Judaean Embassies and Cases before Roman Emperors, AD 44-66

In the two decades before the First Jewish war, litigants ordiplomats from the province of Judaea had recourse to Romanemperors on a number of occasions. In some cases the mattersat issue involved objections against actions of Roman prefectsof Judaea. Evidence about the outcomes of the hearings and diplomaticencounters shows that the emperors Claudius and Nero usuallygave decisions in favour of the Jewish side, especially whenthe Jewish party was the Jerusalem priesthood. It is arguedthat it was a consistent policy of these emperors to be fairand more than fair to the Jerusalem priests in these years—tothe point of ruling against their own procurators on a numberof occasions. It is suggested, in view of this, that when thecase of Paul of Tarsus came before Caesar in the early sixties,the decision probably went in favour of Paul's accusers.