Book Description
In modern times, various Jewish groups have argued whether Jewishness is a function of ethnicity, of nationality, of religion, or of all three. These fundamental conceptions were already in place in antiquity. The peculiar combination of ethnicity, nationality, and religion that would characterize Jewishness through the centuries first took shape in the second century B.C.E. This brilliantly argued, accessible book unravels one of the most complex issues of late antiquity by showing how these elements were understood and applied in the construction of Jewish identity--by Jews, by gentiles, and by the state.
Beginning with the intriguing case of Herod the Great's Jewishness, Cohen moves on to discuss what made or did not make Jewish identity during the period, the question of conversion, the prohibition of intermarriage, matrilineal descent, and the place of the convert in the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. His superb study is unique in that it draws on a wide range of sources: Jewish literature written in Greek, classical sources, and rabbinic texts, both ancient and medieval. It also features a detailed discussion of many of the central rabbinic texts dealing with conversion to Judaism.
Customer Reviews:
A UNIQUE BOOK ON THE ISSUES OF JUDAISM.......2003-09-05
Unfortunately, this book did not achieve attention and respect as it appropriately deserves. The author possesses an incredible knowledge on the issues of Judaism In this modern Guide for Perplexed a curious reader could learn all the lattitude of numerous controversies comprising the core of Jewish thought. This as an extraordinary book. I wish the author would present the discoveries he made in a more passionate manner. He deserves such a stance.
Fascinating and Eye-Opening.......2003-08-31
'The Beginnings of Jewishness' seems like it ought to be essential reading for both Christians and Jews who wonder where they came from. In the book, Cohen avoids reading back into the Bible itself and considers a great deal of other historical and literary evidence to determine when being a Jew changed its meaning from 'being from Judea', the geographical location, to 'being a member of the Jewish religion'. He finds the first traces of this in the Hasmonean period, expansions of it in the Roman and up through history. Along the way he is also tracing the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple, which is quite different from what constituted Judaism before that event. All of this would probably be very surprizing to those who hold anachronistic visions of Jesus as a Rabbinic Jew!. Cohen also goes into quite a bit of detail on matrilineal descent and conversion, maybe more than some would want, but interesting nonetheless. Good book.
A model of historical scholarship.......2002-08-23
I am not a Jew. I bought this book thinking it would explain in good part how the religious culture of the Judeans in the Second Temple period became the enduring religion of a people spread far and wide and how, after the cleansing of Judea, it gave rise to the central documents of that religion, the Mishnah and the Talmud. (What Cohen calls moving from ethnos to ethnoreligion.)
The book actually does little to answer that concern except glancingly. It iscentered on the period I was thinking of (with many extensions later), but the contents are better described by the subtitle, Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, and especially Boundaries. Cohen is a rabbi and a professor of Judaic studies (more accurately a historian of Judaism); quite probably to him my original question was too elementary, and the general answer to it is a given, part of the background from which he speaks. From *his* point of view, the book does contribute seriously to the question of the beginnings of Jewishness. ("Contribute" -- the book is a collection of linked essays on very specific questions, not an overview.) From my original point of view, the book seems totally preoccupied with boundary questions, e.g,, when and how did the Romans stop thinking of Judai as people from Judea, and start looking at them as people sharing a religion, or how did non-Jews become Jews in different periods.
Yet, despite having gone in beyond my depth, I found it impossible to open the book anywhere and not keep on reading, deeply interested. And, as I read on, I realised that the entire book is the best model of historical scholarship, on any topic, that I have ever seen. It could be read with much profit simply for the quality of the work, totally outside any question about Jewishness. If I taught history at the post-graduate level, certainly I would ask my students to spend some hours with the book and then judge by its standard all other scholarly works they will meet.
One of Cohen's qualities is that he is an admirably clear and careful expositor, and that he writes very good prose. (So the book could also be proposed to social science postgrads, though it might push some to drop out.) This is why I got hooked in the first place. But the main quality is in the richness of the footnotes (probably two thirds of the text). When Cohen gets through with a question he has posed, you do not simply have his answer (which may be "I don't know"), but a good dossier of the sources that he thinks bear on the question, with luminous explanations -- always brief, Cohen is anything but a waster of words. Therefore, having followed his travails, you may well incline to a different conclusion. This is a touchstone for true scholarship. This quality of mastering his material and at the same time very candidly sticking to it, extends where Cohen deals with the Christian Fathers or Aquinas. If Cohen is situating and explaining a passage from Aquinas, for instance, you will feel that you are reading a thomistic scholar. (I have to admit, though, that Paul gets under his skin.)
The book is more than worth buying even if you will make heads or tails of no more than a tenth of it. To go beyond this, however, you will need "elementary pre-yeshiva". "Mishnah", "tannaic", etc. are not defined (I had to go to an elementary book first to get up to speed). There is not a single Hebrew character in the book, only transliterations where needed, but obviously a Talmudic student, knowing Hebrew and Aramaic, would get more out of the discussions. Ancient Greek and especially Latin would also be helpful. Of modern languages, Cohen sometimes leaves French untranslated.
Were They Different?.......2001-01-14
Shaye Cohen, using literary criticism, sociological methodology, and history, has effectively demonstrated the evolution of what we call "Judaism." Who or what was a "Jew" is historically a Hellenistic construct developed as part of the Hasmonean regime's (the family behind the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century B.C.E.) attempt to seperate Ioudiaos from Hellene; and what is well documented is the fact that in creating this religio-national group, the Hasmoneans resorted to the same tactics that Alexander imagined in his vision of a "ouranos" centered around Greek culture. Further, and of greater importance to this reader, is the fact that Cohen demonstrates that in the ancient world and late antiquity people generally looked alike (which forces various historical and theological paradigms to be revisited ... particularly in terms of texts used in our high schools and colleges). Another key importance of this analysis lies in the refutation of the sterotypical assumption that Jews somehow looked different and behaved (occupation, interpersonal relations) differently from nonJews in that world. Jews became different, lived apart and worked different occupations only as a result of Roman imperial edict, Church edict, and Medieval European political design. The belief that Jews were different and distinctive emerged as institutional antisemiticism in the 18th and 19th centuries (and reached fruition in the Holocaust) was of political and religious design AFTER the Church became the "official" religion of the state in late antiquity and not a historical fact prior to that occurence.. This book belongs with LATE ANTIQUITY (Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar), THE WORLD OF LATE ANTIQUITY (Brown), CHRISTIANITY & PAGANISM IN THE FOURTH TO EIGHTH CENTURIES (MacMullen), and EMPIRE TO COMMONWEALTH (Fowden). A must for students of late antiquity and the history of religions.
Better than a classic?.......2000-06-21
"This is a gem of a book. Truly a contribution to the history of Judaism. We have waited a long time to discover when Jewishness started and Cohen has laid it out in elegant terms. This surpasses Graetz and Yawetz in erudition and far improves on Maimonides in depth of perception. No doubt lovers of Steinsalz will appreciate this nearly Talmudic tour-de-force."
So says the author about his own book. Buyer beware. Not much of real value here. Just fluff.
Book Description
A landmark study of Hellenistic Judaism by one of the world's recognized experts--now fully revised and updated.
One of the most creative and consequential collisions in Western culture involved the encounter of Judaism with Hellenism. In his widely acclaimed study of the intellectual and moral relationship between "Athens and Jerusalem," John J. Collins examines the literature of Hellenistic Judaism, treating not only the introductory questions of date, authorship, and provenance, but also the larger question of Jewish identity in the Greco-Roman world. First published in 1984, BETWEEN ATHENS AND JERUSALEM is now fully revised and updated to take into account the best of recent scholarship.
Book Description
This volume completes the three-volume collection of Fergus Millar's essays, which, together with his books, transformed the study of the Roman Empire by shifting the focus of inquiry onto the broader Mediterranean world and beyond. The eighteen essays presented here include Millar's classic contributions to our understanding of the impact of Rome on the peoples, cultures, and religions of the eastern Mediterranean, and the extent to which Graeco-Roman culture acted as a vehicle for the self-expression of the indigenous cultures. In an epilogue written to conclude the collection, Millar argues for rethinking the focus of "ancient history" itself and for considering the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean from the first millennium B.C. to the Islamic conquests a valid scholarly framework and an appropriate educational syllabus for the study of antiquity. English translations of extended ancient passages in Greek, Latin, and Semitic languages in all the essays make Millar's most important articles accessible for the first time to specialists and nonspecialists alike.
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Early Christianity & Hellenistic Judaism
Peder Borgen
Manufacturer: T. & T. Clark Publishers
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ASIN: 0567086267 |
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Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors: Volume I: Historians
Carl R. Holladay ,
Halladay , and
HOLLADAY
Manufacturer: Society of Biblical Literature
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Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology (AAR Cultural Criticism)
Lawrence M. Wills
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Collected Ancient Greek Novels
ASIN: 0195151429 |
Book Description
This volume brings together for the first time all of the ancient Jewish novels and fragments of novels. Written at about the same time as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, but before the period of Rabbinic Judaism, these texts reveal the ambiguities and conflicts encountered by Jews in this period.
Book Description
Most studies of Jews in the period from Alexander to Trajan have concentrated almost exclusively on Jerusalem and Judea. In this book, John Barclay assembles and analyzes evidence about the Jewish communities in Egypt, Syria, Cyrenaica, Rome, and Asia. Barclay's ambitious goal is to describe, as precisely as the evidence allows, the varying levels of assimilation and antagonism between Jews and the non-Jewish communities in these areas for this 440-year period. With a concluding review of Jewish identity in the Diaspora as a whole, this book provides our first comprehensive and multi-faceted survey of Diaspora communities and Diaspora literature.
Customer Reviews:
Incredibly Informative And Very Readable.......2003-01-04
Although the title of this book is more like a subtitle and thus is not catchy or memorable, 'Jews of the Mediterranean Diaspora etc.', deserves to be widely read and studied by anyone interested in the development of Judaism and early Christianity. John Barclay is consistently even-handed and fairminded in his considerations of literary and archaeological evidence from the Greco-Roman period, describing a vivid picture of the diversity and unity of Jewish communities in Alexandria, Rome, Cyrene, Anatolia and Syria, as well as the shifting fortunes of these communities under the various regimes. A great deal of the pseudepigraphic literature is examined in detail. The chapter on Paul as a Jew in a Hellenistic society, though short, is more enlightening than several books. Barclay's assessments of, and disagreements with, other scholars work are such that scholarly writing could acquire a good reputation if others would emulate them. The style is as accessible as it is informative. Now I wish Mr. Barclay or someone like him would write similar books on the Pre-Exilic, Exilic, and Persian periods. I can dream, can't I?
Book Description
The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables--not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era.
Customer Reviews:
An encyclopedia on the subject.......2007-01-09
This is a very important survey of the cultural creations of the Jews living in the Ptolemaic and Roman empire. It is a very balanced exposition of what remains a minority living in a world civilisation, could do and would do to keep its group identity. The discussion in the greek of the Ancient Testament does not kill interest on all the rest. As such, there are important parallelims to be drawn with our own time and it is very clear that the author has them in mind.
A Different Way of Seeing.......2006-02-06
Erich Gruen a Classicist and historian of the Roman Republic and Empire has gone somewhat far afield here to review the Greek language literature authored by Jews during the Hellenistic period. Literary criticism of the traditional nature is the chosen vehicle for his investigation. The text and what it says is Gruen's predominate concern. Only after such an analysis has been employed, and its gleanings well explicated is the author willing to deal with other concerns. By so doing, he arrives at a number of conclusions or lack of conlusions somewhat unique among scholars who have appraised these works.
He does not see the tension between Jews and Hellenism often highlighted by others. With rare exception he finds Jews accepting Greek authority while asserting Jewish superiority and precedence. No particular "setz in leben" is found for much of the literature. It may have been generated in the diaspora or Isreal. And, it is proposed that it really does not matter. Furthermore, Gruen finds that most of the works do not have any assertainable specific intent with regard to individual historical occurences. The primary function of this literature is the maintenance of group cohesion and superiority while accomodating or co-opting both Hellenistic culture and accomplishment.
Gruen finds amazing liberties taken in the adaptation of both the Biblical and non Biblical corpus to the advance this project. Broad humor is often present and much of it at the expense of the Greek dynasts of the period. From Macabees 1 to the Jewish Sybilline Oracles, most everything is covered. While short of proposing any earth shaking historical revisions, this book should serve as tempering corrective to much previous scholarship on the topic. Any future account of Jewish reponses to Hellenism that disregard this study do so at their own peril.
An Interesting Look At Hellenistic Jews.......2002-11-09
Gruen's 'Heritage and Hellenism' provided a limited, but informative, overview of Jewish literature from the Hellenistic period, focusing on works with historical intent. He opens with an analysis of I & II Maccabees, to see that the Hasmoneans were not opposed to Hellenism per se, but that they in fact utilized Hellenism to further Jewish ends. Gruen goes on to examine the creative adaptations of Biblical materials by Jews to help place them in the context of Hellenistic society and thought, emphasizing their antiquity and superiority in that world. Other materials discussed are from Josephus, and the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, often little-known fragments of historical lore, Greek additions to Daniel and Esther, and the Third Sybilline Oracle. Gruen looks insightfully at his sources, wonders how they were intended and who they were for. He finds elements of satire, humor, consolation, and exhortation in these remote works. Many of the footnotes are in Greek, but can be looked up in translations by chapter and verse numbers. In a few places Greek is used in the text, but this should not dissuade the general reader. Overall, the book is very readable, fair-minded, and potentially helpful to anyone wishing to understand the Judaism of this period in history.
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The Ancestral Philosophy: Hellenistic Philosophy in Second Temple Judaism (Brown Judaic Studies)
David Winston
Manufacturer: Brown Judaic Studies
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