Michaël Girardin, L'offrande et le tribut: histoire politique de la fiscalité en Judée hellénistique et romaine (200 a.C.-135 p.C.). Scripta antiqua, 152. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2022. Pp. 541. ISBN 9782356134356Cue a "What have the Romans ever done for us?" joke.Review by
Noah Kaye, Michigan State University. kayenoah@msu.edu... Should we understand from this that Roman, indeed all foreign taxes were especially hated in Judea? Was the theocracy of (ancient) Judaism, with its para-fiscal tithes and sacrifices and its elaborate system of finance for the maintenance of cult and priestly caste fundamentally anti-fiscal in its stance toward temporal power? Were Jews fiscally irreconcilable to the Roman ecumene, as in the vision of a second-century rabbi: “Everything that [the Romans] established, they established only for their purposes. They established marketplaces, to place prostitutes in them; bathhouses, to pamper themselves; and bridges, to collect taxes from all who pass over them” (b. Šabb. 33b)?
No, argues Michaël Girardin, in a daring and erudite cultural and psychological history of taxation in Judea between Cyrus and Hadrian. Judean subjects of the Hellenistic and early Roman empires, Girardin argues, only came to resist foreign taxation at moments of full-blown crisis, when charismatic leaders distorted fiscal reality in order to foment pious rebellions. ...
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