As one of the few groups in the Greco-Roman world to resist
cultural assimilation, the Jews remained an object of fascination
throughout antiquity. Greek and Roman writers devoted much space to
them, but few bothered to learn the facts about Jews, preferring to
report stereotypes and rumor. Evidence does exist, however, to show
what real Jews were like in antiquity and how they interacted with
the Greeks and Romans, both pagan and Christian.
In "The Jews among the Greeks and Romans," Margaret Williams
assembles, assesses, and contextualizes literary and archaeological
evidence relating to Jewish communities outside the land of Israel.
The sourcebook covers the period beginning with the Diaspora that
resulted from the chaos of Alexander the Great's death in 323 BCE
and concluding with the demise of the Jewish Patriarchate around
420 CE. This was a time which saw, first, the rapid opening up of
opportunities for Jews and then, in the century after Constantine,
the gradual but inexorable raising of barriers against them.
Newly translated from the Greek and Latin, the documents cover a
broad array of topics, including religion, customs, festivals,
repression, citizenship, military service, economics,
intermarriage, and conversion from Jew to Gentile and Gentile to
Jew. While previous collections have concentrated on literary
texts, the present volume gives prominence to papyrological and
epigraphic source material. Composed in accordance with Greco-Roman
epigraphic conventions but written by Jews, these texts--some only
recently discovered--constitute an extraordinarily rich source of
information about the values and practices of Jews in
antiquity.
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