The Apostle Paul and Jewish Continuity in Italy To Rabbi Benamozegh

From the Romaniote Minhag  

to Benamozegh’s Universalism

Introduction
The story of Jewish life in Italy is both ancient and continuous, stretching from the late Roman Republic to the modern Italian state. Across two millennia, Jewish communities adapted to shifting empires and cultural landscapes while preserving what is known as Minhag or ritual memory, liturgical custom, and intellectual vitality. Within this tapestry, two figures—the Apostle Paul in the first century and Rabbi Elia Benamozegh in the nineteenth—stand as bookends of a grand narrative: both embody the Jewish instinct to render Torah intelligible across languages and cultures, without abandoning its Hebrew core.

Paul’s formative milieu was the Palestinian synagogue tradition—later known through its Romaniote heirs—that combined Hebrew proclamation with vernacular translation, Torah with Greek and Aramaic idioms. His use of the Septuagint, his exegetical method, and his mission to Gentile God-fearers were extensions of this synagogue world. Far from inventing something new, Paul carried forward a deeply Jewish practice: Torah in many tongues, covenant extended through the nations.

Benamozegh, writing in cosmopolitan Livorno, revived this same instinct in a new idiom. His theology envisioned Israel’s vocation as mediating a universal Noahide ethic, framed in the languages of Italian and French, but grounded in rabbinic tradition. Between these poles stretches the long and intricate history of Italian Jewry: Roman catacombs, Byzantine Calabria, Venetian ghettos, Livornese charters, and ultimately emancipation.

By embedding Paul within the Romaniote-Palestinian minhag and following the thread of vernacular Torah traditions through Italy, Byzantium, and Livorno, we discover that Paul and Benamozegh embody the same covenantal instinct: fidelity to Israel’s Torah coupled with a drive to voice it universally. Their missions, centuries apart, still represent the same pattern—a Judaism deeply rooted yet outward-facing, covenantal yet universal.

This insight is not only historical but dialogical. It suggests that Paul’s engagement with the nations and Benamozegh’s Noahide universalism belong to a single Jewish trajectory. Recognizing this continuity opens new avenues for Jewish–Christian dialogue, where Paul can be reclaimed as a Jewish voice and Benamozegh appreciated as a modern interpreter of that same affirmation of the universal nature of the scope of the gospel and the obedience of faith toward the nations and what should be understood as a two-tier system. Both Paul and Elia Benamozegh testify that the covenant of Israel was never parochial but always intended as light for the nations, in Hebrew concepts expressed into every tongue.

I. Roman Antiquity (2nd c. BCE – 5th c. CE)

Jewish Settlement in Rome and Ostia
Jews are documented in Rome from at least the 2nd century BCE, arriving as traders, freed slaves, and emissaries from Judea. By the Imperial period, Jewish life clustered in Trastevere and the port of Ostia. Archaeological finds—inscriptions, menorah carvings, tombstones—attest to structured communities with guilds and synagogue offices. The Jewish catacombs (e.g., Vigna Randanini, Villa Torlonia) offer evidence of burial societies and religious identity.

Ostia’s synagogue, dating from the 1st–2nd centuries CE and renovated into the 4th, is one of the oldest Diaspora synagogues identified. Its presence underscores the permanence of Jewish ritual life in Italy under Roman rule. A striking discovery is the late 4th/early 5th-century mikveh at Ostia, the earliest of its kind in Europe, confirming ritual continuity.

Paul and the Synagogue World
It was into this environment that Paul carried his mission. Trained by Gamaliel of the Hillite School, he was steeped in the Palestinian synagogue minhag: Torah read in Hebrew, translated into Aramaic, expounded midrashically. Yet as he journeyed to Corinth, Thessalonica, and Rome itself, Paul proclaimed Scripture in Greek, citing the Septuagint (LXX)—the very translation long used in Diaspora synagogues.

This liturgical habit connects Paul directly to the communities of Rome and Ostia. In Acts 13:15, Gentile “God-fearers” listen attentively to the readings of “the Law and the Prophets.” Paul’s arguments presuppose the triennial lectionary cycle and haftarot pairings distinctive of Palestinian custom, preserved later in Romaniote liturgy.

Thus, Paul stands not as a break from Judaism but as a Jewish teacher operating within a synagogue system that was already multilingual, already translating Torah into the lingua franca.

II. Late Antiquity to Early Medieval Italy (5th–10th c.)

Continuity in Rome and the South
After the fall of the Western Empire, Jewish life in Rome persisted while flourishing in southern Italy—Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily—often under Byzantine sway. Archaeology at Bova Marina (Calabria) reveals a 4th-century synagogue with mosaic floors, menorot, and Greek inscriptions. Otranto’s mosaic of Alexander and Leviathan hints at cultural integration. Byzantine rule reinforced Greek-speaking Judaism, deeply linked to the Palestinian rite.

Travelers such as Benjamin of Tudela (12th c.) later recorded Greek-speaking Jews still inhabiting these regions, confirming the long life of what became the Romaniote minhag in Italy. This minhag, conserving Palestinian custom, remained a bridge between Paul’s synagogue world and medieval Italian Jewry.

The Multilingual Torah Principle
The synagogue remained bilingual: Hebrew text, Aramaic translation, Greek vernacular for wider audiences. This habit extended into Judeo-Arabic in the Babylonian Gaonic era and later into Ladino and Yiddish. Italy thus became a conservatory of Torah’s multilingual mission, with the Romaniote presence in the south as a decisive factor.

III. High and Late Middle Ages (11th–15th c.)

Diversity of Rites
By the Middle Ages, Italy preserved multiple rites: the indigenous Italki (Bene Romì) rite, the Romaniote-Palestinian rite, and later Ashkenazi and Sephardi usages. Rome’s continuous community is among the world’s oldest, maintaining its unique minhag alongside newcomers. Cities like Mantua and Bologna fostered rabbinic scholarship (e.g., Obadiah Sforno).

Crises and Expulsions
Jews faced periodic hostility. The infamous Trent blood-libel case (1475) provoked violence and shaped anti-Jewish polemics. Expulsions reshaped the map: after 1492, Iberian Jews arrived in Sicily and Naples; by 1541 they were expelled northward to Ferrara and Venice. Italy thus became a mosaic of rites and origins.

The Vernacular Tradition Expands
Here the pattern resurfaces: Sephardi exiles produced the Ferrara Bible (1553) in Ladino, word-for-word translation of the Hebrew text. Just as Paul had used the LXX for his Greek hearers, Sephardim gave exiles Torah in their heart-language—an enduring Jewish habit.

IV. Renaissance and Early Modern Italy (16th–17th c.)

Printing and Learning
Italy was central to Hebrew printing. The Soncino family pioneered typography from 1483. In Venice, Daniel Bomberg produced the first complete Talmud (1520–23) and Mikra’ot Gedolot, whose page layouts became canonical worldwide. These achievements represent the textual counterpart of the synagogue’s bilingual mission: making Torah portable, legible, and universal.

Intellectuals such as Azariah dei Rossi, Leon Modena, and Simone Luzzatto addressed Christian audiences, offering reasoned defenses of Jewish practice. Their works represent Judaism’s ongoing engagement with broader culture.

Ghettos and Exceptions
At the same time, ghettos spread: the Venice Ghetto (1516) was the first, followed by Cum nimis absurdum (1555) which imposed ghettos across Papal States. Jewish books faced censorship and burnings. Yet in Livorno, the Medici charters of 1591/93 created a free port where Jews enjoyed unprecedented privileges: property rights, professional freedom, no badges. Livorno became a cosmopolitan hub, a “Nazione Ebrea” with global trade links.’

Here again, the multilingual mission of Torah was alive: Livorno hosted Jews from Sephardi, Romaniote, and Maghrebi backgrounds, producing a polyglot synagogue culture.

V. 17th–18th Centuries

Multiple Rites Side by Side
By this period, Italian Jewish communities often had three synagogues—Italian, Ashkenazi, Sephardi—each with distinct liturgy, music, and leadership. Venice exemplified this plurality.

Intellectual Currents
Figures like Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto (Ramḥal) and later Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) carried Italian Judaism into new intellectual directions. Their works straddled pietism, ethics, and Wissenschaft, while still rooted in synagogue practice.

Livorno’s Reach

Livorno became the great exception: its Jews ransomed captives, funded schools, and engaged with Sephardi and Western European networks. Its cultural autonomy made it a fertile soil for synthesis—the soil in which Benamozegh would be born.

VI. Emancipation and the 19th Century

From Ghettos to Citizenship
Napoleonic rule briefly dismantled ghettos, but the Restoration reimposed them. The Statuto Albertino (1848) granted Jewish civil equality in Piedmont-Sardinia, extended during Italian unification. The abolition of the Roman Ghetto in 1870 marked a decisive turn.

Italian Jews now faced the challenge of reconciling ancient particularity with modern citizenship—precisely the tension Paul had faced centuries earlier in his universal mission.

VII. Elia Benamozegh (1823–1900): Modern Universalism

Life and Context
Born in Livorno, Benamozegh inherited a synagogue culture shaped by Sephardi, Italian, and Romaniote influences. The Livornina charters had fostered autonomy, trade, and cosmopolitan exchange. This environment produced a rabbinic thinker fluent in Hebrew, Italian, and French.

Works and Ideas
Benamozegh’s Morale juive et morale chrétienne (1867) and Israël et l’humanité (1914) articulated a vision of Judaism as mediator of universal moral monotheism. Israel’s vocation, he argued, was to embody Torah while guiding the nations into Noahide fidelity.

This theology paralleled Paul’s instinct: both saw Torah not as parochial possession but as light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6), mediated through language and culture.

The Vernacular Principle Reaffirmed
Benamozegh’s cosmopolitan synthesis rested on the very history traced here: a Judaism that had always spoken in many tongues—Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish—while remaining rooted in Sinai. Paul had done this with the LXX; Benamozegh did it with French and Italian prose.

VIII. Conclusion: 

One Torah, Many Tongues

From the catacombs of Rome to the ghettos of Venice, from the Greek-speaking Jews of Calabria to the polyglot synagogues of Livorno, Italian Jewry exemplifies the enduring habit of Torah in translation. Paul and Benamozegh, though separated by centuries and differing in idiom, are heirs of the same instinct: to make covenantal truth accessible to the nations while guarding its Hebrew anchor.

The Romaniote minhag stands as the central bridge: conserving Palestinian custom in Greek guise, shaping Italian Jewish life, and providing the soil from which Paul’s mission and Benamozegh’s theology could grow. Both testify that Judaism is at once particular and universal, deeply rooted and expansively multilingual—a faith for Israel, and through Israel, for all nations.

Bibliography

Primary Sources
Babylonian Talmud, ed. I. Epstein. London: Soncino Press, 1935–52.
Jerusalem Talmud. Translations in Jacob Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982–94.
Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006.

Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan. Trans. Bernard Grossfeld. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1980–87.
Benamozegh, Elia. Morale juive et morale chrétienne. Paris: Michel Lévy, 1867.
Benamozegh, Elia. Israël et l’humanité. Paris: Alcan, 1914. English trans. Israel and Humanity. Paulist Press, 1995.

Secondary Sources: Judaism in Italy and the Romaniote Tradition
Avineri, Shlomo. The Jews of Byzantium. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1978.

Bregoli, Francesca. Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.
de Lange, Nicholas. Greek Jewish Texts from the Cairo Genizah. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996.
Goodblatt, David. The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr, 1994.
Roth, Cecil. The History of the Jews in Italy. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1946.
Simonsohn, Shlomo. The Jews in Sicily, 18 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997–2010.
Toaff, Renzo. The Jews in Medieval Assisi, 1305–1487: A Social and Economic History of a Small Jewish Community. Florence: Olschki, 1975.
Toaff, Renzo. Ebraismo e cristianesimo: Saggi storici. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990.

Secondary Sources: Paul, Scripture, and Liturgy
Bauckham, Richard. The Jewish World around the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
Boyarin, Daniel. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
Fredriksen, Paula. Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977.
Segal, Alan F. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Secondary Sources: Vernacular Torah Traditions
Beit-Arié, Malachi. Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West: Towards a Comparative Codicology. London: British Library, 1992.
Gerhards, Albert, and Clemens Leonhard. Jewish and Christian Liturgy: Prayer and Worship in Communities and Cultures. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Ginzburg, Carlo. “Traces of the Romaniote Rite in Southern Italy.” Jewish History 14 (2000): 125–141.
Langer, Ruth. Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lasker, Daniel. Greek-Speaking Jews in Byzantium. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2009.
Saenz-Badillos, Angel. A History of the Hebrew Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Zimmels, H. J. Ashkenazim and Sephardim: Their Relations, Differences and Problems as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa. London: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Secondary Sources: Benamozegh and Modern Jewish Thought
Benamozegh, Elia. Israel and Humanity. Trans. Maxwell Luria. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995.
Luzzatto, Samuel David. Prolegomeni ad una grammatica ragionata della lingua ebraica. Padua: Crescini, 1836.
Piattelli, Fiorenza. Elia Benamozegh: filosofo ebreo del XIX secolo. Florence: La Giuntina, 1982.
Schwarzfuchs, Simon. Du ghetto à l’émancipation: Les juifs en France, 1789–1791. Paris: Albin Michel, 1989.
Valabrega, Sara. Elia Benamozegh e l’universalismo ebraico. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1969.