JohnySkeptic wrote:

They were trying to get rid of the competition. Many Romans converted to Judaism, including Onkelos who was the nephew of an Emperor.

Can you please point me to some good secular or Jewish websites/articles which elaborates on this?

Jewish Antiquities 2.80, by Josephus mentions a lawsuit in which 8,000 Jews from Rome sided with one of the parties. Only adult men were counted in lawsuits, so at this time there must have been at least 40,000 or more Jews in Rome (wives and children. . .).

Modern historians include H.J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, J.G. Westenholz, The Jewish Presence in Ancient Rome are two. From "The Myth of the Jewish Race" (page 60):
"In the early second century (CE) there were so many converts to Judaism among the Romans that the emissaries of Alexandria in Rome felt constrained to complain to Trajan that "his senate was full of Jews."





סופי

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