Giday, I'm Gary Stevens.

And welcome to the third season of the History in the Bible podcast.

In this final season, I explore how the Jews and the Christians constructed new religions when they were

sent spinning into the void after the destruction of the temple. All of the history, about all of the

books beyond the Bible. Episode 3.3.

Before the Great Revolt, Part 1, the Judeans.

In the last episode, I presented the history of the Judeans under the Hellenistic kingdoms

and the astonishing literature it produced.

Time to move forward to the Roman Empire, just before the Great Verbalt broke out in the year 66.

Our best guess is that 3 to 4 million Judeans lived in the Roman Empire and a million in the Parthian Empire, beyond

the remit of Rome. The Parthians ruled Mesopotamia as the successes to the Seleuces.

To this day, we call this population of Judeans Babylonian, even though they spent only 60 years under the empire's rule.

We know almost nothing about the lives of the Judeans living in Parthia.

We know something about the lives of those active in the Roman Empire.

Of the Judeans within the Roman Empire, anywhere from one half to one million, lived in the

province of Judea, perhaps the same in Egypt, and the rest elsewhere in the empire.

Depending on how we cut these very shaky numbers, anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of Roman Judeans lived outside

the Judea-Egypt Axis. By the year 66, Judeans had enjoyed over a century of Roman rule.

They had established communities along the entire eastern coast of the Middle Sea, from Greece to Anatolia, Cyprus to Syria.

They had a substantial presence in Rome.

Paul had spread his message through these communities in his three missionary journeys.

As did other ethnic, Judeans tended to congregate in their own locales.

...