The Jews Among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire

ISBN-13: 9780415049726 / Angielski / Twarda / 1992 / 216 str.

Judith Lieu;John North;Tessa Rajak

Opis

The religious life within and around the Roman Empire, and the context into which Christianity emerged and where it spread, provides a topic of the widest interest. Yet this context was not that of a completely pagan world, for Judaism was already firmly established and continued as a vigorous contender in the field throughout the first four centuries after the death of Christ - a fact not always well recognized. Historically, Christianity's relationship with Judaism continued to be intimate but ambivalent long after their separation. This has distorted scholarly perceptions right down to our own day, when the religious history of the period still tends to be written from a Christianizing perspective. The suggestion of this book is that we can and should reassess, from a more neutral position, how the competition between these three religions influenced the development of each of them. The Jews Among Pagans and Christians offers a model of this complex area by drawing on a variety of types of material and method.

In the period of Roman domination there were communities of Jews, some still in Palestine, some dispersed in and around the Roman Empire; they had to face at first the world-wide power of the pagan Romans and later on the emergence of Christianity as an Empire-wide religion. How they coped with these dramatic changes and how they influenced the new forms of religious life that emerged in this period provide the main themes of The Jews Among Pagans and Christians. Essays by the leading scholars in the field together with the introduction by the editors, offer new approaches to understanding the role of Judaism and the pattern of religious interaction characteristic of the period.

Recenzje

'... attempts most successfully to restore the Jews to view' - Greece & Rome

'... the book should be warmly recommended. Not the least of its virtues is that almost all the chapters - probably due to their origin as orally presented contributions - are highly informative without being unduly technical. The Jews among pagans and Christians offers historians of the Greco-Roman world a valuable introduction to current debates and controversies on the history of Diaspora Judaism, as well as food for thought on the religious history of the Roman Empire in general' - Mnemosyne, Volume XLIX

Spis treści

M. Hengel, University of T^D:ubingen, H. Drijvers, University of Groningen, Fergus Millar, Oxford University and M. Goodman, Oxford University

O autorze

Lieu, Judith; North, John; Rajak, Tessa