Page 31 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

A Walk to Caesarea: A Historical-Archaeological Perspective 17

to conduct community life according to the laws of its religion and its tradition,
and with recognized leadership distinct from that of the polis. The Jews, who were
richer and stronger than the Greeks/Syrians, were scattered throughout all parts of
the city, mixed among the Gentiles, rather than concentrated in a separate quarter.
They claimed they should take precedence since the founder of Caesarea – namely,
King Herod – was of Jewish origin. Their rivals admitted this but responded that
previously Caesarea had been called Straton’s Tower, and then, there was not a
single Jew there.

This dispute grew into a violent conflict resulting in bloodshed in the city streets
and agora. The Jews’ appeal to Governor Felix only aggravated the situation,
and ultimately delegations from the two camps reached Rome for the verdict of
Emperor Nero (54–68). The emperor decided against the Jews, with the Greeks/
Syrians winning and attaining from the emperor rule over the city. This resulted
in the eradication from the public memory of Herod as the founder of the city.
Caesarea became known as Caesarea Stratonis – of Straton.

As time went on, this dispute led to an extremely serious clash, at the end of
the procuratorship of Gessius Florus (64–66). The conflict, which began in 66 CE,
centered on free access to one of the city’s synagogues. The Caesarea Jews had a
synagogue near a plot of land belonging to a member of the local Greek community.
The Jews sought to buy the land, but the owner refused to sell it and even wanted
to build workshops there, allowing the Jews only a narrow passage to the synagogue.
A violent attempt to prevent construction was quashed by procurator Florus. On
the Sabbath, when the Jews gathered in the synagogue, one of the Gentiles placed
a cauldron upside down in the entrance to the synagogue and sacrificed birds on it,
an allusion to the claim against the Jews that they were driven out of Egypt because
they were lepers and suffering from other serious diseases. The Jews considered
this a debasement of their Torah and an act rendering the site impure. A clash
broke out between the young men on both sides. The apprehensive Jews took the
Torah scroll from the synagogue and escaped with it to Narbata, near Caesarea.
A delegation of 12 Jews from among their leaders, headed by the customs official
Johanan, hurried to Florus in Sebaste, asking him to intercede on their behalf.
But Florus ordered their arrest, accusing them of smuggling the Torah scroll out
of Caesarea. He returned to Caesarea only after having inflicted a massacre in
Jerusalem in an attempt to seize money from the Temple treasure.

Violence increased in Caesarea. The same day Florus attempted to take control of
Jerusalem’s Temple treasures, the people of Caesarea slaughtered more than 20,000
Jews of the city in one hour during the Sabbath. That way Caesarea was essentially
emptied of its Jewish inhabitants. Those still alive were enchained by order of
Florus and brought to the harbor (and apparently from there were exiled abroad
as slaves). The slaughter in Caesarea stirred the wrath of the Jews everywhere, and
they went out in groups to take revenge and to destroy Syrian villages and the
neighboring cities throughout the province and beyond it. This eventually led to
the outbreak of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans and the destruction of
the Second Temple. That is why the synagogue was known in the third and fourth