Note 194 — Chapter XI · JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. (continued 2)

In order to make good that even in bondage the Jews were able to exercise a certain self-administration, Origen (about the year 226) writes to Africanus, c. 14: “How much even now, where the Romans rule and the Jews pay to them the tribute (τὸ δίδραχμον), has the president of the people (ὁ ἐθνάρχης) among them in his power with permission of the emperor (συγχωροῦντος Καίσαρος)? Even courts are secretly held according to the law, and even on various occasions sentence of death is pronounced. This I, who have long lived in the land of this people, have myself experienced and ascertained.” The patriarch of Judaea already makes his appearance in the letter forged in the name of Hadrian in the biography of the tyrant Saturninus (c. 8), in the ordinances first in the year 392 (C. Th. xvi. 8, 8). Patriarchs as presidents of individual Jewish communities, for which the word from its signification is better adapted, meet us already in the ordinances of Constantine I. (C. Th. xvi. 8, 1, 2).