249

Conclusion

This book has argued that Judaean elites gradually increased their political,
economic, and ideological power as agents of institutional change in Early
Roman Palestine. These Judaean elites were boundedly rational –​they
were self-​interested social actors, but often their actions were economically
inefficient by modern capitalist standards because they were influenced
by dispositions that we would designate as cultural or religious. The surg-
ing power of Judaean elites, notably, did not generally correspond to the
increased impoverishment of non-​elites relative to earlier periods and other
provinces. This is because of the positive economic effects of urban develop-
ment, trade, and technological innovation as Palestine became integrated
into the social and commercial networks of the eastern Mediterranean. In
lieu of rehashing the conclusions of this study, which are summarized at
the end of each chapter, this conclusion fits them all together in response
to this book’s driving question of how institutional change impacted rela-
tions between Judaean elites and non-​elites in Early Roman Palestine.
The majority of institutions in Early Roman Palestine –​whether admin-
istrative, fiscal, or cultural –​were built on the foundations of earlier insti-
tutions. Change was thus “path-​dependent,” a matter of negotiation and
adaptation rather than invention and imposition. Elites functioned as the
principal agents of institutional change as both a cause and effect of their
political, economic, and ideological power.

Institutional Change and Political Power

Political power, the control over social relations through regulations and
coercion, was disproportionately distributed between elites and non-​elites.
The political power of non-​elites was typically restricted to their influence

249

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250 Conclusion

as part of a civic or village assembly, but we are woefully underinformed

about the regularity and impact of this power in Early Roman Palestine.
Not all elites had direct political power, but many did, especially in the
form of positions in municipal administration. Urban development was a
gradual and incremental process that coincided with the transformation of
administrative institutions that empowered elites. Through various com-
binations of the initiatives of client-​kings and other local elites, urban and
semiurban settlements were transformed into venues of elite power and
status acclamation.
Municipal organizations such as civic boulai or synedria were a primary
source of elites’ political power. High status and wealth were prerequisities
for participation in these organizations, which ensured that members were
bound together by common interests. These organizations shaped local law,
whether through influence or direct interference, and they were thus able
to harness military power to enforce and implement the institutions they
shaped. In Early Roman Palestine, organizations of elites advanced institu-
tions of private property and indirect taxation and also regulated the prices
and types of goods sold at markets. These institutions sometimes had positive
ramifications for the broader population –​for instance, standard toll rates
would have helped to reduce the transaction costs caused by asymmetrical
information and the hubris of individual toll collectors. But institutional
changes had the greatest benefits for the elites responsible for their design.
Elites had a special interest in keeping tax rates low, for example, so that they
could charge higher rents on their land. In this way, political power afforded
elites a measure of control over relations between cities and villages, land-
lords and tenants, contractors and laborers, and producers and consumers.
The institutional changes that endowed a segment of elites with power
over social relations also naturalized status differentials. While not impos-
sible, it was challenging for non-​elites to break into the social ranks of
elites by attaining political office. The informal institutions of patronage
and benefaction facilitated rituals of status differentiation by refracting
political power as legitimate representation and justified honor. The wide-
spread misrecognition of this political power permitted the reproduction
and adaptation of the longstanding institutions that sustained disparities of
status and wealth.

Institutional Change and Economic Power

As control over resources (human and nonhuman) and access to them,
economic power overlaps considerably with political power. Those elites

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Institutional Change and Ideological Power 251

with political power regulated social relations, on the whole, by regulating

resource distribution. However, economic power was also exercised by
elites and non-​elites who did not possess direct political power.
The complex effects of institutional change on differentials of eco-
nomic power are most apparent in the sphere of land tenancy. Due to
the stipulation of private property rights over land by elites with political
power, elite and non-​elite landowners gained access to revenue that had
been conveyed to the state under previous fiscal regimes. Not all land-
owners were elites, but it is clear that it was elites (including the fami-
lies of client-​kings) who owned the majority of the land. As such, elite
landowners had a monopoly on Palestine’s most productive resource and
access to its products. The sources suggest that landowners in Palestine
owned slaves but more typically employed tenants or temporary laborers
to work their land. Elites had a clear advantage in economic power in
negotiations over contracts with workers, but tenants and hired laborers
also had some economic power.
Tenants and nonslave laborers often possessed valuable resources
required to yield revenue from the land, whether skilled labor, slaves,
tools, draft animals, irrigation, seed, or some combination of these. They
also offered information and security that landowners wished to attain.
Ultimately, the bargaining power and legal rights of tenants and laborers
paled in comparison to that of landowners, with negative repercussions for
the former, but both partners in these interactions did have some economic
power. In general, it appears that tenants and hired laborers who worked
on private estates had more economic power than those who worked on
royal estates.
The wealth that elites gained through their power over labor and
resources supported their demand for luxury items. Many elites spent a
portion of their wealth on acquiring high-​quality luxury goods such as
tableware, lamps, and jewelry, whether imported or locally made. In this
way, elite demand for imported styles induced wider trade in a variety
of goods, enabled some degree of supraregional market integration, and
stimulated the production of local versions of foreign items. Elite wealth,
gained through control over the land and other resources, thereby sup-
ported the development of a distinctive elite culture.

Institutional Change and Ideological Power

Ideological power –​control over meaning, norms, and practices –​sus-
tains and legitimates political and economic power, but it is more than

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252 Conclusion

that. Ideological power also orients and constrains the agency of individu-
als, groups, and organizations, shaping patterns of social and economic
behavior. While it overlaps with the other dimensions of social power,
ideological power can also conflict with them, as path-​dependent cultural
institutions are often found to be at odds with economic efficiency.
The wealth and status of Judaean priests in Early Roman Palestine were
contingent on ideological power. By controlling the interpretation of scrip-
tural injunctions, priestly elites and their supporters maintained two institu-
tional practices that increased their wealth and status –​tithes and the Temple
tax. While Jerusalem’s priestly elites (though not all priests) had become the
beneficiaries of several other institutions in the Early Roman period, and did
not want for wealth, they accepted tithes on the pretense that they supported
their subsistence. Similarly, Temple taxes and other offerings supported reg-
ular worship and the upkeep of the Temple, but they also supported elites
who were already wealthy. Jerusalem’s economy of the sacred was thus depen-
dent on religious and cultural institutions that sustained power differentials.
At the same time, however, it facilitated the integration of diasporic social net-
works, interregional trade, and the marketing and distribution of goods from
Jerusalem and its environs, among other social and religious consequences.
Ideological power was also expressed in Early Roman Palestine as chang-
ing class dispositions. As elites surged in economic and political power,
they developed a cultural habitus that distinguished them from non-​elites.
Elite culture incorporated distinctive tableware, oil lamps, dress, and buri-
als. While not static or uniform across Palestine, this culture adapted styles
from elsewhere in the Roman East –​from Tyre, Antioch, and Ephesos –​and
even Italy. Judaean elites appropriated, adapted, and transformed the cul-
tural habits of other provincials, forming out of numerous aesthetic influ-
ences their own culture that negotiated and adapted wider Mediterranean
trends. By using their wealth to acquire imported items, elites had dispro-
portionate power in cultural change and the transregional integration of
markets.
Elites’ innovative norms, meanings, and practices were not glibly
accepted by non-​elites. This was partly because non-​elites could not afford
the same cultural resources as elites, but also because non-​elites, too,
wielded ideological power; they were not passive recipients of a dominant
ideology. At the same time that elites developed a distinctive class cul-
ture, non-​elites did the same. Those non-​elites who could afford it partici-
pated in the generation of a class habitus that relied on local materials and
rejected many of the ostensibly foreign aesthetics that characterized the
class culture of Judaean elites. Nevertheless, non-​elite material culture still

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Institutional Change and Ideological Power 253

betrayed external influences, as is evident in some of the formal features of

tableware and lamps, for example.
Elites and non-​elites both exercised ideological power in a way that
caused social change and influenced economic behavior. Bolstered by
their disproportionate economic and political power, however, elites had a
comparative advantage in maintaining and developing the cultural institu-
tions that entrenched and naturalized inequalities of wealth and power.
The numerous institutional changes that transpired in Early Roman
Palestine did little to mitigate the rampant inequalities of wealth in
Judaean society, but they also did not exacerbate the economic conditions
of non-​elites on the whole. Even still, patterns of the production and use
of material culture indicate that elites and non-​elites were more easily dis-
tinguishable than ever by the early first century CE. This conclusion com-
mends a different and more critical way of understanding the depictions
of tensions between the rich and poor in literary texts from this period.
Instead of accurate reflections of antagonistic socioeconomic relations that
were caused by new forms of economic exploitation, these texts should be
viewed as material contributions to the changing ideologies of class that are
also evident in the archaeological record.

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