Ben Hur, the novel, part 15

I’m ignoring chapter 7 of Book II and that means we’re up to Book III. Chapters 1 and 2 have an error. Quintus Arrius is called a tribune while he is in command of a military ship. The rank of tribune went out before the Republic ended. The commander of a ship was a centurion because ships had a hundred rowers, and he had a co-officer of unknown function called a trierarchus.

Skipping chapters 3-5, wherein Wallace invents the rescue of Arrius by Judah, we get to Book IV. Chapter 1 has Judah being raised for 5 years by Arrius and driving his horses in the circus. Arrius supposedly adopts Judah and bequeaths all his property to him.

While adoptions in the Roman Empire were as close as possible to an actual parental relationship, I believe this is another fiction. It benefits Judah by giving him riches and contacts in government, but it doesn’t do much for Arrius. The emperor could set aside a will if it did not follow the rules of piety: the heir had to owe a duty to the testator to offer to his manes upon his death. Jews don’t do that. Tiberius, who was always hard up for money (or greedy) would have set Arrius’ will aside in a heartbeat and surely some wise friend of Arrius would have told him so.

All the more so as Tiberius cleared Rome in 19 CE of Jews. Finding a Jew named as Arrius’ sole heir would have invited scrutiny.

Is it because there were no Jews in Rome that Judah let Arrius adopt him? Hardly. The book claims that the battle was in 24 CE. Tiberius’ expulsion included officials of Isis worship. Here’s what was going on.

Some Roman priesthoods required that the priests be born from the strictest form of Roman marriage, the confarreatio. Women had to enter this form of marriage if the paterfamilias ordered it. But there were two problems: Augustus noted and passed laws about a habit of marrying girls who were not old enough to give birth. Then the man left her to the care of the paterfamilias and went on his merry way. At any point, he could get the paterfamilias to agree to a divorce and then be free to marry the woman he really wanted. If the family had already eaten up the first wife’s dowry, and the new woman was rich, it was a no-brainer.

Jewish and Egyptian women were not eligible for confarreatio. They were not subject to a paterfamilias; they had more civil and physical freedom than Roman women, including the right to earn and keep money in their own name. Isis was a powerful, popular goddess with handsome rites, and anybody could understand why Roman women would join her cult.

But misconceptions about Judaism make it hard for Gentiles to understand why Roman women would convert to Judaism. Jews had businesses and farmed; they had legions in the Roman army. They could not serve in the government, which required oaths to pagan gods, but they did just about every other job you can think of, some of which were low-paying and others nasty, like leather-working which was smelly. Roman women would not be attracted by rich Jews, who would have been married by age 18; nor could they gain social glamor by marrying a Jew.

So why convert? Maybe stability. A Jewish marriage requires the man to settle a ketubbah on his wife for her benefit after his death, and he can also, as I said, make her a deed of gift. A Jewish divorce requires a finding of ervah or, in the man, impotence. A Jewish marriage requires that the man support his wife. A Jewish wife can say “not tonight, dear” and not have to complain of headache. A Jewish family does not have a paterfamilias who can push through a divorce or who has the right of life and death over those in his manus.

There might have been Roman men who converted. This would get them out from under the cult. Roman men who did not serve in the military could not achieve high government rank. But they were expected to serve in government and that was an expensive proposition; officials paid for religious ceremonies and public works and celebrations like games. If you had a business or property with good income, you could avoid all that if you were a Jew, and maybe even if you were part of the Isis cult.

Nobody is sure why Tiberius pushed Jews and Isis worshippers out of Rome, but it only means they left the city proper. The larger part of the Jews were settled in Trastevere (Cross-Tiber) where a Jewish graveyard has been found. It remained a Jewish quarter into medieval times. So there were Jews in Italy, close to Rome, for Judah to live with, find work, maybe find a wife. He might eventually move back to the Holy Land but, with his family and property there destroyed, it would take either economic disaster in Italy or a strong religious bent to draw him back.

And that would put his conversion back to the arrival of Paul in Rome, about 50 CE. That’s not the story Wallace wants to tell.