Temporal Identities

In Late Antique Palaestina several factors coincided to prompt a wide-spread sense that a new era was dawning. Among Jews, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70CE as well as the suppression of the Bar Kokhva Revolt in 135 CE, with the consequent prohibition to enter Jerusalem, gave rise to a radical reconfiguration of religion and society. The rabbis emerged as a new urban elite, which inscribed itself into Roman structures and integrated Roman law, especially following Caracalla’s general grant of Roman citizenship in 212. Among Christians, Caracalla’s grant of citizenship strengthened the sense of a universal vocation supported by the Empire. At the same time, Origen was concerned to define the relationship of Christianity towards Judaism, reconstructing a pre-Mosaic period of universal Israelite religion, which was now revived via Jesus among the Christian communities. Among “Pagans”, especially Celsus and Porphyry, whose works were transmitted largely in Palaestina, we see a concern to hold onto traditional categories of time, such as the idea of an eternal creation lasting forever.

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