Schwartz Imperialism and Jewish Society

200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E.
Core Textbook
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2485-4
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

Reihe: Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World

This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life.

Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today.

Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before. Imperialism in Jewish Society will be widely read and much debated.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schwartz, Seth

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte des Judentums (Diaspora)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

ABREVIATIONS ix

Introduction 1

PART I: THE JEWS OF PALESTINE TO 70 C.E. 17

ONE: Politics and Society 19

TWO: Religion and Society before 70 C.E. 49

PART II: JEWS IN PALESTINE FROM 135 TO 350 101

THREE: Rabbis and Patriarchs on the Margins 103

FOUR: Jews or Pagans? The Jews and the Greco-Roman Cities of Palestine 129

FIVE: The Rabbis and Urban Culture 162

PART III: SYNAGOGUE AND COMMUNITY FROM 350 TO 640 177

SIX: Christianization 179

SEVEN: A Landscape Transformed 203

EIGHT: Origins and Diffusion of the Synagogue 215

NINE: Judaization 240

TEN: The Synagogue and the Ideology of Community 275

Conclusion 291

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 293

INDEX 317

Über Autor(innen)

Seth Schwartz is the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of Josephus and Judaean Politics and coauthor, with Roger Bagnall, Alan Cameron, and Klaas Worp, of Consuls of the Later Roman Empire.