Mapping Jewishness in Antiquity: New Contributions from the Social Sciences

Abstract

This article introduces a recent contribution to the study of ethnicity from the social sciences that provides needed systemization to the study of Jewishness in antiquity. Current scholarship on Jewishness has no instrument by which to relate the construction of Jewish identity to macrolevel societal changes. The current model, based on extensive empirical data, explains changes in the form and function of ethnicity by a cyclical model that links macro-level characteristics of the social field with individual agency in ethnic construction to produce the first comparative analytic of “how and why ethnicity matters in certain society and contexts.”1 The introduction presented here illustrates the various components of the model with examples from Jewish history and texts and suggests how this model might be used to better understand dynamics of identity construction and change among Jews in antiquity.