Philo
This makes Philo’s ideology well worth noting. We have seen that imperial politics sometimes inspired religious syncretism, like the god Serapis. But in the case of Philo we see an example of that kind of syncretism naturally occurring among Jews as they assimilated into Hellenistic and Roman culture, with or without official influence. Alexandria, the diverse, cosmopolitan, and highly cultured city at the Nile’s delta—and the home of Serapis—was just where one might expect a syncretism like Philo’s to independently arise.
Like both Josephus and the Gospels, Philo’s ideas blended aspects of his native Judaism with pagan ideas, specifically with the ideas of Plato and the Stoics. Some earlier Jewish works, especially The Wisdom of Sirach, had already shown signs of Platonic influence, but it was in the work of Philo that this marriage was fully consummated.
Philo transformed the Jewish God Yaweh into the neo-Platonic Absolute of the Hellenistic philosophers. For Philo, Yahweh became a World-soul, or Form of the Good, or the One, as this Platonic idea has been variously named. In truth, Jewish monotheism already fit more comfortably with this expanding Greek ideology than polytheism ever could and therefore held increasing attraction to pagans. Philo was the first to attempt a complete integration of these two systems of belief.
Philo also employed an allegorical approach to interpreting Hebrew scriptures, one that did not necessarily deny the literal meaning while seeking a deeper, more universal understanding of the text. He developed no less than an integration of Jewish and Stoic thought, taking its concept of Logos to be the agency of the one God’s creation. This is, coincidentally, the basic ideological blend underlying much of the New Testament. (27) It is these very ideas that directly foreshadow the opening lines of the Gospel of John as they are traditionally translated:
In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (28)
While Philo did not live to see the Flavian dynasty come to power, he probably had a considerable intellectual influence on his nephews, Marcus and Tiberius Alexander. In any case, Philo’s joint Judaic-Hellenic ideology is well known. His nephews connect Philo to Titus’s inner circle.
The Herodian princesses who were friends of Titus were quite notorious for their sexual conduct. While Bernice’s reputation, for example, suffered from her affair with Titus, more damaging were accusations of incest with her brother.
Clearly, Titus also associated with “Alabarchs,” who literally helped the Romans collect taxes.
Both sexual licentiousness and tax collecting were objectionable activities among the pious and revolutionary Jews of this period. Even so, the notorious Herodians and the family of Alabarchs from Alexandria were nominally “Jews” themselves. The Flavians, who had been proclaimed Jewish messiahs, were themselves a family of tax collectors. Both Titus’s grandfather and great-grandfather were tax-collectors. (29)
So the Herodian royals and wealthy Alexandrian Jews connected with Titus are rather strikingly similar to the unconventional company Jesus keeps in the Gospels; i.e., prostitutes and tax collectors, characters reviled by contemporary Jews. (30) At Matthew 21:31 Jesus himself informs the chief priests and the elders of the Jews, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” So, we have another curious parallel between the Emperor Titus and the Jesus of the Gospels.
"The Triumph of Titus" by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
The most notable of all the Jewish associates of Titus, of course, is the famous historian Titus Flavius Josephus.
A self-described scion of royal and priestly Jewish lines, Josephus was a reluctant rebel general who was originally named Joseph Ben Mathias (“son of Matthew”). He infamously switched to the Roman side following his defeat at General Vespasian’s hands. Thereafter, he enjoyed official favor and fortune as a writer and historian at the Flavian court, according to his own account.
Josephus tells us he was with Vespasian at Alexandria, although he does not report the celebrated healing miracles that the Roman general performed there. He, too, was present with Titus at the prophetic Siege of Jerusalem along with the others we have mentioned.
Josephus boasts that, after the war, he was awarded a comfortable property near Rome while writing his encyclopedic tome of Hebraic history with Flavian support and approval.
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, by David Roberts (1850)
We shall return to this central and yet elusive figure, of whom there is much more to be said, later.
How should we characterize all of these “Jews” who were intimately connected to the Flavians?
Mingling with the highest elites in Rome, they certainly did not have any of the qualms concerning pagan “pollution” that was condemned by the Dead Sea Scrolls sectarians. They would have welcomed the message of any critic of Jewish purity regulations, like the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, with enthusiasm.
At least in their youth, the Herodians that Rome appointed to rule the Jewish territories and their immediate family members attempted to live a somewhat Kosher lifestyle even when they were “in Rome.” We are told, for example, that Drusilla, the sister of Bernice and Agrippa II, was first married to the King of Emessa only on condition that he be circumcised—an obviously painful concession for an adult man. Likewise, her sister Bernice’s marriage to King Polemon of Cilicia commenced on condition that the groom convert to Judaism and be circumcised, as well. (31) This kind of report suggests that the family was trying, initially, to be observant Jews, at least for public consumption.
Whatever the cost to the groom, Drusilla’s first marriage didn’t take, however. Upon his arrival in the east, Felix, the newly appointed governor of Judea, immediately fell for the beautiful Drusilla, and Drusilla’s marriage was soon dissolved as Governor Felix married her. Unlike her first husband, the Greek Felix did not forfeit his foreskin, it seems, since Josephus reports Drusilla’s marriage tellingly “transgress[ed] the laws of her forefathers.” (32)
Tragically, Drusilla would die in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, along with her son by Felix, as would Titus’s friend, the polymath Pliny the Elder.
Felix’s brother, it should be noted, was a man named Pallas, an important secretary to the Emperor Claudius and a supporter of the Emperor Nero’s mother, Agrippina (the woman who had hired the philosopher Seneca to tutor her son, the future emperor), while Felix’s own first wife had been a granddaughter of the Roman general Marcus Antonius and the famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra. (The level of political power and influence Felix enjoyed had undoubtedly given him additional leverage during his marriage negotiations.)
Drusilla’s sister Bernice, who would later be engaged to Titus, had only a short-lived marriage to King Polemon despite his own encounter with the surgeon’s knife. It seems their union had been shaky from the start. Josephus, in fact, records that Bernice only married him to dispel rumors that she was engaged in an incestuous relationship with her brother, Agrippa II. As for Polemon, he had been persuaded by Bernice’s fabulous wealth to acquiesce to the short and painful marriage.