Author: Richard Lee Kalmin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9781435619128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
'The Babylonian Talmud' is the most important text of Rabbinic Judaism. This book probes the fault lines between Palestinian and Babylonian sources, and demonstrates how the differences between them reflect the divergent social attitudes of these two societies.
Author: Richard Kalmin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198041799
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
The Babylonian Talmud was compiled in the third through sixth centuries CE, by rabbis living under Sasanian Persian rule in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. What kind of society did these rabbis inhabit? What effect did that society have on important rabbinic texts? In this book Richard Kalmin offers a thorough reexamination of rabbinic culture of late antique Babylonia. He shows how this culture was shaped in part by Persia on the one hand, and by Roman Palestine on the other. The mid fourth century CE in Jewish Babylonia was a period of particularly intense "Palestinianization," at the same time that the Mesopotamian and east Persian Christian communities were undergoing a period of intense "Syrianization." Kalmin argues that these closely related processes were accelerated by third-century Persian conquests deep into Roman territory, which resulted in the resettlement of thousands of Christian and Jewish inhabitants of the eastern Roman provinces in Persian Mesopotamia, eastern Syria, and western Persia, profoundly altering the cultural landscape for centuries to come. Kalmin also offers new interpretations of several fascinating rabbinic texts of late antiquity. He shows how they have often been misunderstood by historians who lack attentiveness to the role of anonymous editors in glossing or emending earlier texts and who insist on attributing these texts to sixth century editors rather than to storytellers and editors of earlier centuries who introduced changes into the texts they learned and transmitted. He also demonstrates how Babylonian rabbis interacted with the non-rabbinic Jewish world, often in the form of the incorporation of centuries-old non-rabbinic Jewish texts into the developing Talmud, rather than via the encounter with actual non-rabbinic Jews in the streets and marketplaces of Babylonia. Most of these texts were "domesticated" prior to their inclusion in the Babylonian Talmud, which was generally accomplished by means of the rabbinization of the non-rabbinic texts. Rabbis transformed a story's protagonists into rabbis rather than kings or priests, or portrayed them studying Torah rather than engaging in other activities, since Torah study was viewed by them as the most important, perhaps the only important, human activity. Kalmin's arguments shed new light on rabbinic Judaism in late antique society. This book will be invaluable to any student or scholar of this period.
Author: Gwynn Kessler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119113970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 615
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Book Description
An innovative approach to the study of ten centuries of Jewish culture and history A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism explores the Jewish people, their communities, and various manifestations of their religious and cultural expressions from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. Presenting a collection of 30 original essays written by noted scholars in the field, this companion provides an expansive examination of ancient Jewish life, identity, gender, sacred and domestic spaces, literature, language, and theological questions throughout late ancient Jewish history and historiography. Editors Gwynn Kessler and Naomi Koltun-Fromm situate the volume within Late Antiquity, enabling readers to rethink traditional chronological, geographic, and political boundaries. The Companion incorporates a broad methodology, drawing from social history, material history and culture, and literary studies to consider the diverse forms and facets of Jews and Judaism within multiple contexts of place, culture, and history. Divided into five parts, thematically-organized essays discuss topics including the spaces where Jews lived, worked, and worshiped, Jewish languages and literatures, ethnicities and identities, and questions about gender and the body central to Jewish culture and Judaism. Offering original scholarship and fresh insights on late ancient Jewish history and culture, this unique volume: Offers a one-volume exploration of “second temple,” “Greco-Roman,” and “rabbinic” periods and sources Explores Jewish life across most of the geographic places where Jews or Judaeans were known to have lived Features original maps of areas cited in every essay, including maps of Jewish settlement throughout Late Antiquity Includes an outline of major historical events, further readings, and full references A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism: 3rd Century BCE - 7th Century CE is a valuable resource for students, instructors, and scholars of Jewish studies, religion, literature, and ethnic identity, as well as general readers with interest in Jewish history, world religions, Classics, and Late Antiquity.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004443282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
The four kingdoms motif enabled writers of various cultures, times, and places, to periodize history as the staged succession of empires barrelling towards an utopian age. The motif provided order to lived experiences under empire (the present), in view of ancestral traditions and cultural heritage (the past), and inspired outlooks assuring hope, deliverance, and restoration (the future). Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel includes thirteen essays that explore the reach and redeployment of the motif in classical and ancient Near Eastern writings, Jewish and Christian scriptures, texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, depictions in European architecture and cartography, as well as patristic, rabbinic, Islamic, and African writings from antiquity through the Mediaeval eras.
Author: Yishai Kiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107155517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
This book explores sex and sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud within the context of competing cultural discourses, for students of comparative religion.
Author: Catherine Hezser
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161508899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552
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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive study of Jewish travel and mobility in Hellenistic and Roman times, based on a critical analysis of Jewish, Graeco-Roman, and early Christian literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources and a social-historical evaluation of the material. Catherine Hezser shows that certain segments of ancient Jewish society were quite mobile. Mobility seems to have increased in the later Roman period, when an extensive road system facilitated travel within the province of Syria-Palestine and the neighbouring Middle Eastern regions. Second Temple Judaism was centralized, with Jerusalem as its central space and seat of priestly authority. In post-70 rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, connections between rabbis could be established through mutual visits and second- and third-degree contacts only. Mobility formed the basis of the establishment of a decentralized rabbinic network in Palestine and Babylonia in late antiquity. Numerous narrative and halakhic traditions indicate the importance of mobility for communication and the exchange of knowledge amongst rabbis. It is argued that the rabbis who were most mobile sat at the nodal points of the rabbinic network and elicited the largest amount of influence. They would have combined business travel with scholarly exchange. Scholars' journeys between Palestine and Babylonia are viewed within the wider context of Rome and Persia's economic and cultural exchange in which Jews, just like Christians, may have played the role of intermediaries.
Author: Galit Hasan-Rokem
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814340482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Scholars of Jewish folklore as well as of Talmudic-Midrashic literature will find this volume to be invaluable reading.
Author: Anna Collar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107043441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.
Author: Marianne Bjelland Kartzow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100041521X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
This book examines an undertheorized topic in the study of religion and sacred texts: the figure of the neighbor. By analyzing and comparing this figure in Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and receptions, the chapters explore a conceptual shift from "Children of Abraham" to "Ambiguous Neighbors." Through a variety of case studies using diverse methods and material, chapters explore the neighbor in these neighboring texts and traditions. The figure of the neighbor seems like an innocent topic at the surface. It is an everyday phenomenon, that everyone have knowledge about and experiences with. Still, analytically, it has a rich and innovative potential. Recent interdisciplinary research employs this figure to address issues of cultural diversity, gender, migration, ethnic relationships, war and peace, environmental challenges and urbanization. The neighbor represents the borderline between insider and outsider, friend and enemy, us and them. This ambiguous status makes the neighbor particularly interesting as an entry point into issues of cultural complexity, self-definition and identity. This volume brings all the intersections of religion, ethnicity, gender, and socio-cultural diversity into the same neighborhood, paying attention to sacred texts, receptions and contemporary communities. The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Texts and Receptions offers a fascinating study of the intersections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic text, and will be of interest to anyone working on these traditions.
Author: Katell Berthelot
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691220425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
How encounters with the Roman Empire compelled the Jews of antiquity to rethink their conceptions of Israel and the Torah Throughout their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology. Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel's twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others. Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism.
