Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans

Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans
Author: Louis H. Feldman
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 481
Release: 1996-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567085252

Two of the world's leading authorities on the classical era bring together a comprehensive treasury of sources on Judaism in the ancient period.

Jewish Life and Thought among Greeks and Romans

Jewish Life and Thought among Greeks and Romans
Author: Louis H. Feldman
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 481
Release: 1996-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567255557

Two of the world's leading authorities on the classical era bring together a comprehensive treasury of sources on Judaism in the ancient period.

The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans

The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans
Author: Margaret H. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN:

This collection of freshly translated texts is designed to introduce those interested in Graeco-Roman and Jewish culture to the realities of Jewish life outside Israel between 323 BC and the middle of the 5th century AD.

Diaspora

Diaspora
Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2009-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674037991

What was life like for Jews settled throughout the Mediterranean world of Classical antiquity--and what place did Jewish communities have in the diverse civilization dominated by Greeks and Romans? In a probing account of the Jewish diaspora in the four centuries from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E., Erich Gruen reaches often surprising conclusions. By the first century of our era, Jews living abroad far outnumbered those living in Palestine and had done so for generations. Substantial Jewish communities were found throughout the Greek mainland and Aegean islands, Asia Minor, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Egypt, and Italy. Focusing especially on Alexandria, Greek cities in Asia Minor, and Rome, Gruen explores the lives of these Jews: the obstacles they encountered, the institutions they established, and their strategies for adjustment. He also delves into Jewish writing in this period, teasing out how Jews in the diaspora saw themselves. There emerges a picture of a Jewish minority that was at home in Greco-Roman cities: subject to only sporadic harassment; its intellectuals immersed in Greco-Roman culture while refashioning it for their own purposes; exhibiting little sign of insecurity in an alien society; and demonstrating both a respect for the Holy Land and a commitment to the local community and Gentile government. Gruen's innovative analysis of the historical and literary record alters our understanding of the way this vibrant minority culture engaged with the dominant Classical civilization.

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome

The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome
Author: Tessa Rajak
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 599
Release: 2018-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047400194

Twenty-seven interdisciplinary essays on aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, exemplifying a wide range of techniques, by a well-known scholar. Three are previously unpublished, including a reappraisal of the Judaism and Hellenism debate and a study of the Sardis synagogue. The book's overall coherence derives from the author's long-standing interests in the analysis of texts as documents of cultural and religious interaction, and in how Jewish communities were woven into the social fabric of Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Roman East. The four sections are: Greeks and Jews, Josephus, The Jewish Diaspora and Epigraphy, and finally Beyond the Greeks and Romans, essays which extend into Christian literature and on to the nineteenth century reception of the Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy. Scholars and students from a wide variety of backgrounds will benefit. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans

The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans
Author: Max Radin
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781440046940

Excerpt from The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans It is a counsel of perfection that any historical study should be approached with complete detachment. To such detachment I can make all the less claim as I freely admit an abiding reverence for the history of my own people, and, for the life of ancient Greece and Rome, a passionate affection that is frankly unreasoning. At no place in the course of the following pages have I been consciously apologetic. It is true that where several explanations of an incident are possible, I have not always selected the one most discreditable to the Jews. Doubtless that will not be forgiven me by those who have accepted the anti-Semitic pamphlets of Willrich as serious contributions to historical research. The literature on the subject is enormous. Very few references to what are known as "secondary" sources will, however, be found in this book. A short bibliography is appended, in which various books of reference are cited. From these all who are interested in the innumerable controversies that the subject has elicited may obtain full information. There remains the grateful task of acknowledging my personal indebtedness to my friend, Dr. Ernst Riess, for many valuable suggestions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World

Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World
Author: Louis H. Feldman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 691
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400820804

Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.

God and Empire

God and Empire
Author: John Dominic Crossan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2009-03-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 006174428X

The bestselling author and prominent New Testament scholar draws parallels between 1st–century Roman Empire and 21st–century United States, showing how the radical messages of Jesus and Paul can lead us to peace today Using the tools of expert biblical scholarship and a keen eye for current events, bestselling author John Dominic Crossan deftly presents the tensions exhibited in the Bible between political power and God’s justice. Through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and ultimately, redemption. He examines the meaning of “kingdom of God” prophesized by Jesus, and the equality recommended to Paul by his churches, contrasting these messages of peace against the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the book of Revelations, that has been co-opted by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify the United State’s military actions in the Middle East.