The ancient synagogue from its origins to 200 C.E. : a source book /
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Despite the recent explosion of research on ancient synagogues, investigators in the field have hitherto been forced to cull relevant evidence from a vast assortment of scholarly publications. This volume gathers for the first time all of the primary source material on the early synagogues up through the Second Century C. E. In the case of literary, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, catalog entries contain the texts in their original language and in English translation. For archaeological remains, entries provide technical descriptions along with plans and photographs. All listings are accompanied by bibliographic citations and interpretative comments. An Introduction frames the current state of synagogue research, while extensive indices and cross-references allow for easy location of specific allusions. An appendix to the catalog contains source materials on Jewish temples outside of Jerusalem.
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Includes one fold-out mappages. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-311) and indexes. :
9789047430711 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism /
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Many scholars of the Second Temple period have replaced the concept of canonization by that of canonical process. Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been crucial for this new direction. Based on this new evidence taxonomic terms like biblical, nonbiblical or parabiblical seem anachronistic for the period before 70 C.E. The notion of authoritative Scriptures plays an important part in the new paradigm of canonical process, but it has not yet been sufficiently reflected upon and is in need of clarification. Why were some texts more authoritative than others? For whom and in what contexts were texts authoritative? And what are our criteria to determine to what extent a text was authoritative? In short, what do we mean by "authoritative"? This volume focuses on specific texts or corpora of texts, and approaches the notion of authoritative Scriptures from sociological, cultural and literary perspectives.
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"This volume is a collection of contributions that reflect on the issue of the authoritativeness of Scriptures in Second Temple period Judaism. They result from a conference that the Qumran Institute organized on 28-29 April 2008"--Preface. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004190740 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jewish ethnic identity and relations in Hellenistic Egypt : with walls of iron? /
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In Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt , Stewart Moore investigates the foundations of common assumptions about ethnicity. To maintain one's identity in a strange land, was it always necessary to band tightly together with one's coethnics? Sociologists and anthropologists who study ethnicity have given us a much wider view of the possible strategies of ethnic maintenance and interaction. The most important facet of Jewish ethnicity in Egypt which emerges from this study is the interaction over the Jewish-Egyptian boundary. Previous scholarship has assumed that this border was a Siegfried Line marked by mutual contempt. Yet Jews, Egyptians and also Greeks interacted in complicated ways in Ptolemaic Egypt, with positive relationships being at least as numerous as negative ones.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004303089 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Fighting over the Bible : Jewish interpretation, sectarianism and polemic from Temple to Talmud and beyond /
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Fighting over the Bible explores the bitter conflicts between main stream Jews and their internal and external opponents, especially between particular Jewish groups such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Qumranites, Samaritans, Rabbanites and Karaites, as well as with Christians and Muslims regarding their interpretations of Jewish Scripture. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is an important sacred text for all branches of the Abrahamic faiths, but it has more often divided than unified them. This volume explores and exemplifies the roots of these interpretive conflicts and controversies and traces the rich exegetical and theological approaches that grew out of them. Focusing on the Jewish sources from the late Second Temple period through the high Middle-Ages, it illustrates how the study of the Bible filled the vacuum left by the Temple's destruction, and became the foundation of Jewish life throughout its long conflicted history.
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1 online resource (xi, 341 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004339118 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism /
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This book suggests a new approach to the social history of Jewish religious movements in the Second Temple and early Rabbinic periods. It argues that most of these movements and their traditions emerged within the context of complex interaction between traditional families and disciple circles. The first part of the book examines the development of Jewish religious movements during the Second Temple period. It culminates with the discussion of the Dead Sea Sect, which is analyzed as the first unambiguous example of a movement shifting from a social structure based on families to a social structure based on disciple circles. The second part of the book discusses the history of pharisaic and early rabbinic movements from a similar perspective. Topics covered in the book will be of interest to scholars of Judaism and Early Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047407768
9789004144477
Legal fiction s studies of law and narrative in the discursive worlds of ancient Jewish sectarians and sages /
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Ancient Jewish writings combine interpretive narratives of Israel's sacred history with legal prescriptions for a divinely ordered way of life. Two ancient Jewish societies have left us extensive textual corpora preserving interpenetrating legal and narrative interpretive teachings: the sectarian community of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sage-disciple circles of the early Rabbis. This book comprises studies that explore specific aspects of the interplay of interpretative, narrative, and legal rhetoric with an eye to pedagogic function and social formation for each of these communities and for both of them in comparison. It addresses questions of how best to approach these writings for purposes of historical retrieval and reconstruction by recognizing the inseparability of literary-rhetorical textual analysis and a non-reductive historiography.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004201842 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inscribing devotion and death : archaeological evidence for Jewish populations of North Africa /
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Reliance on essentialist or syncretistic models of cultural dynamics has limited past evaluations of ancient Jewish populations. This reexamination of evidence for Jews of North Africa offers an alternative approach. Drawing from methods developed in cultural studies and historical linguistics, this book replaces traditional categories used to examine evidence for early Jewish populations and demonstrates how direct comparison of Jewish material evidence with that of its neighbors allows for a reassessment of what the category of "Jewish" might have meant in different North African locations and periods and, by extension, elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The result is a transformed analysis of Jewish cultural identity that both emphasizes its indebtedness to larger regional contexts and allows for a more informed and complex understanding of Jewish cultural distinctiveness.
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1 online resource (xviii, 342 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-334) and index. :
9789047423843 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.