Chapter 5 explores Pseudo-Hegesippus’ brief yet striking engagement with the ancient Judeo-Christian discourse of martyrdom. It assesses the biblical figures cited in a speech made by the Jewish leader Matthias in De Excidio 5.22, and compares this to the story of the martyr deaths of the Christian apostles Peter and Paul in De Excidio 3.2, to show how De Excidio delegitimates the notion of Jewish martyrdom, implicitly leaving Christians as the only legitimate martyrs of the first century CE.

The Bible contains competing maps of Israel’s homeland, and these maps bear directly on questions of belonging and status for communities that affiliated with Israel. This first chapter of Part II compares the conceptions of the conquest that inform these maps.

This chapter examines how different cultural and religious groups constructed narratives of Roman justice between the late first and late third century, and assesses the interactions and connections between these narratives. It focuses on three case studies: (i) the Acta Alexandrinorum, accounts of embassies and trial scenes between Alexandrian Greeks and emperors; (ii) Christian texts, chiefly the apocryphal acts featuring encounters between apostles and emperors and the martyr acts recounting trials before Roman governors; and (iii) Jewish literature, including 1 and 2 Maccabees, and rabbinic texts which include discussions of Roman justice. The narratives of justice created by Alexandrian Greeks, Christians, and Jews in the High Empire are united by the fact that they all rewrite the public transcript of Roman legal authority. These stories show evidence of cross-cultural interactions in both form and content, but this chapter argues that the ultimate purpose and agenda of the different narratives were specific to the community that produced them.