Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire

Description

In histories of ancient Jews and Judaism, the Roman Empire looms large. For all the attention to the Jewish Revolt and other conflicts, however, there has been less concern for situating Jews within Roman imperial contexts; just as Jews are frequently dismissed as atypical by scholars of Roman history, so Rome remains invisible in many studies of rabbinic and other Jewish sources written under Roman rule. Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire brings Jewish perspectives to bear on long-standing debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity. Focusing on the third to sixth centuries, it draws together specialists in Jewish and Christian history, law, literature, poetry, and art. Perspectives from rabbinic and patristic sources are juxtaposed with evidence from piyyutim, documentary papyri, and synagogue and church mosaics. Through these case studies, contributors highlight paradoxes, subtleties, and ironies of Romanness and imperial power. Contributors: William Adler, Beth A. Berkowitz, Ra'anan Boustan, Hannah M. Cotton, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Paula Fredriksen, Oded Irshai, Hayim Lapin, Joshua Levinson, Ophir Münz-Manor, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Hagith Sivan, Michael D. Swartz, Rina Talgam. List of Abbreviations ix Introduction: Rethinking Romanness, Provincializing Christendom 1 Annette Yoshiko Reed and Natalie B. Dohrmann Part I. Rabbis and Other Roman Sub-Elites 23 1. The Afterlives of the Torah’s Ethnic Language: The Sifra and Clement on Leviticus 18.1–5 29 Beth A. Berkowitz 2. The Kingdom of Edessa and the Creation of a Christian Aristocracy 43 William Adler 3. Law and Imperial Idioms: Rabbinic Legalism in a Roman World 63 Natalie B. Dohrmann 4. The Law of Moses and the Jews: Rabbis, Ethnic Marking, and Romanization 79 Hayim Lapin Part II. Christianization and Other Modalities of Romanization 93 5. There Is No Place Like Home: Rabbinic Responses to the Christianization of Palestine 99 Joshua Levinson 6. Between Gaza and Minorca: The (Un)Making of Minorities in Late Antiquity 121 Hagith Sivan 7. Christian Historiographers’ Reflections on Jewish-Christian Violence in Fifth-Century Alexandria 137 Oded Irshai 8. Narrating Salvation: Verbal Sacrifices in Late Antique Liturgical Poetry 154 Ophir Münz-Manor 9. Israelite Kingship, Christian Rome, and the Jewish Imperial Imagination: Midrashic Precursors to the Medieval “Throne of Solomon” 167 Raʿanan Boustan Part III. Continuity and Rupture 183 10. Chains of Tradition from Avot to the ʿAvodah Piyutim 189 Michael D. Swartz 11. Change and Continuity in Late Legal Papyri from Palaestina Tertia: Nomos Hellênikos and Ethos Rômaikon 209 Hannah M. Cotton 12. The Representation of the Temple and Jerusalem in Jewish and Christian Houses of Prayer in the Holy Land in Late Antiquity 222 Rina Talgam 13. Roman Christianity and the Post-Roman West: The Social Correlates of the Contra Iudaeos Tradition 249 Paula Fredriksen Notes 267 Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources 345 List of Contributors 379 Index 383 Acknowledgments 389