Jewish identity

In classical antiquity, the Jewish people were constantly identified by Greek, Roman, and Jewish authors as an ethnos, one of the several ethne living in the Greco-Roman world.[3][4] Van Maaren utilizes the six attributes that co-ethnics share, as identified by Hutchinson and Smith, to show why ancient Jews may be considered an ethnic group in modern terminology.[3] Those include:

1. A common proper name that identifies and conveys the "essence" of its community. In antiquity, three proper names were used to refer to the Jewish ethnos, namely: "Hebrew", "Israel", and "Jews".
2. A myth of common ancestry. In the Jewish case, of descent from eponymous ancestor Jacob/Israel; additionally, the putative descent from Abraham was used to expand definitions of Jewishness by the Hasmoneans and contested by others.
3. Shared memories of the past, including historical events and heroes. Jewish sacred books' accounts of historical events serve as a basic collection of those. Stories and figures narrated in the Hebrew Bible and other writings were further ingrained in the collective Jewish identity by the community reading of these books in synagogues. That includes figures such as the Patriarchs, Moses and David, and events including the Exodus, the covenant at Mount Sinai, the heyday of the united monarchy, the Babylonian captivity, the Antiochene persecutions, and the Maccabean revolt.
4. One or more aspects of common culture, which are not necessitated to be specified, but typically include religion, language, and customs. There were significant overlaps between the religion, languages, customs, and other cultural aspects shared by ancient Jews; moreover, religion cannot be separated from other cultural aspects, especially in ancient times. The worship of the God of Israel, the work of the cult at Jerusalem and other cultic sites, and the following of particular Jewish customs (dietary laws, Sabbath observance, etc.) were major aspects of Jewishness at the period. Despite the fact that not all Jews spoke the same language, because many of the sacred writings were written in Hebrew, it also served as a symbol for Jews who did not speak the language.
5. A connection to a homeland, which need not be physically occupied by the ethnic group in order for it to have symbolic attachment to the place of origin, as is the case for diaspora populations. In the Jewish case, this is the Land of Israel, or Judaea/Palaestina. For both the local Jews and those residing abroad, the land held symbolic value. It endures, despite the Land's borders frequently shifting and occasionally disappearing throughout time.
6. A sense of solidary on the part of at least some sections of the ethnic population. The strength of this sentiment varies. Josephus reports that when the First Jewish-Roman War broke out, the Jews of Scythopolis joined the city in fighting the Jewish rebels because they had weaker sense of solidarity for the Jewish ethnos.[3]

In his works from the late Second Temple period, Philo of Alexandria made comments that reflected the features of Jewish identity in the diaspora. At the time Philo lived, Jews had been present in the Diaspora, particularly in Alexandria, for a very long time. Because his fellow nationals had lived there for many generations, he appears to have thought of Alexandria as his city. In an effort to explain the status of the Jews in words that Greek readers would understand, Philo depicted them as immigrants who laid the groundwork for "colonies" (Greek: apoikiai), with Jerusalem serving as their "mother-city" (metropolis). According to Kasher, Alexandria in this circumstance could only be regarded as a homeland in the political sense because it was the site of the establishment of a Jewish "colony," structured as a distinct ethnic union with a recognized political and legal status (politeuma), with Jerusalem being the colony's mother-city.[5]

Jewish identity underwent a significant shift in the centuries that followed the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The initial conception of the Jews as an ethnos, albeit one with a distinctive religious culture, gradually shifted to that of a religious community that also identified as a nation.[4]

In the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, the Fiscus Judaicus was imposed on all Jews in the Roman Empire, replacing the annual half-shekel tribute that Jews paid to the Temple in Jerusalem. It appears that the Romans chose to use Jewish religious behavior rather than Jewish ancestry to determine tax liability, and this Roman interference in Jewish tax-collection may had prompted this transformation in Jewish identity.[4]

In the following centuries, the Christianization in the Roman Empire sped up this transformation. Ethnic identity had no meaning in Christian thought. Additionally, Christians also believed that the Jews were important solely (or primarily) because their religious practices had served as a foundation for the development of the new covenant.[4]