Jews and Christians in the Roman World : From Historical Method to Cases /
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Roman Judaea, Christian origins, and Roman-Judaean-Christian relations are flourishing fields of endless fascination. Amid the flurry of new research, however, which uses ever new methods in the humanities and social sciences, basic questions about what happened and how people then understood events are easily obscured. This book argues that a simple but consistent historical method can throw new light - and challenge entrenched views - on such familiar topics as Roman provincial governance, the Jewish War, Flavian politics, Judaea after King Herod, Jewish and Christian historiography, Pharisees and Essenes, John the Baptist, the apostle Paul, and Luke-Acts.
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1 online resource (670 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004545960
Jewish and Christian communal identities in the Roman world /
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Jews and Christians under the Roman Empire shared a unique sense of community. Set apart from their civic and cultic surroundings, both groups resisted complete assimilation into the dominant political and social structures. However, Jewish communities differed from their Christian counterparts in their overall patterns of response to the surrounding challenges. They exhibit diverse levels of integration into the civic fabric of the cities of the Empire and display contrary attitudes towards the creation of trans-local communal networks. The variety of local case studies examined in this volume offers an integrated image of the multiple factors, both internal and external, which determined the role of communal identity in creating a sense of belonging among Jews and Christians under Imperial constraints.
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"This volume presents revised versions of lectures given in October 2013 at a Jerusalem symposium on Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in Antiquity. The Hebrew University's Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Jewish Studies together with the editorial board of Brill's Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity series kindly co-sponsored the symposium in memory of our colleague Friedrich Avemarie."--Preface. :
1 online resource (xi, 286 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004321694 :
1871-6636 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Revelations of Ideology: Apocalyptic Class Politics in Early Roman Palestine.
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In Revelations of Ideology , G. Anthony Keddie proposes a new theory of the social function of Judaean apocalyptic texts produced in Early Roman Palestine (63 BCE-70 CE). In contrast to evaluations of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic texts as "literature of the oppressed" or literature of resistance against empire, Keddie demonstrates that scribes produced apocalyptic texts to advance ideologies aimed at self-legitimation. By revealing that their opponents constituted an exploitative class, scribes generated apocalyptic ideologies that situated them in the same exploited class as their constituents. Through careful historical and ideological criticism of the Psalms of Solomon, Parables of Enoch, Testament of Moses, and Q source, Keddie identifies an internally diverse tradition of apocalyptic class rhetoric in late Second Temple Judaism.
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1 online resource. :
9789004383647
Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture : Essays on the Jewish Encounter with Hellenism and Roman Rule /
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This is a collection of 12 essays, written since 1997, on themes related to Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Judaism. They include a review essay on recent scholarship on Hellenistic Judaism, a discussion of the question of anti-Semitism in antiquity, a study of the Hellenistic reform in Jerusalem, several studies of individual texts and an essay on the circumstances that led to the first Jewish revolt against Rome.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047407720
9789004144385
Jewish reactions to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 : apocalypses and related pseudepigrapha /
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The Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 was a watershed event in the religious, political, and social life of first-century Jews. This book explores the reaction to this event found in Jewish apocalypses and related literature preserved among the Pseudepigrapha (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 4 Baruch, Sibylline Oracles 4 and 5, and the Apocalypse of Abraham). While keeping the historical context of their composition in mind, the author analyzes the texts with a view to answering the following questions: What do these texts tell us about Jewish attitudes toward the Roman Empire? How did Jews understand the situation in post-70 Judea through the lens of Israel's past, especially the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.?
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Fairly substantial revision of the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006. :
1 online resource (x, 305 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-293) and index. :
9789004210448 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Judaism and Hellenism reconsidered /
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This book is a collection of 26 previously published articles, with a number of additions and corrections, and with a long new introduction on "The Influence of Hellenism on Jews in Palestine in the Hellenistic Period." The articles deal with such subjects as "Homer and the Near East," "The Septuagint," "Hatred and Attraction to the Jews in Classical Antiquity," "Conversion to Judaism in Classical Antiquity," "Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Josephus, and Theodotus on the Rape of Dinah," "The Influence of the Greek Tragedians on Josephus," "Josephus' Biblical Paraphrase as a Commentary on Contemporary Issues," "Parallel Lives of Two Lawgivers: Josephus' Moses and Plutarch's Lycurgus," "Rabbinic Insights on the Decline and Forthcoming Fall of the Roman Empire."
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [813]-843) and indexes. :
9789047408734 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Was 70 CE a watershed in Jewish history? : on Jews and Judaism before and after the destruction of the Second Temple /
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The destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which put an end to sacrificial worship in Israel, is usually assumed to constitute a major caesura in Jewish history. But how important was it? What really changed due to 70? What, in contrast, was already changing before 70 or remained basically - or "virtually" -- unchanged despite it? How do the Diaspora, which was long used to Temple-less Judaism, and early Christianity, which was born around the same time, fit in? This Scholion Library volume presents twenty papers given at an international conference in Jerusalem in which scholars assessed the significance of 70 for their respective fields of specialization, including Jewish liturgy, law, literature, magic, art, institutional history, and early Christianity.
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"This volume presents revised versions of lectures given in January 2009 at a Jerusalem symposium sponsored by Hebrew University's Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Jewish Studies"--Preface. :
1 online resource (xiii, 548 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004217447 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Studies in the cult of Yahweh.
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These two volumes collect some of the most influential and important scholarly essays by the late Morton Smith (1915-1991), for many years Professor of Ancient History at Columbia University in New York City. Smith was admired and feared for his extraordinary ability to look at familiar texts in unfamiliar ways, to re-open old questions, to pose new questions, and to demolish received truths. He practiced the \'hermeneutics of suspicion\' to devastating effect. His answers are not always convincing but his questions cannot be ignored. The essays of Volume I center on the Hebrew Bible (\'Old Testament\'), Ancient Israel and Ancient Judaism, of Volume II on the Christian Bible (\'New Testament\'), Early Christianity and Ancient Magic. Volume II also contains an assessment of Smith's scholarly achievement and a complete list of his publications.
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1 online resource (viii, 334 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004295872 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Studies in the cult of Yahweh.
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These two volumes collect some of the most influential and important scholarly essays by the late Morton Smith (1915-1991), for many years Professor of Ancient History at Columbia University in New York City. Smith was admired and feared for his extraordinary ability to look at familiar texts in unfamiliar ways, to re-open old questions, to pose new questions, and to demolish received truths. He practiced the \'hermeneutics of suspicion\' to devastating effect. His answers are not always convincing but his questions cannot be ignored. The essays of Volume I center on the Hebrew Bible (\'Old Testament\'), Ancient Israel and Ancient Judaism, of Volume II on the Christian Bible (\'New Testament\'), Early Christianity and Ancient Magic. Volume II also contains an assessment of Smith's scholarly achievement and a complete list of his publications.
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1 online resource (viii, 292 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004301443 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Manières de penser dans l'antiquité mediterranéenne et orientale : mélanges offerts à Francis Schmidt par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses amis /
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Francis Schmidt's works in various fields of religious studies (mainly ancient Judaism), can be characterized by three words: historiography, anthropological history, and comparatism. In that respect he placed himself in the continuation of previous French scholars, such as Maurice Halbwachs or Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Francis Schmidt also played an essential role in transmitting to a new generation of scholars the complex issues and debates concerning the Dead Sea scrolls and Qumranic research. The papers offered in this volume share all the same interest in ancient religions and the methodological devices previously mentioned. They offer a rare example of a large comparatism between Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian approaches of some essential social or intellectual issues, by some of the most competent specialists in each field.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047428633 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Jewish dialogue with Greece and Rome : studies in cultural and social interaction /
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Twenty-seven interdisciplinary essays on aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, exemplifying a wide range of techniques, by a well-known scholar. Three are previously unpublished, including a reappraisal of the Judaism and Hellenism debate and a study of the Sardis synagogue. The book's overall coherence derives from the author's long-standing interests in the analysis of texts as documents of cultural and religious interaction, and in how Jewish communities were woven into the social fabric of Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Roman East. The four sections are: Greeks and Jews, Josephus, The Jewish Diaspora and Epigraphy, and finally Beyond the Greeks and Romans, essays which extend into Christian literature and on to the nineteenth century reception of the Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy. Scholars and students from a wide variety of backgrounds will benefit. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
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1 online resource (xix, 579 pages cm) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047400196 :
0169-734X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
From Scrolls to Traditions : A Festschrift Honoring Lawrence H. Schiffman /
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This Festschrift in honor of Professor Lawrence H. Schiffman, a renowned authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism, includes contributions by twenty of his former doctoral students, now colleagues. The volume is divided into two sections, the "Biblical and Second Temple Period" and "Rabbis, Other Jews, and Neighboring Cultures." The diverse topics covered and the wide range of interdisciplinary approaches employed reflect Professor Schiffman's success in cultivating a school of scholars who are making unique contributions to the study of the Jews and Judaism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004443891
9789004443884
Torah centers and rabbinic activity in Palestine, 70-400 CE : history and geographic distribution /
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This book analyses the data about Torah centers and rabbinic activity in Palestine during Mishnaic and Talmudic times, 70-400 CE-the Roman and early Byzantine periods. The research is an interdisciplinary inquiry. It encompasses rabbinic literature as well as archeology, geography, and sociology, thus enriching the discussion of the history and scope of rabbinic activity in the different regions of Palestine. Arranged in chronological order, the book highlights the changes generated by historical events, in particular the relocation of rabbinic centers following the upheaval of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. In spite of this upheaval, Torah centers continued to develop in Palestine for several hundred years, until the end of the period under discussion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047440734 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The despoliation of Egypt in pre-rabbinic, rabbinic and patristic traditions /
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This work examines the role played by the biblical motif of the despoliation of Egypt in the understanding Gentiles had of Jews, and how Jews defended themselves, their heroes and their God in the face of anti-Jewish slander. It also examines the manner in which Christians learned from their rabbinic counterparts how to defend Moses and his God against the gnostic challenge. Beginning with Philo and based on haggadic additions, the embarrassment of the episode was 'healed' through allegory and became a critically important biblical justification for the Christian appropriation of the 'Egyptian treasures' of their Greco-Roman cultural heritage. This work describes how Christians borrowed exegetical traditions from rabbis not only to defend their sacred texts against gnostic attacks but to justify their interest in and appropriation of non-Christian philosophy in their theological understandings.
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1 online resource (viii, 305 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-298) and indexes. :
9789047433569 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The development of Christology during the first hundred years, and other essays on early Christian Christolog y
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Entering the debate about the development of Christology among Jesus' earliest followers, this volume critiques both the traditional evolutionary view that posited an elementary early Jewish Christology that developed in complexity as it was increasingly Hellenized and the more recent attempt to see a full-orbed Christology both as early and as Jewish, not Hellenistic, in its categories. It contends that during the first 100 years Jesus' followers employed four models from their milieu, Jewish and Greco-Roman, both to understand and to communicate their Christologies. These models were appropriated because they were appropriate vehicles for expressing the impact of Jesus on them, past, present, and future.
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Part One comprises previously unpublished material; Part Two is a collection of previously published essays. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004203501 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christus Militans : Studien zur politisch-militarischen Semantik im Markusevangelium vor dem Hintergrund des ersten judisch-romischen Krieges /
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In Christus Militans knüpft Gabriella Gelardini an Interpretationen an, die das Markusevangelium im Kontext des jüdisch-römischen Krieges und des Aufstiegs der Flavier interpretieren. Von Interesse sind darin aber nicht nur "ideologische Macht- oder Herrschaftsdiskurse" und damit "politische Theologie," sondern insbesondere auch die militärischen Zusammenhänge und die Kriegssemantik im engeren Sinn. Dies erfolgt eingedenk der großen Bedeutung, die das Militär und der Krieg für die Herstellung und Aufrechterhaltung von Herrschaft in der Antike hatten, besonders bei Dynastiewechseln, etwa wie hier von der julisch-claudischen zur flavischen Dynastie. Diesen Wechsel zur flavischen Dynastie zeichnet die Autorin zunächst in einer umfassenden kontextuellen Analyse nach, nicht allein auf der Basis des Werkes von Josephus und antiken Historikern, sondern erstmals auch unter Einbezug zeitnaher Militärhistoriker. Die Rekonstruktion dieses durch Militär und Krieg erzielten Aufstiegs, der seinen krönenden Abschluss in der Machtergreifung und einem den Krieg beendenden Triumph in Rom fand, trägt sie dann an den Evangelientext heran, und stellt in der Erzählung des Protagonisten Jesus Christus vergleichbare politisch-militärische Inkodierungen fest, nicht zuletzt auch in Form von "hidden transcripts," welche diesen Herrschaftsantritt ebenfalls als einen Dynastiewechsel darstellen, nämlich von der herodianischen zur davidisch-messianischen Dynastie. Politisch-militärische Inkodierungen ließen sich in jeder Szene finden, so dass die Autorin das Repertoire von Anknüpfungsmöglichkeiten des markinischen Texts an den literarisch-historischen Kontext des ersten jüdisch-römischen Kriegs um viele, neue und oft auch plausiblere Deutungsangebote erweitert konnte. Inkodierungen stellte sie aber auch auf lexikalischer Ebene fest; denn nicht weniger als ein Drittel des markinischen Lexikons trägt im Blick auf seine Semantik auch oder ausschließlich militärische Bedeutung. Eine zentrale Rolle misst sie der sogenannten Passion Jesu zu. Denn zwar steht der Kreuzestod als Sinnbild für die militärische Niederlage, interpretiert man seinen Tod jedoch konsequent im Kontext des "Triumphzugs," dann wäre er auch als sühnendes und von Kriegsschuld reinigendes Opfer zu deuten. Und als solches - lässt sich schließen - hätte Jesus die religiös zwingende Voraussetzung für eine gottgewollte und siegreiche, durchaus auch militärisch zu verstehende Rückkehr geschaffen. In Christus Militans , Gabriella Gelardini builds on interpretations that construe the Gospel of Mark in the context of the Jewish-Roman War and the rise of the Flavians. She explores not only "ideological discourses of power and domination," but also military contexts and the semantics of war. This book thus acknowledges the great importance of the military and warfare for establishing and maintaining power in antiquity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004309340 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Volume 2 : Collected Essays, 2006-2017 /
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Eldon Jay Epp's second volume of collected essays consists of articles previously published during 2006-2017. All treat aspects of the New Testament textual criticism, but focus on historical and methodological issues relevant to constructing the earliest attainable text of New Testament writings. More specific emphasis falls upon the nature of textual transmission and the text-critical process, and heavily on the criteria employed in establishing that earliest available text. Moreover, textual grouping is examined at length, and prominent is the current approach to textual variants not approved for the constructed text, for they have stories to tell regarding theological, ethical, and real-life issues as the early Christian churches sought to work out their own status, practices, and destiny.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004442337
9789004438774