{"title":"The Impact of Hellenistic Monarchy on Jewish Identity","authors":"Benedikt Eckhardt","doi":"10.30965/21967954-12340002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-12340002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The rise of “conversion,” i.e., the interpretation of Jewishness as an elective identity, is frequently described as a consequence of the advent of Hellenism. This article argues that while the main observations on the chronology and the nature of the phenomenon are correct, “Hellenism” as such cannot explain it. A more plausible context is the change of power relations in Judea after the interventions of Antiochus IV. When the depositions of legitimate high priests and the rise of the Hasmoneans called into question the value of genealogy as an ordering principle, the lessons learned were not limited to the political sphere.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":"11 1","pages":"11-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45345631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Priests without a Temple: On Priests and Rabbis in Sasanian Babylonia","authors":"Geoffrey Herman","doi":"10.30965/21967954-12340007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-12340007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Rabbis and priests are often viewed as two groups in competition and rabbinic sources relating to priests are consequently interpreted through a prism of conflict. While focusing on the situation in Sasanian Babylonia, this paper posits that the ancient sources point to a more complex situation whereby there is also much evidence of a positive attitude towards the priesthood in rabbinic sources. These sources must of necessity be treated seriously in any appraisal of the interaction between rabbis and priests.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":"11 1","pages":"148-160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46601587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lineage and Virtue in Josephus: The Respective Roles of Priestly Worldview and Roman Culture","authors":"K. Berthelot","doi":"10.30965/21967954-12340003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-12340003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article assesses the importance of lineage and virtue in Josephus’ notions of Jewish nobility and the Jewish people. Furthermore, it investigates the respective roles of Josephus’ priestly education and his exposition to Roman culture in his use of such concepts. I argue that while Josephus adopted some aspects of Roman or Greco-Roman discourses on nobility, such as the notion that true nobility goes along with virtue, he resisted the Roman sociopolitical view of nobility, because he tended to identify Jewish aristocracy with the priesthood and thus stuck to a genealogical model. By contrast, Josephus’ definition of the kinship (oikeiotēs) that unites the members of the Jewish people as based either on birth/common ancestors or on choice (the choice to live under Jewish laws, implicitly characterized as virtuous) in Against Apion reflects the impact on the Judean historian of Roman citizenship grants and the pro-Roman discourses that praised this policy.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":"-1 1","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46966969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Genealogy versus Merit? On the Role of Lineage in Ancient Judaism. Introduction","authors":"K. Berthelot","doi":"10.30965/21967954-12340001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-12340001","url":null,"abstract":"Concerns about genealogy permeate many ancient and modern societies and groups. Ancestors have to do with the question of one’s origins and, more often than not, with one’s place in the world. Genealogies have also proved fundamental to some collective ethnic self-definitions. Modern scholarly discussions of ethnicity in the ancient world have emphasized – among other criteria – the importance of shared ancestors, whether imagined or real, to define membership in a group.1 Admittedly, in contemporary Western countries, genealogies may be perceived as belonging to the realm of hobbies (as in the case of people attempting to reconstruct their genealogical trees). Especially in the professional realm, the emphasis is on personal training, capacities, and achievements rather than on the identity of one’s ancestors. In short, merit or personal worth prevails over lineage. However, DNA tests reflect a new type of fascination with genealogy, buttressed by the scientific aura of genetic studies. Moreover, the impact of genetics on Jewish communities and Jewish studies – in relation to the origins of the Jewish people and the definition of Jewishness – is growing.2 On the whole, lineage probably matters for many people in our contemporary world no less than it did for people living in the Greco-Roman world. Some anthropological studies have emphasized that kinship ties are cultural constructions that cannot be limited to the biological links based on","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47201575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Jewish Minority of Dura-Europos","authors":"Chad Spigel","doi":"10.13109/jaju.2019.10.2.211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13109/jaju.2019.10.2.211","url":null,"abstract":"This article accomplishes two goals. The first is to update Carl Kraeling’s seating capacities for the Dura Europos synagogue by applying the methodology from Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. Using the detailed methodology, this article shows that the synagogue in Dura Europos could have accommodated more worshippers than previously thought. The second goal is to analyze the resulting data in an effort to better locate the Jewish community within the city of Dura. The first part of the analysis focuses internally on the Jewish community, looking at the size of the worship community and the Jewish population of Dura. The second part considers the Jewish community within the wider local context in an effort to test Kraeling’s assertion that it was a “relatively small and unimportant” minority community. Although the updated seating capacities suggest that the Jewish community was only a small percentage of the total population of Dura, by comparing the seating capacity of the synagogue building with the seating capacities of the Christian building and Mithraeum, this article suggests that the Jewish community was more significant in terms of population than other minority religious groups in the city and that it experienced the most growth in the final decades of the city’s existence.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42932609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Canonization of the Mishnah","authors":"Yehuda Brandes","doi":"10.13109/jaju.2019.10.2.145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13109/jaju.2019.10.2.145","url":null,"abstract":"What is the Mishnah? A code of law or an anthology of Tannaitic literature? The traditional approach relates to the Mishnah as a legal code written by the school of Rabbi Yehudah The Prince. However, among scholars of Mishnah this approach has been the subject of fierce controversy for many years. There were those who regarded the Mishnah as a collection of sources not intended in any way to present legal rulings. Others, however, followed the traditional approach, arguing that Rabbi Yehudah intended to produce legal rulings in the Mishnah and did so by means of emending the text of the sources he had used and editing them. The resolution of this controversy lies in understanding the historical process of the reception of the Mishnah. At first, the Mishnah did function primarily as an anthology. It was only the second generation of the Amoraim, Talmudic sages, who began to regard the Mishnah as a uniform work and an authoritative and binding legal code. Subsequent generations of Amoraim reformulated their approach to the Mishnah with regard to both hermeneutics and legal decision making. Thus, one who studies the Talmud without taking into consideration the historical development concealed within it is influenced by the later approach, which dominates most of the Talmud. An additional stage in the process of the canonization of the Mishnah took place toward the end of the Amoraic period and, in particular, at the time of the redaction of the Talmud in the Savoraic period: both the text of the Mishnah and its language became consecrated, in similarity to the text of the Bible, and a fastidiousness developed with regard to the language of the text, down to the last word. In this article I will endeavor to delineate this historical process.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41943096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Vitae Prophetarum and the Archaeology of Jewish Burials: Exploring Class Distinctions in Early Roman Palestine","authors":"G. Anthony Keddie","doi":"10.30965/21967954-01001005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-01001005","url":null,"abstract":"Modern commentators on the Vitae Prophetarum have tended to assume that every prophet’s bur-ial in this text was considered monumental in scale. A close examination of the language used to describe each burial yields a different, more nuanced picture. Vitae Prophetarum features prophets being buried in one of three ways: in a more-or-less monumental rock-cut tomb just outside Jerusalem, in a rock-cut tomb on the prophet’s own property, or in an indistinct field grave. This typology agrees with the emerging archaeological record of socioeconomic distinctions in burial practices. Whereas Jewish elites were buried in rock-cut tombs around Jerusalem or, more modestly, on their own estates, non-elites were interred in simple trench graves. This study demonstrates that the Vitae Prophetarum corroborates this relationship between burial types and socioeconomic distinctions, placing priestly elites and landowners in rock-cut tombs but the humbler prophets in trench graves.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47500485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Herod the Great’s Self-Representation Through His Tomb at Herodium","authors":"J. Magness","doi":"10.13109/jaju.2019.10.3.258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13109/jaju.2019.10.3.258","url":null,"abstract":"In 2007, the late Ehud Netzer announced the discovery of the mausoleum of Herod the Great at Herodium. This paper considers Herod’s self-representation through his tomb at Herodium, which consists of a mausoleum on the side of a massive artificial tumulus that was planned by Herod as his final resting place and everlasting memorial. Comparisons with the lost Mausoleum of Alexander in Alexandria, the Philippeion at Olympia, and the Mausoleum of Augustus at Rome indicate that Herod intended Herodium to serve as a royal, dynastic monument and victory memorial situating him within a line of heroic and deified kings, while the site’s location overlooking Bethlehem visually asserted Herod’s claims to have fulfilled the expectations associated with a Davidic messiah.","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47856590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Vitae Prophetarum and the Archaeology of Jewish Burials: Exploring Class Distinctions in Early Roman Palestine","authors":"G. A. Keddie","doi":"10.13109/jaju.2019.10.1.79","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13109/jaju.2019.10.1.79","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.13109/jaju.2019.10.1.79","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42154302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Content","authors":"Editors Journal of Ancient Judaism","doi":"10.30965/21967954-01002001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-01002001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41821,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Judaism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44012557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}