The venality of priesthoods is a well-established phenomenon from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, essentially in Asia Minor. This custom, generally condemned by the Romans, was in use mainly in the cities in order to bail out the local treasury. Talmudic testify to the existence of this phenomenon in Palestine during the great crisis of the 3rd century CE, when serious economic and financial difficulties probably encouraged Jews to serve as priests in pagan temples, and the cities to sell priesthoods in an attempt to alleviate the financial und economic situation.
This article attempts to reconstruct the heathen cults which existed in Jerusalem, after the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE and especially after the foundation of the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of the Jewish city, in the first half or the second century CWE. Based on all the currently available literary and archaeological sources, this area of research reveals that the pantheon of Aelia Capitolina was exclusively Graeco-Roman, as was the case with the city of Sebaste/Samaria. Those two religious centers dissociate themselves from the Palestinian paganism, in the Roman era, which was profoundly characterized by the syncretistic merger of the Greek and Roman religions with ancient Phoenician and Syrian cults.