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In this published version of a doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Groningen, Marius Heemstra dedicates an entire study to the effect of the Fiscus judaicus upon the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. His argument is clearly laid out. The original didrachma tax of Vespasian was levied upon all Jews registered in synagogues throughout the Diaspora, and was essentially ethnic in its scope. Domitian instituted a change to the tax, recorded in Suetonius, Domit. 12.2, whereby those who led a Jewish way of life without publicly acknowledging it (understood by Heemstra as God-fearers and Gentile Christians), and those who concealed their origins and did not pay the tribute, i.e. tax evaders (understood by Heemstra as Jewish tax evaders, proselytes, apostate Jews, circumcised non-Jews, and Jewish Christians) came, often through the work of informers, to be liable to the tax. Such an extension of the tax led to the persecution of some Christians. Nerva, Domitian's successor, very publicly, as seen on a famous coin legend reading, 'fisci judaici calumnia sublata', reformed the tax so that 'Jews paid the Jewish tax to the fiscus Judaicus if they wanted to practice their religion following the custom of their forefathers as members of the synagogue' (p. 83), a change, then, from an essentially ethnic definition of the tax to a religious one, reflected in the contrast between Josephus' and Suetonius' account of who should be liable to the tax (an essentially ethnic view), and Dio's (a religious one). In this interpretation calumnia is understood as 'wrongful accusation', not 'abuse', associated here with delation, as some scholars have argued. This led to the exemption from the tax of apostate Jews and Jewish Christians, who, as non-Jews, were now perceived, like Gentile Christians, as illegal atheists (in this argument Heemstra assumes that Nerva held Christianity to be a form of atheism, encouraged, so he argues, by the Jewish leadership, who disliked Judaism being associated with Christianity in any way, not least because of its proselytic tendencies), and some of the consequences of Domitian's reforms are seen in 1 Peter, Hebrews and Revelation, which give evidence of persecution (Heemstra here restores the view that Domitian persecuted the Church, an opinion now...