In the Service of the Empire: Continuity of Jewish Military Service in the Armies of Rome

Abstract

The main debate regarding Jewish soldiers serving in the Roman armies is still focused on the question whether these Jews actually existed. Unfortunately, this debate is not only limited, but at times it also misses the larger picture. The current article will conclusively show that Jews served in the Roman armies, even in large numbers, and that the main debate we must conduct is whether they served in accordance with their percentage of the general population, or even in higher numbers. Furthermore, the article will irrefutably prove that Jewish military service was a continuous phenomenon from the last decades of the Republic until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, and possibly continued, to some extent, in the Eastern Roman Empire until the first half of the 6th century AD.