Were There Jewish Gladiators?

THOSE DEADLY GAMES: Evidence ancient Jews watched but didn’t participate in gladiatorial games. If a Jews did occasionally fight, they would’ve probably opted to take on animals rather than people, according to a new scholarly article (Menachem Wecker, JNS).

A new scholarly paper finds “inconclusive” evidence that Jews participated in the ancient Roman gladiatorial games. But it is clear that they defied rabbinic admonitions and attended the games as spectators, wrote Haggai Olshanetsky, a University of Basel postdoctoral fellow in ancient civilizations.

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The underlying article is in the open-access journal ‛Atiqot, vol. 111 (2023):

Were There Jewish Gladiators? A Re-Evaluation of the Available Archaeological and Textual Evidence
(pp. 119-147)
Haggai Olshanetsky
Keywords: Jews, gladiators, Judaism, arena, Colosseum, Roman Games

The participation of Jews in the arena, especially as gladiators, has received relatively little attention. The few articles written on this matter suggest that Jews were both spectators and participants. The present paper relates to all previously suggested indications for the existence of Jewish gladiators and also introduces new ones. Although the possibility that Jewish gladiators were active in the first–fourth centuries CE cannot be ruled out entirely, the evidence remains inconclusive, suggesting that their number was very limited at best. It is also suggested that if Jews had participated in the games, they probably preferred to fight beasts rather than men.

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