Author: Peter Schäfer Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134403178 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636. Under the Greek, Roman and finally Christian supremacy which Hellenism brought, Judaism developed far beyond its biblical origins into a form which was to influence European history from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book focuses particularly on the social, economic and religious concerns of this period, and the political status of the Jews as both active agents and passive victims of history. The author provides a straightforward chronological survey of this important period through analysis and interpretation of the existing sources. With its accessible style and explanation of technical terms, the book provides a useful introduction to students and anybody with an interest in post-biblical Judaism.
Author: Peter Schäfer Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 9780415305853 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334 BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636.
Author: Peter Schäfer Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134371373 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
First Published in 1995, the main emphasis of this book is on the political history of the Jews in Palestine, where "political" is to be understood not as the mere succession of rulers and battles but as the interaction between political activity and social, economic and religious circumstances. A particular concern is the investigation of social and economic conditions in the history of Palestinian Judaism.
Author: Jörg Frey Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004158383 Category : Religion Languages : de Pages : 444
Book Description
The book addresses critical issues of the formation and development of Jewish identity in the late Second Temple period. How could Jewish identity be defined? What about the status of women and the image of 'others'? And what about its ongoing influence in early Christianity?
Author: Judith Lieu Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand ISBN: 0199262896 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
Judith Lieu's study explores how a sense of being a Christian was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. By exploring this theme she reveals what made early Christianity so distinctive and separate.
Author: Martin Goodman Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191518360 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
This book contains studies of the social, cultural, and religious history of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman world. Some of the sixteen contributors are specialists in Jewish history, others in classics. They tackle from different angles the extent to which Jews in this period differed from other peoples in the Mediterranean region, and how much Jewish evidence can be used for the history of the wider classical world. The authors make extensive use not only of types of evidence familiar to classicists, such as inscriptions and the writing of Josephus, but also Jewish religious literature, including rabbinic texts. The various studies demonstrate that, although Jews lived to some extent apart from others and with distinctive customs, in many ways this showed the cultural presuppositions and preoccupations of their gentile contemporaries. The book aims to encourage wider use of the Jewish evidence by classicists and will be important for all students of the classical world.
Author: Louis H. Feldman Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400820804 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 691
Book Description
Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.
Author: Burton L. Visotzky Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 1250085764 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
Hard to believe but true:- The Passover Seder is a Greco-Roman symposium banquet- The Talmud rabbis presented themselves as Stoic philosophers- Synagogue buildings were Roman basilicas- Hellenistic rhetoric professors educated sons of well-to-do Jews- Zeus-Helios is depicted in synagogue mosaics across ancient Israel- In Israel there were synagogues where the prayers were recited in Greek.Historians have long debated the (re)birth of Judaism in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple cult by the Romans in 70 CE. What replaced that sacrificial cult was at once something new, even as it also sought to preserve what little it could of the old Israelite religion.Arguing that its transformation from a Jerusalem-centered cult to a world religion was made possible by the Roman Empire, Rabbi Burton Visotzky presents Judaism as a distinctly Roman religion. Full of fascinating detail from the daily life and culture of Jewish communities across the Hellenistic world, Aphrodite and the Rabbis will appeal to anyone interested in the development of Judaism, religion, history, art and architecture.
Author: Erich S. Gruen Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674037991 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 410
Book Description
What was life like for Jews settled throughout the Mediterranean world of Classical antiquity--and what place did Jewish communities have in the diverse civilization dominated by Greeks and Romans? In a probing account of the Jewish diaspora in the four centuries from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E., Erich Gruen reaches often surprising conclusions. By the first century of our era, Jews living abroad far outnumbered those living in Palestine and had done so for generations. Substantial Jewish communities were found throughout the Greek mainland and Aegean islands, Asia Minor, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Egypt, and Italy. Focusing especially on Alexandria, Greek cities in Asia Minor, and Rome, Gruen explores the lives of these Jews: the obstacles they encountered, the institutions they established, and their strategies for adjustment. He also delves into Jewish writing in this period, teasing out how Jews in the diaspora saw themselves. There emerges a picture of a Jewish minority that was at home in Greco-Roman cities: subject to only sporadic harassment; its intellectuals immersed in Greco-Roman culture while refashioning it for their own purposes; exhibiting little sign of insecurity in an alien society; and demonstrating both a respect for the Holy Land and a commitment to the local community and Gentile government. Gruen's innovative analysis of the historical and literary record alters our understanding of the way this vibrant minority culture engaged with the dominant Classical civilization.
Author: Peter Schäfer
Author: Peter Schäfer
Author: Peter Schäfer
Author: Steven Fine
Author: Jörg Frey
Author: Judith Lieu
Author: Martin Goodman
Author: Louis H. Feldman
Author: Burton L. Visotzky
Author: Erich S. Gruen