Bibi said
Relations between Israel and the Roman Empire suffered a notable cooldown, and it can be said that after Claudius the idyll of the times of Caesar and the Jews of Rome ended definitively: “because, instigated by Chrestus, they did not stop promoting disturbances” ( Suetonius, Claudius 25, 4), which led to the FINAL EXPULSION of the Jews in Rome, probably in the year 49. Suetonius (Claudius 25:4) reports that Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome without any remaining. This definitive expulsion, according to Orosius (Historiae adversus Paganos VII 6, 15: Anno eiusdem nono expulsos per Claudium urbe Iudaeos, Iosephus refert) took place in the year 49 (Claudius was prince from 37 to 54). The expulsion of the year 49 is probably referred to by Lucan of Cyrene (evangelist Luke) in the brief annotation of Acts 18:2: “since Claudius had ordered that all the Jews leave Rome”.

Based on this:

1) The Jews with Claudius had their Roman citizenship irrevocably withdrawn, so they passed the status of ‘barbarians’ or non-Romans.

2) The Jews were definitively expelled from Rome after the year 49 by Emperor Claudius, without any Jew remaining in Rome.

How to understand that Paul claims to be a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25; 23:27) and that the centurion accepted it, or Felix, if the Roman citizenship was taken from all Jews from Claudius?

If Roman citizenship had been withdrawn from all Jews and after that Paul continues to identify himself as a Roman and the Roman rulers continue to accept him as a Roman, and according to tradition he dies a Roman (beheaded), does that not mean that Paul was not a Jew, but a Roman?

For example, according to the Jewish-Ebionite version, Paul would be of Gentile origin, (by his Roman father: Antonio, and by his Samaritan mother: Rachel) and later, as Paul grew up, he would have fallen in love with a daughter of a Cohen and, as part of his efforts to win the woman’s affection, he would have undertaken a lukewarm attempt to observe the Law of Moses. When she finally rejected him, he wrote against marriage, followed by his castration to despise circumcision by writing against circumcision and returned to his old paganism and vented his frustration by attacking the Judaism that had rejected him.

This information circulated in some anti-Pauline circles shortly after Paul’s death, as is evident in the writings of the 4th century Christian bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion (also known as Refutation of all Heresies) 30.16.6-9. There is a translation in The Writings of St. Paul, ed. Wayne A. Meeks (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 177-178.))

Doesn’t this prove that Paul was a Roman and not a Jew?

I appreciate your attention

Ami

  

We cannot recreate ancient society, let alone recreate the community of Hellenistic Jews. John Dominic Crossan talked about the fact that most of the names of the founders of city synagogues were non-Jewish. Hellenistic Judaism dates back to at least Alexander the Great. Herod’s temple was Hellenistic and most of the pilgrims attending the 3 annual festivals were also Hellenistic. The persecution was to prevent the spread of foreign religion when it was particularly popular and posed a threat to official civic cults. It was the same with the persecution of Christians by Hellenistic Jews – if something dangerous is spreading, you have to suppress it. Paul is an ecumenical golem made by 4 or 5 ghost writers and an unknown number of editors. He is the hero of Pauline Corpus, not its author. The same as with Jesus – Crossan says different, Ehrman says different, and such a ghost writer nicknamed Mark sat and chose from Josephus, from LXX and other whatever he wanted