Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Jerusalem grew even wider. It was standard Roman policy
     to forge alliances with the landed aristocracy in every captured city, making them
     dependent on the Roman overlords for their power and wealth. By aligning their interests
     with those of the ruling class, Rome ensured that local leaders remained wholly vested
     in maintaining the imperial system. Of course, in Jerusalem, “landed aristocracy”
     more or less meant the priestly class, and specifically, that handful of wealthy priestly
     families who maintained the Temple cult and who, as a result, were charged by Rome
     with collecting the taxes and tribute and keeping order among the increasingly restive
     population—tasks for which they were richly compensated.
    The fluidity that existed in Jerusalem between the religious and political powers
     made it necessary for Rome to maintain close supervision over the Jewish cult and,
     in particular, over the high priest. As head of the Sanhedrin and “leader of the nation,”
     the high priest was a figure of both religious and political renown with the power
     to decide all religious matters, to enforce God’s law, and even to make arrests, though
     only in the vicinity of the Temple. If the Romans wanted to control the Jews, they
     had to control the Temple. And if they wanted to control the Temple, they had to control
     the high priest, which is why, soon after taking control over Judea, Rome took upon
     itself the responsibility of appointing and deposing (either directly or indirectly)
     the high priest, essentiallytransforming him into a Roman employee. Rome even kept custody of the high priest’s
     sacred garments, handing them out only on the sacred festivals and feast days and
     confiscating them immediately after the ceremonies were complete.
    Still, the Jews were better off than some other Roman subjects. For the most part,
     the Romans humored the Jewish cult, allowing the rituals and sacrifices to be conducted
     without interference. The Jews were even excused from the direct worship of the emperor,
     which Rome imposed upon nearly every other religious community under its dominion.
     All that Rome asked of Jerusalem was a twice-daily sacrifice of one bull and two lambs
     on behalf of the emperor and for his good health. Continue making the sacrifice, keep
     up with the taxes and tribute, follow the provincial laws, and Rome was happy to leave
     you, your god, and your temple alone.
    The Romans were, after all, fairly proficient in the religious beliefs and practices
     of subject peoples. Most of the lands they conquered were allowed to maintain their
     temples unmolested. Rival gods, far from being vanquished or destroyed, were often
     assimilated into the Roman cult (that is how, for example, the Canaanite god Baal
     became associated with the Roman god Saturn). In some cases, under a practice called
evocatio
, the Romans would take possession of an enemy’s temple—and therefore its god, for
     the two were inextricable in the ancient world—and transfer it to Rome, where it would
     be showered with riches and lavish sacrifices. Such displays were meant to send a
     clear signal that the hostilities were directed not toward the enemy’s god but toward
     its fighters; the god would continue to be honored and worshipped in Rome if only
     his devotees would lay down their arms and allow themselves to be absorbed into the
     empire.
    As generally tolerant as the Romans may have been when it came to foreign cults, they
     were even more lenient toward the Jews and their fealty to their One God—what Cicero
     decried as the “barbarian superstitions” of Jewish monotheism. The Romansmay not have understood the Jewish cult, with its strange observances and its overwhelming
     obsession with ritual purity—“The Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred,”
     Tacitus wrote, “while they permit all that we abhor”—but they nevertheless tolerated
     it.
    What most puzzled Rome about the Jews was not their unfamiliar rites or their strict
     devotion to their laws, but rather what the Romans considered to be their unfathomable
     superiority complex. The notion that an insignificant Semitic tribe residing in a
     distant corner of the mighty Roman Empire demanded, and indeed received, special treatment
     from the emperor was, for many Romans, simply incomprehensible. How dare they consider
     their god to be the sole god in the universe? How dare they keep themselves separate
     from all other