The Jews refused to disappear from history upon Christian ascendency in Late Antiquity. Although early Christian historical writing largely interacts with Jews as foils, Jewish vitality can be witnessed. Modern scholars have described scenes of pluralism, mutual influence and conflict beyond the portraits of Jews in theological debate. The past thirty years in particular have produced diverse landscapes, even for a general readership. R. Wilken's John Chrysostom and the Jews (1983), for example, downplays conflict. J. Neusner's several books on Judaism and Christianity (e.g. 1987, 1993, 2009) emphasise mutual influence. J. Carroll's Constantine's Sword (2001) emphasises conflict.
This collection of thirteen essays historicises further, questioning the emphasis on ‘passivity, isolation, persecution’ of Jews, of nineteenth-century historiography, and the twentieth-century's counter-framing of the study in conflict theory (here consider M. Simon's Verus Israel [1948, 1996]). The authors in this collection strive to show new ways ‘to read the Jews back into the broader history of Late Antiquity’ by removing the privilege of conflict without constructing an equally deceptive landscape of ‘multicultural or pluralistic coexistence’, featuring rather ‘less dramatic circumstances’ and ‘materials marginalized in grand narratives about the Roman empire’ (pp. 13–14). The essays address three sub-themes: interactions before the imperial support of Christians in the fourth century, Constantinian legislation and its aftermath, and miscellaneous topics across a wider chronology, the second century to the Barbarian Kingdoms.
In Part 1, ‘Rabbis and Other Roman Sub-Elites’, B. Berkowitz describes uses of Leviticus 18.1–5 by Christians and Jews that offer counter-examples to the simple binary of Jewish particularism and Christian universalism. She contrasts Philo's and Paul's disregard for ethnic separatism in favour of allegory and anti-Law themes with later particularist references in Clement and Sifra.
W. Adler illustrates a blending of binary categories of pagan and Christian in Julius Africanus and Bardesanes, two figures living under King Abgar VIII of Edessa. The article looks at the way the Edessene kings chose to Romanise themselves, while many Edessene citizens were becoming nominal Christians. While Edessa reveals tenuous acculturation on the fringes, even Constantine at the centre blended Roman tradition and Christian kerygma. Now called ‘reinvention’, it is a typical phenomenon.
D.’s ‘Law and Imperial Idioms’ asks, ‘What do we mean when we speak of Jewish Law?’ She argues that Jewish legalism emerges in rabbinic times and was actually ‘a break from Jewish precedent precisely in its legality’. Underlying that question are ‘Why did rabbinic legalism emerge when it did, and does Roman influence play a role?’ The article distinguishes from genuine halakha examples of Second Temple literature that may be ‘repositories of legal traditions’ without being legal texts. On Roman influence, the article is less than definitive. Rome's efficient legal structure is seen to build an idiom of authority for the rabbis. Readers may add that Pauline anti-legalism was growing as well.
H. Lapin also discusses Jewish legal culture under the rabbis, here rabbinic texts on the behaviour of wives and grounds for divorce. Mishnah, Tosefta and the Yerushalmi present increasingly generic treatment, so that examples of impropriety for married women apply to women of the Empire, Jewish or not. Lapin thus points to the risks of oversimplification through the dichotomy of rulers and ruled in the Empire.
Part 2 is devoted to ‘Christianization and Other Modalities of Romanization’ in which documents are read for what they reveal about the communities marginalised as Christianity acquired imperial support. The articles examine Jewish reaction to the sharing, appropriation or loss of their sacred space. J. Levinson's ‘There's No Place like Home’ shows how some rabbis found a distorted way to express Palestine's importance: it was important to its Roman conquerors. During the Christian palimpsesting of Jewish sites, Jews appropriated Christian customs, like pilgrimages, or developed the notion of ‘the placeless Jew’, or relocated sacred spaces. Levinson calls attention both to Jewish denigration of gullible Christians seeking to identify holy sites and the Jews’ own virtual ‘counter-pilgrimages’ to an eschatological future.
Jewish resistance to erasure from history, by debate and then violence, is the theme of the next two chapters. H. Sivan's ‘Unmaking of Minorities’ examines effects of Christianisation on pagans and Jews in Gaza and of Jews on the island of Minorca. He reads conversion accounts for evidence of Christian aggression in communities where civic leaders and citizens tolerated non-Christian customs.
Similarly, O. Irshai's ‘Alexandrian Riots’ posits instances of Christian extremism to understand the motivation behind Jewish violence. Irshai also suggests that the subsequent expulsion of Jews from Alexandria anticipated new imperial legislation against pagans or Jews who commit crimes against the Church. Was this Bishop Cyril's doing, or did the historian Socrates reshape the events? Irshai suggests that Socrates portrayed Jews as villains and instigators but also sought tolerance that would eventually lead to Jewish conversions.
O. Münz-Manor presents the transition from blood sacrifice to verbal sacrifice in both the Seder ‘Avodah and Apostolic Constitutions. Here are examples of first-century liturgical texts with sacrificial language replacing animal sacrifice and the physical self-sacrifice of Jesus. Münz-Manor agrees implicitly with M. Swartz's description of the purpose of Seder ‘Avodah as not so much recalling Temple sacrifices historically as re-presenting sacrificial ritual verbally. Readers of the Yerushalmi will be familiar with this substitution of prayer for Temple sacrifice.
R. Boustan suggests another instance of mutual influence perhaps assumed but not explored. He discusses how Solomon's throne in rabbinic literature symbolised either royal restraint or divine kingship. Rabbinic texts precede Christian appropriation of the symbol to promote royal power, but later Jewish sources were influenced by Christian usage to emphasise the cosmic aspects of kingship.
Part 3, ‘Continuity and Rupture’, distinguishes genuine from deceptive parallels in Jewish and Christian art and architecture as well as writings. M. Swartz explores two strands of authority for priesthood, wherein paternity contrasts with either pious learning or divine grace. The argument is that rabbinic departure from earlier emphasis on legitimacy by birth occurred under the influence of Christian claims about bishops. Readers should compare S. Fine's chapter on priestly authority in his Art, History and the Historiography of Judaism (2013).
H. Cotton suggests a continuing assimilation of a Palestinian Jewish community into the Empire from findings that are based on marriage contracts ‘entered into by Jews, as the names, but not much more, attest’ (p. 209), since the contracts reflect Greek legal tradition instead of ketuboth.
In another article devoted to synagogue liturgy, R. Talgam focuses on images and decorative schemes in synagogues and churches in the Holy Land. The ‘Avodah promoted verbal sacrifice, but there was still longing for the Temple. Some synagogues thus were decorated with temple motifs, including images of blood sacrifice. In Christian churches comparable symbols and liturgical prayer reinforced the church as the fulfilment of Solomon's temple. By contrast, the synagogue art affirms the propriety of blood sacrifice after its temporary suspension. Thus, Talgam argues, the same visual elements should not mislead the observer to overlook the opposing conceptions of worship that the same visual elements could convey.
P. Fredriksen's closing article on the contra Iudaeos tradition points out that seeds for that rhetoric are in Scripture itself but were strengthened by Roman rhetorical and philosophical education adopted by Christian schools. She notes, however, that even when the anti-Jewish rhetoric increased with Constantine, it was used more in disputes among Christian factions than against the contemporary Jewish communities. And in spite of harsh-sounding laws, Christian emperors added to Jewish freedom. To explain the polemical legislation against Jews, Fredriksen cites the need to avert divine wrath. While that explanation risks oversimplifying complex motivation and the evidence for bitter arguments between Christians and Jews, her effort to mark a gap between words and practice is sound. She does not ignore anti-Jewish violence but reminds readers that conditions varied, legislation was often local, and the occasional violence was not compelled by the government. That was to change in Western Christendom, when the ‘constant’ of ecclesiastical contra Iudeos rhetoric unfortunately brought official action.
