A01=Seth Schwartz
Ancient Judaism (book)
Archaeology
Author_Seth Schwartz
Avodah Zarah
Bar Kokhba revolt
Book of Deuteronomy
Category=JBSR
Category=NHTQ
Christianity
Christianization
Church Fathers
Eastern Mediterranean
Edom
Epigraphy
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eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_society-politics
Euergetism
Exegesis
First Jewish-Roman War
Galilean
Gentile
Hellenistic period
Hellenization
Herodian
Iconography
Ideology
Idolatry
Israelites
Jewish history
Jewish identity
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic
Jewish prayer
Jewish religious movements
Jewish studies
Jews
Judaism
Judea (Roman province)
Late Antiquity
Literature
Maccabean Revolt
Menorah (Temple)
Mishnah
Narrative
Near East
Paganism
Palestinian Jews
Pharisees
Piyyut
Ptolemaic Kingdom
Rabbi
Rabbinic literature
Religion
Religiosity
Rhetoric
Roman Empire
Samaritans
Scythopolis (see)
Second Temple
Second Temple period
Sect
Sefer (Hebrew)
Sepphoris
Synagogue
Tax
Temple in Jerusalem
Theology
Tiberias
Torah
Torah reading
Torah study
Tosefta
Tractate
Upper Galilee
Urban culture
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691117812
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2004
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life. Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in "re-Judaizing" the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities.
It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today. Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before. Imperialism in Jewish Society will be widely read and much debated.
Seth Schwartz is the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of "Josephus and Judaean Politics" and coauthor, with Roger Bagnall, Alan Cameron, and Klaas Worp, of "Consuls of the Later Roman Empire".
