Jewish Culture and Society Under the Christian Roman Empire

by Kalmin, Richard Lee

• ISBN13: 9789042911819
• ISBN10: 9042911816
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Peeters Pub & Booksellers

Summary

This book investigates the complexity, diversity, uniqueness and enduring significance of Jewish life in the Christian Roman Empire, from 312 to 634 C.E. During this period there occurred an unprecedented Jewish cultural explosion, encompassing the compilation and/or composition of such texts as the Palestinian Talmud, the main aggadic midrashim, an extensive magical/mystical literature, the revived apocalypse, a vast corpus of piyyutim and the beginnings of a practically oriented halakhic literature. Furthermore, this was the era of the florition of Jewish art, for it was only in the fourth century that a specifically Jewish iconographic language came into common use in synagogues and catacombs, the archaeological remains of almost all of which date from this period.
This volume moves toward a synthesizing and contextualizing view of the Jewish cultural production of late antiquity, examining the interaction of Jews, Christians and pagans and with the emergence of new religious forms generated by such interaction.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Acknowledgements	p. 7
Palestinian Rabbinic Attitudes to Intermarriage in Historical and Cultural Context	p. 11
Slipping Toward Sacrament: Jews, Christians, and Marriage	p. 65
Contextualizing Jewish Art: The Synagogues at Hammat Tiberias and Sepphoris	p. 91
The Jewish Image of God in Late Antiquity	p. 133
Jewish Literacy and the Use of Writing in Late Roman Palestine	p. 149
Some Types of Jewish-Christian Interaction in Late Antiquity	p. 197
Holy Men, Rabbis, and Demonic Sages in Late Antiquity	p. 211
Lions, Snakes, and Asses: Palestinian Jewish Holy Men as Masters of the Animal Kingdom	p. 254
The Diadoche of the Rabbis; or, Judah the Patriarch at Yauneh	p. 285
Hegemony and its Discontents: Rabbis as a Late Antique Provincial Population	p. 319
Tragedies Naturally Performed: Fatal Charades, Parodia Sacra, and the Death of Titus	p. 349
Justinian's Novella 146 Between Jews and Christians	p. 385
Jewish and 'Judaizing' Eschatologies in Jerome	p. 409
Bibliography	p. 431
Index of Topics	p. 469
Index of Sources	p. 483
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