There has been quite a lot of recent publishing activity on the topic of ancient associations, notably John Kloppenborg's Christ's associations: connecting and belonging in the ancient city (New Haven 2019). Eckhardt has been involved in this field for quite some time. He now brings together a set of scholars who (with one exception) approach this topic from the perspective of a focus on Jewish groups.
Eckhardt's introduction sets up a general picture of the field, in which most recent scholars who approach with an interest in church history (as Kloppenborg does, although he would avoid the word ‘church’ for the early period) use an etic (constructed by people external to the situation) model of Greco-Roman association as a category that covers a broad range of non-civic ancient groups, include Jewish and Christian ones. Eckhardt acknowledges this but notes that ancient historians tend instead to produce studies of groups categorised according to emic labels such as collegium. These studies also tend to be restricted in further ways, geographically or temporally. Eckhardt sees a key motive towards the latter type of study as being doubt as to whether ‘a model based only on etic classification leads to meaningful historical conclusions’ (p. 7). The contributors to this volume are mostly scholars who would have such doubts and therefore tend towards a preference for the use of emic categories.
Eckhardt follows up the introduction by contributing the first substantive paper, ‘Private associations in Hellenistic and Roman cities: common ground and dividing lines’. This chapter offers a direct analytical challenge to the ‘Greco-Roman association’ category by exploring the degree of continuity and discontinuity in the nature of associations between the periods before and after coming under the control of Rome. In particular, Eckhardt argues that the legal issues that characterised much nineteenth- and twentieth-century discussion of Roman associations do produce some significant differences from the situation in the Hellenistic period. The next paper, ‘Political and sacred animals: religious associations in Greco-Roman Egypt’, by Andrew Monson, is the one that does not include discussion of Jewish groups. Monson focuses especially on Ptolemaic evidence and is particularly useful for updating work that has often been a key comparative point for study of Jewish groups.
The papers specifically on Jewish groups begin with Andrew R. Krause, ‘Qumran discipline and rites of affliction in their associational context’. Krause considers measures such as exclusion and expulsion, detailing Qumran practice and making constructive use of comparison across Greco-Roman associations, in which expulsion tended to be much rarer than exclusion. He also uses the comparison to relativise some of the extreme language linked with exclusion. Kimberley Czajkowski then uses a provocative question mark in her title, ‘Jewish associations in Alexandria?’ She uses a diachronic approach to bring out complications that are faced by any attempt to bring the Jewish groups of various periods under the umbrella of the single term, ‘association’. Marie-Françoise Baslez, ‘Les Communautés juives de la Diaspora dans le droit commun des associations du monde gréco-romain’, also suggests limits on the utility of the broad association model by arguing that there are situations in which it is more fruitful to analyse Diaspora Jewish communities in terms of actual terms that are used of them by outside bodies: in particular the terms thiasos and synodos. Baslez backs this with examples from Delos and elsewhere.
Eckhardt returns with, ‘Associations beyond the city: Jews, actors and empire in the Roman period’. This focuses on Roman legal handling of some groups that had translocal aspects to them. It leads to Eckhardt's most sharply expressed conclusion:
if we want to explain the historical development of Jewish communities in the Roman imperial period, we do not gain much by classifying them as ‘Greco-Roman associations’, but should see them as social institutions with specific purposes, backed by imperial legislation and operating under different circumstances than private groups in their respective cities. (p. 153)
Eckhardt does seek to soften this somewhat with a footnote noting other questions for which the broader association model is useful.
Ulrich Huttner's ‘Organisationsstrukturen jüdischer Gemeinden im Mäandertal’ is both more specific and broader than Eckhardt's preceding chapter. Huttner focuses just on Miletus, Priene, Tralles and Nyssa but his points of comparison for the Jewish groups are more broadly associative, concluding that the picture of the Jewish groups is somewhat unclear. Finally, Clemens Leonhard draws on Tosefta Demai and other Rabbinic texts to ask, ‘The associates and the others: were Rabbinic Ḥavurot Greco-Roman associations?’ His conclusion is that the groups, as described in the texts, lack the basic characteristic of an association in that they did not generally regard themselves as organised groups with a defined membership separable from those around them.
It would probably be wrong to say that this book will divide opinions. The opinions in question are generally already divided and the holders of them will view the main stances of the book in the way they would have expected to do before reading it. However, irrespective of one's view of the theoretical perspective on associations that the contributors mostly take, anyone interested in either associations or early Jewish groups will find a great amount of valuable evidence and analysis in this collection. The book also provides a set of seriously informed contributions largely on one side of debates about the extent to which it is helpful to analyse ancient Jewish groups under the category ‘Greco-Roman association’. As such, it helps carry the debate forward and will no doubt elicit a number of vigorous responses.
