This volume is the magnum opus of K., Professor Emerita of Religious studies and Judaic studies at Brown University. She is well known for the classic Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (1992) and for Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (2011) among many other works on religion and gender in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Interestingly, she has also co-authored Religions of Star Trek (with W. Cassidy and S.L. Schwartz [2003]).
The volume is a wide-ranging and thorough analysis of the life of Jews around the Mediterranean Sea in 300–600, outside of Palestine. K.'s aim is to correct the history of late antique Jews as dominated by Rabbinic Judaism. She challenges the recurring narratives of Jewish history in which the lives of late antique Jews have been treated and obscured as a homogenised entity – usually as adherent to rabbinic norms and submissive to the authority of the rabbis. K. is rightly sceptical of this retrojection of later rabbinic hegemony back to late antiquity. She also demonstrates how modern narratives by Jewish historians have been profoundly shaped by concerns for Jewish rights and shared history in nineteenth-century Europe. She repeatedly shows that disparate groups of Jews competed and were in conflict with one another, and she criticises the notion of ‘a saga of persecution and sorrow, with occasional respites’ (p. 38). Therefore, instead of the homogenisation of Jews and the ‘lachrymose model’ of Jewish history, K. stresses local diversity in the Mediterranean diaspora and gives a balanced analysis of late antique Jews not only as victims but also as active agents. This is not to deny the hostile rhetoric of Christian writers and the numerous accounts of Christian anti-Jewish violence and destruction – frequently unreliable in their specifics and occasionally not even reporting historical events at all – and the cumulative distressing evidence thereof.
Most importantly, K. shows throughout her book that the Jews were not the only group to have been subject to increasing pressures in a Christianising Empire, from the Emperor Constantine onwards, from the fourth to the early seventh centuries. The coercion of Jews is perceived in the bigger picture together with the fates of other dissenter groups, that is, the traditionalists and the dissident Christians (K.'s wisely chosen terms for the conventionally used ‘pagans’ and ‘heretics’). As K. stresses, ‘none of this was unique to Jews’ (p. 343). The pressures were part of the trend to transform the Roman Empire into a homogeneous orthodox polity. However, this does not mean that there was a master plan to achieve Christian unity. It is also important to distinguish between the bishops’ agitation against the Jews and the decisions of the imperial government that often had different goals in its legislation than the zealous bishops. As K. points out, Jews were not even under the worst pressure: traditionalists who adhered to their ancestral religious practices and dissident Christians who held different views of Christian beliefs and authority met heavier coercive measures. K. appositely notes the consequences of Christianisation that entailed ‘the suppression and eradication of all traditional Mediterranean religious practice except that of Jews, Samaritans, and of course Christians themselves’ (p. 402).
K.'s aim is to analyse the lives of Jews, ‘real people’, as she says (p. 37), meaning that she focuses on looking for evidence on Jews, not only anti-Jewish rhetoric that has been analysed extensively in previous scholarship. She starts her discussion in Chapter 2 with a detailed analysis of the (in)famous fifth-century writing known as the Letter of Severus of Minorca on the conversion of Jews. This letter depicts the conflict between Christians and Jews, the destruction of a synagogue and the coerced conversion of Jews into Christianity. The Letter of Severus also illustrates the situation of the available sources. The problem is that there are no extant accounts of Jewish life written by Jews themselves (with the exception of inscriptions inscribed by Jews or for Jews). There are laws by Christian emperors and an abundant number of writings by Christian bishops. In the following chapters (3–9) K. discusses a remarkable amount of evidence and proceeds in chronological sequence according to the Roman emperors’ reigns. Much of her focus is on legislation, and K. meticulously analyses the context of each law, including the lobbying of different interest groups, mainly local bishops, but also of Jews themselves. The emperors and bishops had competing motivations or interests, and the emperors usually gave only moderate support to the anti-Jewish ideology of the bishops, monks and other influential figures. The laws concerning traditionalists and dissident Christians were bent on eliminating non-orthodox forms of Christianity and on seizing the property and other resources of forbidden groups. Traditionalists needed to be converted and their cult places wiped out, and dissident Christians needed to be forced back into Christian unity. In comparison, the practice of the Jewish religion by those who were born into Jewish families remained lawful and even protected. However, Jewish practice by anyone else was criminal.
Throughout the book K. indicates the ambivalence of Christian bishops towards the Jews. One increasing trend put pressure on Jews to become Christians. Another strand of thinking (represented by Augustine of Hippo) regarded Jews as unwitting testimony to the truth of the divine scriptures that prophesied Christ, and they were therefore to be left as they were, for now. In any case, the Jews had a special place in Christian eschatological scenarios as their conversion was a precondition to the final coming of Christ. Examining the sermons and treatises of Christian bishops such as John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria and basing her analysis on the subtle interpretations of recent scholarship, K. argues that these sermons reveal complex social dynamics on local level and attest the porosity of socio-religious boundaries. Anti-Jewish preaching nonetheless had the potential ‘for all kinds of invidious consequences, naturalizing and normalizing anti-Jewish sentiment and undercutting civil social relations’ (p. 185).
Chapter 10 puts together all the themes examined and looks at the ways in which Jews responded to the increasing coercion from the Christianising Empire and post-Roman societies. First, some Jews yielded to the pressures by converting to Christianity. We nonetheless do not know how many Jews eventually converted. Second, some Jews emigrated, either to regions where they left no trace or to parts of the empire that were ruled by ‘Arian’ kings who seem to have exerted a moderate policy towards Jews. The extant laws of the Ostrogothic King Theoderic in Italy upheld Jewish rights from former Roman law. The third response was to raise active resistance, to use their own networks to influence rulers, for example, by petitions, or even to resort to violence. Some Jews who held messianic hopes entertained the possibility of divine intervention. Some adapted their practices and organisation: as part of such adaptation, K. asks whether the increase of women mentioned as synagogue officers in late antique inscriptions was also a consequence of the pressures coming from Christianisation. Finally, some Jews retrenched themselves by retreating from the long-shared cultural practices of communities and by embracing practices that elevated tighter social boundaries, maybe with intensified interest in rabbinic practices. However, this is uncertain, as there is no reliable evidence for rabbinic dominance until the early ninth century. In this speculation, as well as in other uncertainties throughout the book, K. remains prudently cautious, which is a great virtue in studying history.
