| DECREE
OF CAESAR ON FORTIFYING JERUSALEM AND ON THE REMISSION OF TAXES ( 44 BC ) |
| ( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, pp. 104-105, n. 115 ). |
| The
chief difficulty with this document is in dating it. Permission to rebuild
Jerusalem's walls had been given in 47 B.C. and the work had been finished
in that same year (Ant. jud. 14, 9, 1, 156). But the date for
this decree seems to be 44 B.C., from its attribution of the fifth consulship
to Julius Caesar. Perhaps it is a senatorial resolution confirming Caesar's
earlier decree. |
ENGLISH TRANSLATION. |
| Gaius
Caesar, consul for the fifth time, decrees that these men shall receive
and shall fortify the city of Jerusalem and that Hyrcanus, son of Alexander,
high priest and ethnarch of the Jews, shall occupy it as he himself
may choose. And that for the Jews in the second year of the rentterm they shall deduct a kor from the revenue and that persons neither shall make a profit nor shall they pay the same tribute. |