This volume is a collection of papers that were presented at a colloquium held at Princeton University in January 2006. In them the authors explore how ancient Jews, Christians, and pagans in the Hellenistic and Roman world viewed their own antiquity, using collective memory and the construction of the past for political purposes and to form identities, social relations, and religious beliefs and practices. The volume opens with an introduction by Gardner and Osterloh, who remind scholars to be wary of the ‘primordialist urge’ (viewing present reality as if it has always been this way) and the ‘modernist/presentist fallacy’ (rupture trumps continuity).

Part One brings together articles on ‘Jewish and Pagan Antiquities from the Late Hellenistic to Early Imperial Period’. In ‘The end of Jewish Egypt: Artapanus and the second exodus’, H. Zellentin suggests that Artapanus’ re-imagining of Jewish ancestors as culture-heroes who bequeathed the benefits of civilization to the Egyptians would have appealed to the Jewish military élite of Egypt. H. Flower (‘Remembering and forgetting temple destruction: the destruction of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in 83 BC’) demonstrates that for the Romans the burning of the Capitolium in 83 B.C. and A.D. 69 portended divine disfavour, whereas the reconstructions by Sulla and Vespasian conjured up images of a New Age and refounded republic. In ‘The Greeks and the distant past in Josephus's Judaean War’, S. Mason examines the influence of contemporary Greek writers (such as Plutarch and Dio) and literary trends on Josephus’ presentation of the Jewish War and identifies several thematic ‘clusters’ or themes. Mason shows how Josephus consistently presents the ancient Greeks in a positive light and contemporary Greeks in a negative light, and associates Judeans and Romans with the former. D. Mendels considers ‘How was antiquity treated in societies with a Hellenistic heritage? And why did the rabbis avoid writing history?’ Mendels points out that the presentation of history as a linear past was the exception in antiquity, and that history generally was studied in a fragmentary and distorted fashion.

Part Two presents articles on ‘Jewish, Pagan, and Christian Antiquities in the Greco-Roman World’. P. Schäfer (‘Rabbis and priests, or: how to do away with the glorious past of the sons of Aaron’) examines selected passages from rabbinic literature to illustrate how the rabbis rewrote biblical and post-biblical history, replacing the priests with themselves as the new heroes of Judaism. Other scholars have documented evidence of rabbinic hostility towards the priests, including R. Elior, who (like Schäfer but not cited by him) notes the elimination of the Aaronide priests from the chain of transmission of the Torah from Mount Sinai in Mishnah Avot 1:1 (see The Three Temples, On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, trans. D. Louvish (2004), especially ch. 9, ‘The secessionist priesthood and rabbinic tradition’, 201–31; for the omission of the Zadokite priesthood from the chain of transmission in m. Avot see 205). In ‘“Jewish Christianity” as counter-history? The apostolic past in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies’, A. Y. Reed demonstrates that both of these works draw upon a (constructed) apostolic past to legitimize their respective version of ‘orthodoxy’, and either deny or justify the continued place of Judaism in church history and Christian identity. The passage in m. Avot 1:1 discussed in Schäfer's article is also mentioned by Reed, who notes that the Homilies makes similar authority claims about a chain of transmission beginning with Moses. Reed concludes by suggesting that the Homilies might be associated with groups of Syrian or Palestinian Christians who claimed continuity with the Jerusalem church. L. Levine (‘Jewish collective memory in Late Antiquity, issues in the interpretation of Jewish art’) discusses the problem of interpreting the symbols and images portrayed in late antique Jewish art (mostly in synagogues), focusing especially on Palestine. Although Levine acknowledges that Jewish art was ‘a product of the Byzantine-Christian historical orbit’ (252), the diversity of synagogue art and architecture indicates that there is no all-inclusive interpretation. Instead, Levine advocates a polyvalent understanding of late antique Jewish art, depending on the context. In ‘Tradition and transmission, Hermes Kourotrophos in Nea Paphos, Cyprus’, E. Kessler-Dimin examines a fourth-century mosaic in the triclinium of the House of Aion at Nea Paphos, which depicts the epiphany of Dionysos. She suggests that this mosaic provides evidence of a ‘monotheizing Dionysian religion’ in which Dionysos was worshipped as the new supreme god. Kessler-Dimin's argument that the mosaic attests to the continued vitality of pagan religions rather than having been chosen as decoration by Christian homeowners recalls the debate over a similar mosaic at Sepphoris, Israel, where two similarly opposing interpretations have been presented in the final report (see R. Talgam and Z. Weiss, The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris, Excavated by E. M. Meyers, E. Netzer, and C. L. Meyers (2004), esp. 127–31).

Part Three groups together papers under the rubric ‘Antiquities of Late Antiquity and Today’. In ‘The Bavli's discussion of genealogy in Qiddushin IV’, M. Vidas shows how the Babylonian Talmud reinterprets the ideas of genealogical and geographical homogeneity, both of which are associated with the restoration of the Babylonian exiles to Judea under Ezra, to undermine the traditional precedence claimed by the Land of Israel and its inhabitants over Jewish Diaspora communities. R. Boustan (‘The spoils of the Jerusalem temple at Rome and Constantinople, Jewish counter-geography in a Christianizing Empire’) demonstrates that Byzantine Christian claims to the spoils of the Jerusalem temple as sacred relics have counterparts in rabbinic writings, which use the temple vessels in legal exegesis (halakhah), and in late antique Jewish messianic discourse and expectations. Boustan argues that Procopius’ narrative of the rediscovery of the temple vessels has no factual basis but was used as a motif to enhance the parallels between Justinian's age and the Solomonic and Roman pasts. In ‘A debate about the rebuilding of the temple in sixth-century Byzantium’, Y. Papadoyannakis shows that the sixth-century dialogues (Eratopokriseis) of pseudo-Kaisarios reflect Christian anxieties and fears about possible Jewish resurgence and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, even as Jerusalem was being transformed into a Christian city. G. W. Bowersock (‘Helena's bridle and the chariot of Ethiopia’) discusses the kingdom of Ethiopia, whose inhabitants adopted Christianity in the fourth century and traced their descent from the Jews through the Queen of Sheba. He focuses on an Ethiopian apocalyptic tradition involving a miraculous horse bridle in Constantinople that was made by Helena from the nails of the crucifixion, and the Ark of the Covenant, which — according to this tradition — had been transported by means of a magic chariot to Aksum in the time of Solomon. Bowersock demonstrates that this tradition aimed to bolster monophysite Ethiopian claims to leadership in a post-Chalcedonian era. In the volume's final article, A. Becker (‘The ancient Near East in the late antique Near East’) considers contemporary East Syrian (‘Nestorian’) Christian claims to descent from the ancient Assyrians, and concludes that these claims have roots in Late Antiquity, within the context of shifting relationships between religious and ethnic identities.

To conclude, this is a rich and rewarding collection of articles, with a greater degree of thematic cohesion than is usual in conference proceedings. As an archaeologist I found myself thinking about ‘antiquity in antiquity’ in relation to physical remains, which provide plenty of evidence for this phenomenon, ranging from the incorporation of architectural elements belonging to the Older Parthenon in the walls of the Athenian Acropolis, to the archaizing art of the early Roman period, to Hellenistic and Roman royal portraiture, to the extensive use and display of spolia in late antique churches and synagogues. Readers of all backgrounds and interests will find the articles in this volume rewarding and thought-provoking.