Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities

Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities
Title Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities PDF eBook
Author Dr. Benedikt Eckhardt
Publisher BRILL
Pages 233
Release 2019-07-01
Genre Religion
ISBN 900440760X

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In Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, Benedikt Eckhardt brings together a group of experts to investigate a problem of historical categorization. Traditionally, scholars have either presupposed that Jewish groups were “Greco-Roman Associations” like others or have treated them in isolation from other groups. Attempts to begin a cross-disciplinary dialogue about the presuppositions and ultimate aims of the respective approaches have shown that much preliminary work on categories is necessary. This book explores the methodological dividing lines, based on the common-sense assumption that different questions require different solutions. Re-introducing historical differentiation into a field that has been dominated by abstractions, it provides the debate with a new foundation. Case studies highlight the problems and advantages of different approaches.

Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities

Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities
Title Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities PDF eBook
Author John R. Bartlett
Publisher Routledge
Pages 262
Release 2003-05-19
Genre History
ISBN 1134663994

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A comprehensive study of Jews in the classical world. Articles examine Jerusalem and other Jewish communities on the Mediterranean, as found in the writings of Luke, Josephus and Philo.

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome
Title The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome PDF eBook
Author Tessa Rajak
Publisher BRILL
Pages 599
Release 2018-12-10
Genre Religion
ISBN 9047400194

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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 Three are previously unpublished, including a reappraisal of the Judaism and Hellenism debate and a study of the Sardis synagogue.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.

Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World

Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World
Title Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World PDF eBook
Author Louis H. Feldman
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 691
Release 2021-08-10
Genre Religion
ISBN 1400820804

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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.

Diaspora

Diaspora
Title Diaspora PDF eBook
Author Erich S. Gruen
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 410
Release 2009-07
Genre History
ISBN 9780674037991

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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.

The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism

The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism
Title The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism PDF eBook
Author Erich S. Gruen
Publisher Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Pages 540
Release 2016-09-12
Genre Religion
ISBN 3110387190

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This book collects twenty two previously published essays and one new one by Erich S. Gruen who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His many articles on this subject have, however, appeared mostly in conference volumes and Festschriften, and have therefore not had wide circulation. By putting them together in a single work, this will bring the essays to the attention of a much broader scholarly readership and make them more readily available to students in the fields of ancient history and early Judaism. The pieces are quite varied, but develop a number of connected and related themes: Jewish identity in the pagan world, the literary representations by Jews and pagans of one another, the interconnections of Hellenism and Judaism, and the Jewish experience under Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman empire.

Heritage and Hellenism

Heritage and Hellenism
Title Heritage and Hellenism PDF eBook
Author Erich S. Gruen
Publisher Univ of California Press
Pages 361
Release 2002-02-13
Genre History
ISBN 0520235061

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In these fictive creations, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us vital insights into Jewish self-perception.