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.
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