Today, in the twenty-first century, Judaism is usually thought of as an ethnic religion and Jewish people are not generally known for their proselytizing. At least in the second and first centuries BCE and the first century CE, though, Jewish people in the Mediterranean world were far from totally disinterested in trying to convert other people to their religious practices and way of life. In fact, among ancient Greek and Roman authors in this period, one of the main things Jewish people became known for was their supposed habit of aggressively proselytizing.
Early Christianity’s strong emphasis on proselytism is best understood not as a completely sudden new development or an example of early Christians doing something that no Jewish people had ever done before, but rather an example of Christians taking something that some Jewish people had already been doing and making it a major focus for their movement.
Jewish proselytism in antiquity
The epitomist Ianuarius Nepotianus in his epitome 3.2 summarizes a statement by the earlier Roman historian Valerius Maximus (fl. first century CE), who recorded in his De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus 1.3.3 that, in 139 BCE, the Roman praetor peregrinus Cornelius Hispalus ordered for all Jews to be expelled from the city of Rome because the Jews were supposedly “Romanis tradere sacra sua conati,” which means “trying to transmit their own sacred rites to the Romans.”
If this report is accurate, it indicates that at least one Roman official at the time believed that the Jewish people living in the city of Rome were trying to convince Romans to follow at least some of their religious practices, if not outright convert them.
On somewhat more certain ground, we know that, in the late second century BCE, John Hyrcanus, the ruler of the Hasmonean Kingdom, conquered the region of Idumea located to the south of Judaea. He forced all the Idumeans to circumcise themselves and follow the Jewish law, mandating that anyone who would not follow the Jewish law would be forced to leave. The Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus (lived c. 37 – c. 100 CE) describes how this happened in his Antiquities of the Jews 13.9.1, as translated by William Whiston:
“Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa, cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.”
This is one of the earliest known instances in human history of one nation forcing another whole nation to convert to their religion.
ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the territories the Hasmonean Kingdom conquered during the reign of John Hyrcanus, including Idumea
The Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (lived 65 – 8 BCE), commonly known today in English as “Horace,” makes a famous joke in his Satires 1.4.142–43 in which he clearly plays on a popular stereotype that Jewish people will supposedly stop at nothing to convert people to their religion and rituals. He says:
“cui si concedere nolis,
multa poetarum veniat manus, auxilio quae
sit mihi (nam multo plures sumus), ac veluti te
Iudaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam.”
This means, in my own translation:
“If, for this, you are not willing to concede,
a mass of poets will arrive at my hand, they will be at my aid
(for we are by far the majority), and, just like
the Jews, we will compel you to concede into our throng.”
A number of sources, including Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews 18.81–84, the Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) in his Life of Tiberius 36, the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (lived c. 56 – c. 120 CE) in his Annals 2.85, and the Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 CE) in his Roman History 57.18.5, attest that, in 19 CE, the emperor Tiberius expelled many Jews from the city of Rome. Kassios Dion specifically claims that the reason for this expulsion was because the Jews were successfully converting so many Romans to their religious customs. He writes:
“τῶν τε Ἰουδαίων πολλῶν ἐς τὴν Ῥώμην συνελθόντων καὶ συχνοὺς τῶν ἐπιχωρίων ἐς τὰ σφέτερα ἔθη μεθιστάντων, τοὺς πλείονας ἐξήλασεν.”
This means, in my own translation:
“When many Jews were congregating toward Rome and were converting multitudes of the locals to their own customs, he [i.e., Tiberius] expelled most of them.”
The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) rails at the apparent success of Jewish proselytism in Rome in a fragment from his now-lost treatise De Superstitione (i.e., On Superstition), which has been preserved through quotation by the Christian church father Augustinus of Hippo (lived 354 – 430 CE) in his apologetic treatise On the City of God 6.11. The fragment declares: “victi victoribus leges dederunt!” (“The conquered have given laws to the victors!”)
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble portrait bust of the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, who complains about the success of Jewish proselytism in Rome in a surviving fragment
The Gospel of Matthew (henceforth abbreviated gMatthew), which was most likely written at some point between c. 75 and c. 95 CE, portrays the Pharisees, who were one prominent school of thought among religious Jews in the Levant in the first century CE, as particularly dedicated to the task of winning converts to their school of thought. gMatthew 23:15 portrays Jesus as denouncing them by saying (as translated in the NRSV):
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
For more information about Jewish proselytism in antiquity, my main secondary source for this section is Louis H. Feldman’s chapter “The Enigma of Horace’s Thirteenth Sabbath” (pages 351–376) in his book Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, published by E. J. Brill in 1996.
ABOVE: Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees, painting made by the French artist James Tissot at some point between 1886 and 1894
The roots of Christian proselytism in Second Temple Judaism
In this historical and cultural context, it is perhaps easier to see how proselytism became so important for members of the Jesus movement and later Christians. The most commonly held view among scholars who study the historical Jesus is that he and his earliest disciples believed in an imminent eschatology, meaning they believed that the eschaton (i.e., the end of the world) was imminent and that God would establish his kingdom on earth very soon. Consequently, they believed that there was extremely limited time remaining for them to spread Jesus’s message. This made proselytism a very important priority.
gMatthew 28:16–20 describes a famous scene known as the “Great Commission,” in which Jesus instructs his disciples to go out and make converts “of all nations.” It reads as follows (as translated in the NRSV):
“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”
There are very good reasons to doubt that the historical Jesus really spoke these exact words. Indeed, the question of whether the historical Jesus ever had any interest at all in converting Gentiles to his movement is a matter of open scholarly debate. Nonetheless, it is extremely likely that Jesus, as an itinerant apocalyptic Jewish religious teacher in the early first century CE, would have told his disciples to go out and make converts, at least of other Jews.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a stained glass window depicting the Great Commission from the Gospel of Matthew from the Cathedral Parish of Saint Patrick in El Paso, Texas
It is also clear that, after Jesus’s death, followers of the Jesus movement that would eventually become Christianity were very interested in winning converts from very early on. The seven authentic letters of Paul, written in the 50s CE, are the earliest surviving Christian writings. In them, Paul makes it very clear that he sees proselytism as an imperative. In 1 Corinthians 9:16, he says “οὐαὶ γάρ μοί ἐστιν ἐὰν μὴ εὐαγγελίσωμαι” (“for it is woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!”)
Even after Christians began moving away from the imminent eschatology of Jesus and his earliest followers, many Christians continued to believe strongly in the importance of proselytism. The Gospel of Mark 16:15–16, which is part of the “Longer Ending of Mark” that was not part of the original gospel and was instead added later by an author relying on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, portrays Jesus after his death and resurrection as saying to the eleven remaining apostles (as translated in the NRSV):
“Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”
Outside the writings that are now included in the New Testament canon, early Christian writers like Ioustinos Martys (lived c. 100 – c. 165 CE), Klemes of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 CE), and Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 185 – c. 253 CE) all wrote works with the more-or-less explicit aim of convincing people who were not Christians to convert to Christianity.
ABOVE: Sixteenth-century engravings by the French illustrator André Thevet showing what he imagined Ioustinos Martys (left), Klemes of Alexandria (middle), and Origenes of Alexandria (right) might have looked like. (No one knows what any of these men really looked like.)
The cult of Kybele
As a side note related to my own research and the honors thesis I am currently writing, another religious group that existed in the Mediterranean world before Christianity that was apparently known for its zealous proselytism was the cult of the Phrygian mother goddess Kybele.
One group of devotees of Kybele who are prominent in the ancient sources are the Galli, who lived as mendicants, meaning they traveled around and survived by begging for alms. Despite being assigned male at birth, the Galli deliberately castrated themselves, dressed in feminine clothing, wore cosmetics, wore their hair long in a feminine manner, and spoke in what Greek and Roman authors perceived as high, effeminate voices. Greek and Roman authors generally perceived the Galli as disgusting, foreign, and effeminate. In Greek, they are sometimes called “ἡμιγυναῖκες” (“half-women”) and in Latin they are sometimes called sēmivirī, (“half-men”).
For those who wish to read more about the Galli, I discuss them extensively in this post I wrote in August 2020 about people in the ancient world who might be considered transgender or gender-variant and this post I wrote in February 2022 about how eunuchs were perceived in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world.
The Roman satirical poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (lived 38 or 41 – c. 103 CE), commonly known today in English as “Martial,” who lived in what is now Spain, tells a fictional story about one group of Galli in his Epigrams 3.91 that is evidently supposed to be humorous. The story suggests that elite Roman men harbored a fear that the Galli would seek out especially handsome young men, castrate them, and force them to become Galli:
“Cum peteret patriae missicius arva Ravennae,
semiviro Cybeles cum grege iunxit iter.
Huic comes haerebat domini fugitivus Achillas
insignis forma nequitiaque puer.
Hoc steriles sensere viri: qua parte cubaret
quaerunt. Sed tacitos sensit et ille dolos:
mentitur, credunt. Somni post vina petuntur:
continuo ferrum noxia turba rapit
exciduntque senem, spondae qui parte iacebat;
namque puer pluteo vindice tutus erat.
Subpositam quondam fama est pro virgine cervam,
at nunc pro cervo mentula subposita est.”
This means, in my own translation from the Latin:
“When a newly-discharged veteran, from homeland Ravenna, was aiming for a field,
he joined on the way with a half-man herd of Kybele.
His companion was hanging close, a runaway slave of his master, Achillas,
a youth remarkable in beauty and lewdness.
The sterile men perceived this; and they inquired in which part he would sleep.
But he perceived their secrets and deceitful words;
he lied, they believed him. After wine, they went to sleep;
straightaway, the noxious throng seized iron
and castrated the old man, who was lying in one part of the bed;
for the boy in his avenging crevice was safe.
It is said that, once, a doe was substituted for a virgin,
but now, in the place of a stag, a cock was substituted.”
This idea of the Galli forcibly castrating young men and forcing them to become Galli against their wills is almost certainly a literary invention that says more about how elite Roman men found the existence of the Galli threatening to their own masculinity than about what the Galli were actually doing. Nonetheless, one can imagine that these kinds of stories might be fueled by the Galli engaging in aggressive proselytism and maybe trying a bit too hard to convince people to join their mendicant order.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a funerary relief of an Archigallus from Lavinium dated to the second century CE on display in the Capitoline Museums in Rome
(NOTE: This post is adapted from an answer I originally wrote for r/AskHistorians.)
I really enjoy your texts and how thoroughly researched they are. I will add your site to my favorites. I especially liked the one about silphium. Keep going!
Thank you so much! I am so glad to hear that you are enjoying my work. I put a lot of time and effort into researching and writing each article that I post. If you would like, you can subscribe to my emailing list so you will receive an email each time I make a new post. I also have a Patreon you can subscribe to if you are feeling generous and you would like to support the work I do here on this blog. Don’t feel like you have to do that if you don’t want to, though.
Interesting post, thank you. It’s been my (not well-informed) opinion for a while that the reason for modern Judaism’s quietism (as in: they make it actually *difficult* to convert!) is that they had to spend 15 or so centuries playing nice and non-threatening with the Christian majority around them.
I think you are very correct. There is also the fact that, throughout most of Europe throughout basically the entire Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, it was actually illegal for Jews to engage in proselytism and, in some places in Europe during some time periods, any Jewish person who was caught proselytizing could literally be put to death. For Jewish people to survive in that environment, they obviously had to adapt.
Late Yahwism and Early Judaism have always something interested me, especially how it reflects in the writings found Hebrew Bible, Deuterocanonical writings, and texts that never became canon at all.
Thank you for this entry, Spencer, and for so many others. There is something I don’t get, though. The Jewish people is still the chosen one, right? So, were ancient Jews trying to get non-Jews into a religion which says they are second-class for their god? Or maybe the proselytizing was for social customs and practices (on food, etc.), rather than for faith?
Ancient people generally saw ethnicity as flexible to some degree. A person who was born into one ethnicity could become a different ethnicity by adopting the language, culture, religion, dress, customs, and way of life associated with that ethnicity. Thus, people born as Gentiles could “Judaize” and become Jews, not just in a religious sense, but also in an ethnic sense. Of course, people could hold another person’s ancestry against them later and say that it made them less Jewish or less Greek or less Roman or what have you, but there was still a fairly widespread idea that, by changing one’s speech, ways, and customs, one could actually change one’s ethnicity.
Ancient Jews who engaged in proselytism seem to have had various goals. Some seem to have simply wanted to convince Gentiles to follow certain Jewish practices. Judging from the passage by Valerius Maximus that I quoted, for instance, it is possible that Jews in Rome may have only been trying to get Romans to follow some of their practices, not completely convert to Judaism. Some Jews, though, do seem to have been interested in fully converting people into Jews. Josephus indicates in the passage I have quoted from him above that John Hyrcanus forced the Idumeans to become “no other than Jews” (i.e., fully Jewish).
It seems like the cult of Dionysus did something similar to proselytising. Do you think this would count?
Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett, “The Republic,” (Lawrence: Digireads Publishing, 2008), pg. 36:
“…they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them, no one knows what awaits us”
Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture(Harvard University Press, 2004), Walter Burkert, pg. 78:
“As Plato noted, the cult has itinerant “purifiers” and “initiators”, kathartai, telestai, who, through the appropriate rituals, offer their clients freedom from various afflictions, including the fear of death and postmortal punishments. The key document for such priests is a decree of king Ptolemy Philopator from Egypt, dated at about 210 B.C., which orders “those who are performing initiation rituals for Dionysus” to register at Alexandria. They are organized in “families”, with tradition from “father” to “son” and are presumed to guard a sacred text (heiros logos), be it mythical stories or ritual formulas; this, the decree says, shall be deposited at the royal office in Alexandria under seal. That wandering initiators would cover the distances between Macedonia, Thesaly, Lesbos, Crete, and southern Italy is not remarkable.”
Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians(Mohr Siebeck, 2015) pg. 229:
“The tragedy presents a religious vision in which Dionysus appeals to, and indeed requires, the allegiance of all humanity, both Greeks and barbarians. As E.R. Dodds observes, “Euripides represents the Dionysiac cult as a sort of ‘world relgion’, carried by missionaries (as no native Greek cult ever was) from one land to another.” The universal scope of Dionysus’ mythological conquests and his power to unite barbarians and Greeks under common religion were important factors in the god’s appeal as a divine model in subsequent imperial ideology, beginning with the legends surrounding Alexander. Thus, for example, Diodorus Siculus, in his summary of the mythologies of the Dionysus’ conquests of the inhabited world, characerizes the god as a model statesman who “furnished unity of mind and much peace in place of divisions and war”. Acts similarly represents Christianity as a religion with universal claims, one that must reach “to the end of the earth” (1:8)”
Yes, I think you are correct that what is described in the passages you have quoted here counts as a form of proselytism.
Thank you very much, Spencer! Until I read your post, I wasn’t aware of the proselytizing nature of Judaism in the century before the war of 66-70.
It seems to me that you made a small mistake at the beginning, when you say that “The Roman writer Valerius Maximus … in his De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus 1.3.3, summarizes the work of an earlier historian named Ianuarius Nepotianus”. The preserved manuscripts of Valerius Maximus’s first book have a big lacuna including the entirety of chapter 3. We know its contents because of two later epitomists. The first one, Julius Paris (5th century), abridged the nine books of the work preserving their structure. The reference to 1.3.3 is to be found in this epitome, but the Latin text is different; it reads: “Idem Iudaeos, qui Sabazi Iovis cultu Romanos inficere mores conati erant, repetere domos suas coegit.”
Ianuarius Nepotianus is not “an earlier historian”, but the other later epitomist. His compendium is shorter than Paris’s, having compressed VM’s information within a one-book work, but he also added some exempla of his own to the collection. The passage you quoted is found here, in chapter 3.2.
One last remark: Seneca’s quote is to be found in Augustine’s CD 6.11, not 6.1.
Oh gosh, I am so sorry for those mistakes. Thank you so much for pointing those out to me. I have now corrected both of the errors you have mentioned.
As usual, this was very interesting, I never knew Judaism used to proselytise! I thought, since Buddhism is also (somewhat) proselytising, that this was simply a phenomenon common in religions with charismatic founding figures who preached of salvation and equality. Good comparison with the Galli, I wonder if worshippers of Isis (Isiacs?) also used to proselytise, since that religion also spread throughout the Mediterranean and had a lot of followers in Rome
Hey Spencer, I was thinking, could you do an article covering the history of the concept of heaven and hell in Judeo-Christian thought? I think that would be so cool! Or even just an article just kind of explaining the history of the afterlife in different cultures throughout the world?
I have an article about the history of angels that I am hoping to publish within the next few days hopefully. An article about the history of heaven and hell is definitely an idea on my list of articles that I eventually want to write about. In the meantime, I will note that Bart D. Ehrman, the eminent scholar of early Christianity, published a book in 2020 titled Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, which is an accessible history of the development of concepts of the afterlife in Jewish and Christian thought.
This would make a great base for an alternate history novel. Christianity never existed — Judaism instead grew to true world religion status. It seems like they were on their way at one point.
A little sad too, that the whole attitude of Judaism was warped by 2000 years of bans on proselytizing. In the book “Rashi’s daughters”, Rashi converts a Christian woman who begged him to Judaism, but makes her move far away from town afterwards, since if people found out he had done this, he would surely be put to death. Free of these kind of constraints, Judaism would have been rather more confident and outgoing.