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Half a century ago, the primary contours of the history of the Jews
in Roman times were not subject to much debate. This standard
account collapsed, however, when a handful of insights undermined
the traditional historical method, the method long enlisted by
historians for eliciting facts from sources. In response to these
insights, a new historical method gradually emerged. Rewriting
Ancient Jewish History critiques the traditional historical method
and makes a case for the new one, illustrating how to write anew
ancient Jewish history. At the heart of the traditional historical
method lie three fundamental presumptions. The traditional
historical method regularly presumes that multiple versions of a
text or tradition are equally authentic; it presumes that many
ancient Jewish sources are the products of largely immanent forces
of cloistered Jewish communities; and, barring any local grounds
for suspicion, it presumes that most ancient Jewish texts
faithfully reflect their sources and reliably recount events.
Rewriting Ancient Jewish History unfurls the failings of this
approach; it promotes the new historical method which circumvents
the flawed traditional presumptions while plotting anew the limits
of rational argumentation in historical inquiry. This crucial
reappraisal is a must-read for students of Jewish and Roman history
alike, and a fascinating case-study in how historians should
approach their ancient sources.
Half a century ago, the primary contours of the history of the Jews
in Roman times were not subject to much debate. This standard
account collapsed, however, when a handful of insights undermined
the traditional historical method, the method long enlisted by
historians for eliciting facts from sources. In response to these
insights, a new historical method gradually emerged. Rewriting
Ancient Jewish History critiques the traditional historical method
and makes a case for the new one, illustrating how to write anew
ancient Jewish history. At the heart of the traditional historical
method lie three fundamental presumptions. The traditional
historical method regularly presumes that multiple versions of a
text or tradition are equally authentic; it presumes that many
ancient Jewish sources are the products of largely immanent forces
of cloistered Jewish communities; and, barring any local grounds
for suspicion, it presumes that most ancient Jewish texts
faithfully reflect their sources and reliably recount events.
Rewriting Ancient Jewish History unfurls the failings of this
approach; it promotes the new historical method which circumvents
the flawed traditional presumptions while plotting anew the limits
of rational argumentation in historical inquiry. This crucial
reappraisal is a must-read for students of Jewish and Roman history
alike, and a fascinating case-study in how historians should
approach their ancient sources.
The story of Bar Qamtza is one of the most famous stories in all
rabbinic literature. In this tragic tale, a private feud at a
Jerusalem banquet triggers a series of events which eventually
culminates in the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
Until the Holocaust, Jews commonly viewed the razing of the Second
Temple as the greatest calamity in all Jewish history, and for many
Jews through the ages, the story of Bar Qamtza explained why it had
happened. In time, the story also became emblematic of the internal
strife and divisive infighting which have troubled Jewish
communities time and again across the generations. In A Tragedy of
Errors: Bar Qamtza and the Fall of Jerusalem, Amram Tropper enlists
this well-known rabbinic tale as a window into the world of its
authors and early audiences. Through a close reading and thick
description of the story, Tropper illuminates ancient Jewish social
ideals and cultural practices, religious beliefs and literary
trajectories, historical imaginings and political inclinations,
systemic structures and institutional realities. In Tropper's
hands, the story of Bar Qamtza serves as a springboard for
exploring the interplay of the minutiae of everyday life in
antiquity and the overarching architecture of Jewish society under
Rome and Persia.
In third-century CE Palestine, the leading member of the rabbinic
movement put together a highly popular wisdom treatise entitled
Tractate Avot. Though Avot has inspired hundreds of commentaries,
this book marks the first comprehensive effort to situate Avot
within the context of the Graeco-Roman Near East. Following his
novel interpretation of Avot, Amram Tropper relates the text to
ancient Jewish literary paradigms as well as to relevant
socio-political, literary, and intellectual streams of the
contemporary Near East. Through comparisons to ancient wisdom
literature, the Second Sophistic, Greek and Christian
historiography, contemporary collections of sayings, and classical
Roman jurisprudence, Tropper interprets Avot in light of the local
Jewish context as well as the ambient cultural atmosphere of the
contemporary Near East.
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