History of the Jews in the Roman Empire

The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire (Latin: Iudaeorum Romanum) traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire (27 BC – 476 AD). A Jewish diaspora had migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of Israel, Anatolia, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC. In Rome, Jewish communities thrived economically. Jews became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century AD (Anno Domini), with some estimates as high as 7 million people; however, this estimation has been questioned. because 7 million which is the number of Roman citizens in 47 AD census was misinterpreted as a report of the number of Jews. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus, included non-Jews. The figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon.

Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and its surroundings by 63 BC. The Romans deposed the ruling Hasmonean dynasty of Judaea (in power from c. 140 BC) and the Roman Senate declared Herod the Great "King of the Jews" in c. 40 BC. Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea became the Roman province of Judaea in 6 AD. Jewish–Roman tensions resulted in several Jewish–Roman wars between the years 66 and 135 AD, which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and the institution of the Jewish Tax in 70 (those who paid the tax were exempt from the obligation of making sacrifices to the Roman imperial cult).

In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan giving official recognition to Christianity as a legal religion. Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital from Rome to Constantinople ("New Rome") c. 330, sometimes considered the start of the Byzantine Empire, and with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire. The Christian emperors persecuted their Jewish subjects and restricted their rights.