No imperial cult. Rome's relationship with the Jews?

If you don’t establish the Imperial Cult or deemphasize it after Augustus, do the later Jewish rebellions still happen and on the same scale? Would ethnic religious conflict between Greeks and Jews still occur and lead to the same destruction? Would Roman authorities find Jews much less problematic and rebellious if Republican era notions of religion and divinity were continued to a much greater extent and there was no culture of worshipping Rome or the emperor in the provinces?
 
There's a line of reasoning holding that the Jewish rebellions were largely the product of Jewish internal dynamics, as opposed to anything the Romans did. While I tend to disagree, it is true the tension between Jewish monotheism and Hellenism pre-dated the Roman imperial cult and even Roman imperialism in the region. So rebellions are still very likely. However, a lesser emphasis on the Imperial cult would certainly defuse some tensions (Caligula really did a lot to inflame Jewish opinion) and maybe reduce the scale and violence of the rebellions, even if clashes of some kind remain likely. However, a Rome without a strong Imperial cult would be very different in many regards, so it's hard to predict.
 

Philip

Donor
It does nothing to avert the Jewish rebellions. The immanent arrival of the Messiah to reestablish the Kingdom of David was a central theme of the Jewish religion at the beginning of the Common Era. From their perspective, the Romans were an occupying army in the land promised to the Hebrews by YHWH. The religious practices of the occupiers was incidental.
 
In OTL the Romans exempted the Jews from having to participate in the Imperial cult. The root cause of the Jewish rebellions was sending second rate incompetent governors to administer Judaea. The better options were either to keep Judaea as a client state answerable only to the Emperor and not the Syrian legate or to administer Judaea as proper province with its legate. Governing Judaea with prefects / kings that were subject to meddling from the Legate of Syria was the worst of both worlds and could only end in revolt.
 
The imperial cult wasn’t just “set up” one day imposed from above entirely within the roman control, it was Hellenic provinces particularly in Asia Minor who established the imperial cult from below. So you would an earlier pod to butterfly all forms of the imperial cult.
 
It does nothing to avert the Jewish rebellions. The immanent arrival of the Messiah to reestablish the Kingdom of David was a central theme of the Jewish religion at the beginning of the Common Era. From their perspective, the Romans were an occupying army in the land promised to the Hebrews by YHWH. The religious practices of the occupiers was incidental.
They rebelled also against the Seleukid rule.
 
Jewish were among the most nationalist of all people conquered by the Romans, stubbornly loyal to their traditions, culture and especially exclusive within their communities. Any governor either had to thread very carefully to avoid uprisings or completely annihilate them once they rose, a task rendered even more difficult since more often than not they rebelled out of the blue, with no real plan or prospect. Their revolts had less to do with their disrespect towards the Emperor’s cult and more to do with their attidute towards a world which didn’t understand them and to which they were unwilling to adapt.
 
Jewish were among the most nationalist of all people conquered by the Romans, stubbornly loyal to their traditions, culture and especially exclusive within their communities. Any governor either had to thread very carefully to avoid uprisings or completely annihilate them once they rose, a task rendered even more difficult since more often than not they rebelled out of the blue, with no real plan or prospect. Their revolts had less to do with their disrespect towards the Emperor’s cult and more to do with their attidute towards a world which didn’t understand them and to which they were unwilling to adapt.
also the Romans had a horrible tax system in Judea too.
 
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