Communities in the Graeco-Roman world cherished certain expectations of their members. Whether free or slave, male or female, citizen or disenfranchised, all had to pay their respects to the ruler (emperor and governor or client king), perform certain public duties (military service, maintenance of public buildings, local taxes) and participate in the cultic activities of the community.

The Jews’ lifestyle, however, often prevented them from fulfilling all of these expectations. Jews did pray for the emperor, but not to him. The offering of incense to statues of the emperor was one of the ways in which people celebrated their participation in the empire religiously, but the Jews often refused to allow any statuettes into their houses. Sabbath customs often prevented them from participating in processions and other community activities. Jewish dietary laws sometimes forced them to turn down invitations to banquets.

Jewish groups were ‘outsiders’ in the eyes of other people. To forestall problems, they often requested official permission from the emperor or from local authorities to be exempted from public activities. Jewish leaders, therefore, often referred to a special kind of citizenship possessed by their people. This view caused strong reactions: many people felt that the Jews benefited from the welfare and opportunities that the cities had to offer, but were not prepared to fulfil any of the obligations or the bothersome public services, and various Greek cities suspended Jewish privileges during the first century BCE and the first century CE.

The attitudes of the Roman emperors to the Jews varied. In 38 CE, when tension in Alexandria ended in a bloodbath, the emperor Gaius had little sympathy for the Jews. However, in 41 CE, the emperor Claudius restored Jewish rights in all the cities of the Roman Empire.

This protection was to last until 70 CE. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the right to gather temple tax was cancelled; from that point, all such funds would go to the imperial coffers. From that moment too, the history of the Jews would continue to be one based on their contextual setting and the inevitable factors that accompany such contexts.