History questions not worth their own thread IV

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The Dura Europos synagogue doesn't contain images from the New Testament, does it? My art history book says that it does. While this seems like it should be really significant (and in fact seems to contradict the author's thesis regarding the synagogue), it's only alluded to briefly in a caption. The author listed Paul as a witness to the Transfiguration, so it's not like he's beyond error when it comes to religion, even though that's Sunday School stuff. I can only imagine the sort of misconceptions I'm getting about religions I don't know anything about.

Basically, survey textbooks suck and I just want to confirm that that was an error.
 
The Dura Europos synagogue had frescoes of Old Testament and pagan imagery (re-interpreted as Jewish). There's a description here and you can see some of them here.

The author either mistyped or confused the synagogue with the famous Dura Europos church - which does have frescoes of New Testament scenes, the earliest known anywhere.
 
What was the extent of Roman involvement in southern Arabia, and was there any distinctly realistic effort to control southern Arabia by the Romans?

Is there any interesting book on this topic?
 
If I'm not mistaken the Romans considered Saba or those dudes in south Yemen to be some kind of allies or trading partners.
 
Dreadnought said:
What was the extent of Roman involvement in southern Arabia, and was there any distinctly realistic effort to control southern Arabia by the Romans?

Is there any interesting book on this topic?
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The trade route up the coast (called "The Incense Route") was a well known and reasonably well traveled route by the time the Romans took control of the region. I can't recall exactly when, but sometime during the reign of Augustus, the Romans did send an expedition to Yemen (Called "Arabia Felix" by the Romans) to secure trade dominance and possibly conquer the area if possible. The expedition pretty much amounted to nothing more than some Roman legions wandering around the desert and laying siege to a couple of towns before calling it quits because of disease and overextended supply lines. Basically it was a complete failure with no long term accomplishments. I don't think any other attempts were made to conquer that far south after that.
 
How did a Roman citizen demonstrate citizenship?
 
Do you mean, what where the rights of citizenship of whether or not the Roman citizens wore a specific item with which they were recognizable?

If the first... I have to look that up.
The second, I believe that only Roman citizens were allowed to wear a toga but that they didn't actually wore them in daily life, only at special occasions like holidays
 
contre said:
How did a Roman citizen demonstrate citizenship?
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The office of the censor kept records about what levels of citizenship applied to what people. In some cases, such as discharged soldiers, the citizen in question would potentially have documentary evidence (we have found many "diplomas of discharge and Roman citizenship" issued to retiring legionaries), but mostly it seems that a person would, if pressed, have to claim that he was a citizen, and if he wasn't believed then a legal inquiry would be sent to the censor. There was no form of Roman ID card, obviously.
 
And what did a Roman citizen gain from citizenship? I can't imagine there was much voting outside the city of Rome, and especially not in the Imperial phase. Was it simply the right to be bound by Roman law, rather than local law?
 
Well, after 212 AD it was a right to be taxed by the Roman state.
 
History_Buff said:
And what did a Roman citizen gain from citizenship? I can't imagine there was much voting outside the city of Roman, and especially not in the Imperial phase. Was it simply the right to be bound by Roman law, rather than local law?
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Right to a trial. I was asking as it comes up a few times in the New Testament, where Paul uses his citizenship as a get out of jail card.
 
Weren't property law and inheritance law affected by Roman citizenship (or lack of)?
 
contre said:
Right to a trial. I was asking as it comes up a few times in the New Testament, where Paul uses his citizenship as a get out of jail card.
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General question: How did Paul become a citizen? IIRC, Judea was a client state of Rome until the 60's and citizenship didn't extent to client states. So was Paul born in a Roman province with the appropriate qualifications (what were those qualifications?) or did he aquire it later?
 
Paul, also known as Saul of Tarsus, was raised in Jerusalem but (as the name implies) born in south central Asia Minor in the city of Tarsus, whose residents were granted citizenship after Pompey conquered it around 67 BC and made it the capital of the Roman Province of Cilicia.
 
After the Russian revolution, is there any estimate of how many of the aristocrats and other "enemies of the people" types escaped to other countries as compared to killed or imprisoned?
 
It's not absolutely certain that Paul was actually a Roman citizen. The evidence that he was, and that he claimed the rights of citizenship, is solely in Acts, which is of questionable historical value. In his own letters Paul never claims Roman citizenship, and indeed claims to have been beaten with rods three times, a punishment which Roman citizens could not undergo.

(Of course he might have suffered the punishment illegally, as Cicero accused Verres of doing to Publius Gavius.)
 
He certainly could have been beaten illegally. He also could have exaggerated his suffering as a way to show his suffering for Christ.

I think the historical value of Acts depends on its authorship. If you believe it was written by Luke, it's far more likely to be accurate on Paul's Roman citizenship.

What are the sources that say the people of Tarsus were granted citizenship (and when is Paul referred to as being from Tarsus)?
 
Louis XXIV said:
I think the historical value of Acts depends on its authorship. If you believe it was written by Luke, it's far more likely to be accurate on Paul's Roman citizenship.
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Sure, but I don't think many scholars would say that Acts was written by Luke.

That doesn't make it wrong, of course. As far as I can tell Acts is rather dubious about details but probably reliable enough when it comes to the general sweep of events, and it's hard to make sense of the later parts of Paul's story if he wasn't a Roman citizen. I'm just saying it's not certain.
 
Well, I understand belief on authorship to be split (at least, I don't think there's a consensus saying it isn't Luke). Certainly, early Christians believed it to be Luke. Is there any reason to think they are wrong aside from the fog of history (in other words, any greater reason than to believe that Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, etc. are not actually who they claim to be?).
 
Well, Luke-Acts doesn't claim any author, so that immediately puts it in a different category from Plutarch etc. The main reason for the traditional identification with Luke is that there are passages in Acts, describing Paul's journeys, where it slips into the first person plural, which implies that the author is someone who was actually with Paul. But there are lots of rival explanations for this, most of which involve interpreting it as a rhetorical technique of some kind. (Entire books have been devoted to the subject.)

It's true that early Christians thought it was by Luke, but "early" here must be taken with a pinch of salt - we're talking about the times of Irenaeus and Tertullian, a century or so after it was written. Irenaeus was demonstrably wrong about some of his claims of Gospel authorship (he thought Matthew's Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, which it certainly wasn't). Given the tendency of ancient authors to accept unlikely claims of authorship, I don't think these beliefs can be given much weight without decent supporting evidence.
 
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