[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Although taxation is among the most prevalent aspects of ancient polities, its study remains a challenging topic to tackle from a “big picture approach”. This state of affairs results from the varied methods of assessing and collecting taxes — even within the same empire or political unit — and partly from the quality of the evidence that survives from antiquity. As a result, specific case studies tend to be more prevalent than broad overviews in analyses of taxation. In its form, the edited volume reviewed here fits with recent studies of ancient taxation.[1] Although ancient Rome and Egypt feature prominently in the title of the volume, the book is focused primarily on the province of Judaea.
The book is divided into two parts: the first is titled “Taxation in Egypt and the Roman Empire”, and the second “The Galilean Economy before and after the First Judaean Revolt”. The editors’ introduction is helpful in providing a summary of the contents of each contribution and for its attempt to place the volume within the larger discourse of Roman economy and taxation (p. 2). Perhaps most importantly, the editors stress that past scholarship has focused on the view of taxation from the Roman administrative offices, while their volume — and in particular the second part — focuses on the “effect … the destruction and expropriation of resources in the Galilee ha[d] on local and regional microlevel economies around the time of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 66/7 to 70 CE…” (p. 3). This is a promising topic and framing, but unfortunately the result lacks coherence and significant effect; the volume promises analyses that the majority of chapters do not deliver, namely how taxes were collected and served ideological purposes, and how they were understood by “provincials”.
The volume includes two articles of great interest and strong methodological rigor, both at the end. The book suffers, however, from both its framework and its methodology — it is possible that the issue is fundamentally editorial, but I think that the problem is methodological at base. The authors are clear experts in their fields, namely New Testament and Biblical studies. A greater representation of expertise in Economic History, however, would likely have averted the volume’s tendency to describe broad economic practices economic practices with rudimentary theoretical frameworks and minuscule datasets that yield studies too brief to do justice to the topic or even the data presented. Given the variety of quality, length, and subject of each chapter, I will address the main challenges in and contributions by each article in turn.
John T. Fitzgerald’s chapter serves as a good introduction for beginning students of ancient taxation, since it deals with more theoretical questions on the nature of extraction and the role taxes play within state ideology. The article presents a dichotomy between the two traditional types of economy: temple vs palace, or put more plainly by the author, tithes vs taxes. Using case studies of Persia, Athens, and Sparta (with a focus on the Melian Dialogue), Fitzgerald explores cases in which the significance of tribute essentially signals economic exploitation and fundamentally acts as the economic gain of war, demonstrating how ancient cities paying tribute often felt extorted (p. 27). While the analysis of the speech and in particular the case study on Melos is rich, this chapter could have benefited from trimming. The inclusion of Persia at the beginning is useful as prolegomena to the author’s analysis of Thucydides’ speeches and subsequent texts, but the chapter really loses its thread with the brief inclusion of Rome, which in this context is superficial and unnecessary, even if the volume is supposed to focus on the Roman period (p. 33).
Given the quality of the evidence from Egypt, where taxation receipts survive on papyri, Agnes Choi had the best opportunity to deal with the topic at hand. The author has an appealing line of inquiry, too: when does the actual payment of taxes take place? Choi concludes that during the Graeco-Roman period taxed grain was required to be “pure and clean”, therefore probably meaning that the collection did not take place from the threshing floor where the grain that had been harvested was initially gathered.[2] The author seems to be focused particularly on wheat, which was part of the annona during the Roman period and thus much more institutionalized and regularized in Egypt than other products and also much more controlled by the fiscus.[3] Choi answers the article’s central question, where the payment of wheat in kind took place, by using a modern ethnographical analysis conducted in Cyprus, and concludes that assessment took place at the threshing floor while the collection took place at a later stage when the grain had been cleaned by the cultivator (p. 49). This suggestion is enticing, but there is no clear explanation on how twentieth-century Cyprus compares to Graeco-Roman Egypt, if it does.
David Hollander’s contribution on the unfair nature of Roman taxation during the principate presents a summary of important scholarship dealing with Roman taxation. The premise is simple: contrary to certain scholarly opinions, Roman taxes were burdensome at the local level. The chapter serves as a good foundation for understanding the underlying theories regarding the low tax model vs the high tax model, and furthermore presents food for thought about the type of evidence and data we are missing, the potential bias provinces like Egypt can present, and the fact that taxation could be weaponized as a political and imperial tool especially in instances when the subjects were not citizens (p. 63) : a small remark with big implications, as it is often not discussed in assessments of taxation in the ancient world. Hollander’s three propositions — that the Roman tax system was opaque, that Roman taxes were inconsistent, and that Roman taxes were unfair — are useful to frame the theme of the volume. Perhaps another fruitful research avenue would be to explore how Roman taxes were inconsistent even within the same province, which would allow for conversation with other articles in the volume.
Presenting evidence from Egypt, Arabia, and the New Testament, G. Anthony Keddie attempts to demonstrate how imperial population censuses were not necessarily only aimed at increasing the tax burden of subjects, but also at discriminating ethnic groups by gradually transforming privileges for Greeks into good taxation rates for elites. Since most of the same officials who oversaw the census were also in charge of overseeing epikrisis declarations (examination of special statuses in order to determine tax discounts), the epikrisis could be seen as an extension of the Roman census, Keddie argues. The author then adduces evidence of such marginalization through taxation, as in the example of the Ioudaiōn telesma, which was collected for both men and women starting at the age of three and was only possible because of the census’ collection of information that was not strictly relevant to the poll tax. Keddie concludes that the Roman imperial census normalized privilege as well as marginalization. This chapter, though engaging in subject, hastily surveys texts from Arabia, Egypt, and the New Testament, unfortunately not providing the right amount of space to find a connective thread. The cursory overview offered in the first half of the article is balanced by a significantly more detailed analysis of New Testament texts, again betraying one of the volume’s central threads: the appropriation of select examples from the field of economic history as an aid to understanding biblical texts, rather than as an analysis of the questions posed around economic history.
The book’s second part focuses more closely on archaeological analysis. Mordechai Aviam’s chapter aims to “show the development and changes in economic terms of the Galilee before and after the war [the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-73 CE]…” (p. 95), though in the end it provides a summary of sites rather than a substantive discussion of case studies. Aviam describes archaeological evidence from the sites of Yodefat, Gamla, and Tell Rekhesh to show that Judaean villages were destroyed and abandoned. The data itself is of intriguing, but unfortunately not presented with visuals or discussed by stratigraphic layers at greater length. Perhaps this chapter alludes to the “revolt” aspect of the volume’s title? There is compelling archaeological data described from Yodefat, which supports the account of the revolt according to Josephus, yet the reader is provided no more information than a few sentences. The author concludes that archaeology proves Josephus right and that there was a wall built around each settlement in Yodefat, Gamla, Magdala, and Tell Rekhesh.
Thomas McCollough discusses the economic transformation of villages in Upper Galilee using John Maynard Keynes’ notion of “animal spirits” to explain economic choices that “reflect a more emotive or narrative-based approach to economic behavior” (p. 108). It is an unique approach, though the chapter lacks definitions—what is the author’s definition of rational vs irrational economic behavior? (p. 122)—and could have benefited from more detailed scholarship on ancient market economies, especially since the aim of the chapter is to “make the case for the importance of building an economic portrait of a region by beginning at the micro level and building out from that evidence to a more general theory of economic behavior” (p. 108). The numismatic data seems a fruitful avenue for the author to explore potential market transitions: there is an absence of growth of Roman coins in the archaeological record during the first three centuries CE but a significant number of Tyrian coins.
David Fiensy’s primary goal is to describe and analyze changes in the economic posture of a small Jewish village in Lower Galilee in the early first century CE by describing the economic situation of the Galilean economy and how it could have led to a rise in banditry. Comparative data provided by economists suggest that banditry, to a great extent, exists most often in a sweet spot of either decreased government efficiency or a slight increase in government effectiveness, but that rates of banditry substantially decrease in the presence of both hyper-vigilant and dysfunctional governmental structures. Accordingly, Fiensy suggests that the rise in banditry presented by Josephus in Palestine in the first century CE was also a result of a decrease in government efficiency or an increase in its effectiveness (p. 135). Fiensy’s is the best executed article in the book, because it is concise, clear, and not overly ambitious, while still contributing to the theme of the book.
Likewise, James Riley Strange’s contribution is a straightforward case study, arguing that the rise in production of a certain type of pottery lamp present in assemblages of finds from the site of Shikhin, located in Galilee, during the first century CE could perhaps point to the presence and thriving industry of Judaean refugees who arrived after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. The article begins with a theoretical discussion which aids in framing the importance of the lamp industry and archaeological evidence from Shikhin.
This book is clearly written for readers interested in Judaea and biblical studies and could serve as an introduction to basic economic questions framed by and for biblical scholars. I do not think, however, that it will be a book of particular significance to scholars of the Roman Empire who require a developed theoretical approach to economic analyses and detailed arguments based on the available data. This concern is not solely mine: Jürgen Zangenberg states in his epilogue that “some readers might of course deplore what they diagnose as ‘lack of theory’” (p. 173), indicating that the editors and authors of the book were at least aware of the potentially unsatisfactory nature of the approach if the volume was intended as a work of scholarship in the field of economic history. Zangenberg first states that the papers are not isolated from each other (p. 173), though in the final paragraph he references the contributions as “beautiful islands”, in a call to find a “map to be able to connect them” (p. 174), further reinforcing, at least in my eyes, the assumption that the choice for the title of the volume arose out of the varied nature of the chapters, rather than the chapters being written with the aim of illuminating a particular subject at hand.
I appreciate the intention to mix economic and biblical texts with archaeological data, and the evidence presented in each chapter is thought-provoking. Nevertheless, this book required more editorial overview and quality control. The introduction is a useful forethought but given the advances we have made in the field of taxation (many of which the authors cite) the book, while providing important data for the economic status of the province of Judaea in the first century CE, is not particularly innovative for the field of ancient economic history in general.
Authors and Titles
“Introduction”, Thomas R. Blanton IV, Agnes Choi, and Jinyu Liu
Part I. Taxation in Egypt and the Roman Empire
- “Taxation and Tribute in Early State Thought and Practice”, John T. Fitzgerald
- “The Check is in the Mail: Assessing and Collecting Taxes in Ancient Egypt”, Agnes Choi
- “Opaque, Inconsistent, and Unfair: Some Remarks on the Burden of Roman Taxation during the Principate”, David B. Hollander
- “Roman Provincial Censuses as Sociopolitical Regulation: Implications for Interpreting the Synoptic Gospels and Acts”, G. Anthony Keddie
Part II. The Galilean Economy before and after the First Judean Revolt
- “The Economic Impact of the First Jewish Revolt on the Galilee”, Mordechai Aviam
- “The Economic Transformation of an Early Roman Galilean Village: A Keynesian Approach”, C. Thomas McCollough
- “Bandits and the Galilean Economy: Was the Galilee Prosperous or Desperately Poor?”, David A. Fiensy
- “Refugees: The Missing Element in Discussions of the Galilean Economy in the Roman Period”, James Riley Strange
“Epilogue”, Jürgen K. Zangenberg
Notes
[1] The introduction itself cites many examples, including Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel (edd.), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States (Cambridge, 2015) and Jonathan Valk and Irene Soto Marín (edd.), Ancient Taxation: the Mechanics of Extraction in Comparative Perpective (New York, 2021).
[2] The article is missing key scholarly interlocutors, such as Dominic Rathbone, “Egypt, Augustus and Roman Taxation”, CCG 4 (1993): 81-112; Andrew Monson, “Land Tenure and Taxation from Ptolemaic to Roman Egypt”, Tyche 25 (2010): 55-71; Andrea Jördens, “Government, Taxation, and Law”, in Christina Riggs (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2012), pp. 56-67; and Andrew Monson, From the Ptolemies to the Romans. Political and Economic Change in Egypt (Cambridge, 2012).
[3] In the subsequent chapter by Hollander (61), Walter Scheidel is cited precisely on how much more closely Egypt might have been guarded than other provinces (Walter Scheidel, “The Early Roman Monarchy”, in Andrew Monson (ed.), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 229-57 at p. 248).