Significance of Yavneh & Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism

by Cohen, Shaye J. D.

• ISBN13: 9783161503757
• ISBN10: 3161503759
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-09-17
• Publisher: Mohr Siebrek Ek

Summary

This volume collects thirty essays by Shaye J.D. Cohen. First published between 1980 and 2006, these essays deal with a wide variety of themes and texts: Jewish Hellenism; Josephus; the Synagogue; Conversion to Judaism; Blood and Impurity; the boundary between Judaism and Christianity. What unites them is their philological orientation. Many of these essays are close studies of obscure passages in Jewish and Christian texts. The essays are united too by their common assumption that the ancient world was a single cultural continuum; that ancient Judaism, in all its expressions and varieties, was a Hellenism; and that texts written in Hebrew share a world of discourse with those written in Greek. Many of these essays are well-known and have been much discussed in contemporary scholarship. Among these are: 'œThe Significance of Yavneh' (the title essay), 'œPatriarchs and Scholarchs,' 'œMasada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus,' 'œEpigraphical Rabbis,' 'œThe Conversion of Antoninus,' 'œMenstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity,' and 'œA Brief History of Jewish Circumcision Blood.'