The Constitutio Antoniniana as a Catalyst of the Rabbinic Movement

• In Event: Jews in Late Antiquity: Perspectives of Law, Art, and Imperial Policy

Abstract

The proposed paper considers the impact of the Constitutio Antoniniana, or the Antonine Constitution, on the growth of the rabbinic movement in third-century Palestine. Issued around the year 212 C.E., the Antonine Constitution granted citizenship to virtually all free men in the Roman Empire. The reform was of little practical advantage to its beneficiaries, in effect merely granting them the right to partake of Rome’s civil judicial procedure. But its impact on the self-perceptions of those who chose to avail themselves of that right was no less profound, instilling in their minds a sense of pride in their legal empowerment. It is my contention that the expansion of the rabbinic movement and the extension of its reach during the third century were indirect effects of this common mentality. The rabbinic sages, I argue, perceived their civic empowerment as a de facto endorsement of their Torah. They thereby construed the honorific extended to all Jews and to all peoples under Roman rule as a license both to practice the halakhah themselves and to disseminate it among those receptive to their influence. In other words, the casual Romanization of the rabbis facilitated their initial efforts to expand their movement beyond its initial geographic and demographic footprints. I conclude by considering the residual impact of this relatively early development upon the so-called ‘rabbinization’ of Palestinian Jewish society typically associated with the escalation of Rome’s legal degradation of its Jewish subjects during the late fourth century.

author

• Joshua Ezra Burns, Marquette University