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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge History of Judaism
  • Cited by 17
  • Volume 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period
  • Edited by Steven T. Katz, Boston University
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9781139055130
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521772488
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Religion
Subjects:
Ancient History, Judaism, History, Regional History Before 1500, Religion
Series:
The Cambridge History of Judaism
Information

Book description

This fourth volume of The Cambridge History of Judaism covers the period from 70 CE to 640 CE (the rise of Islam). It deals with the major historical, political and cultural developments in Jewish history and the history of Judaism in this crucial era during which Judaism took on its classical shape. It provides discussion and analysis of all the essential subjects pertinent to an understanding of this period, and is especially strong in its coverage of the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections. In addition, it surveys the early encounter of Judaism and Christianity from both the Jewish and Christian sides and describes the rise of Jewish mystical literature, the liturgical literature of the developing synagogue, the nature of magical practices in classical Judaism and Jewish Folklore.

Awards

The Jewish Book Award in Reference was awarded to Stephen Katz for editing this volume.

Reviews

' … there are in this volume a good number of essays that are outstandingly clear and informative, wisely constructed and well documented … They achieve a happy medium between what is suitable for a monograph and what belongs in a short encyclopaedia.'

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

'All credit, … to the editor, Steven T. Katz for his successful … task. … An additional bouquet to Cambridge University Press for supporting the work.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • 29 - Jewish folk literature in late antiquity
    pp 721-748
    • By Eli Yassif, Faculty of Humanities, Tel-Aviv University
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter presents four major types of folk narratives in rabbinic culture: the legend, the magic tale, the fable, and the humoristic tale. The biographical legend centers on the persona of a sage, leader, or folk saint around whose various stages of life the people wove legends. Rabbinic literature contains hundreds of biographical legends. Magic tales in rabbinic aggadah are unique in form and content. These tales significantly enhance our understanding of how Jews of the period perceived magic. The fable is one of the most ancient literary forms known. Many fables and remnants of animal tales have been found in the writings of ancient Sumer, Babylonia, and Egypt, indicative of intensive activity in these areas, as regards both elite literary creativity and folklore. The joke enables the observer to understand the tensions and the structure of relations between the various components of a given culture at a given time.
  • 30 - Early forms of Jewish mysticism
    pp 749-791
    • By Rachel Elior, Department of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter explains some of the most prominent characteristics of the mystical section of heikhalot literature, taking into consideration its pseudepigraphic features, its undefined chronological-historical setting, and the dearth of independent external evidence of any relevance, on one side, and its distinctive mystical message on the other side. Much of heikhalot literature is written as a description of a mystical ascent to the heavenly sanctuaries. The kedushah prayer interlinks the lower and upper worlds, merging the heavenly panegyrics with the praises of Jews on earth. Shiur Qomah is one of the most original contributions of Heikhalot literature to the new mystical perception of the Deity. The theophany of Shiur Qomah, or the vision of the Deity in the heavenly Sanctuary is one that transcends in content and detail any parallel prophetic biblical description. The book Sefer Yetzira introduced the interesting idea that creation is an ongoing, creative, linguistic process, whereby language and divine creativity are shared by humans and God.
  • 31 - The Political, Social, and Economic History of Babylonian Jewry, 224–638 CE
    pp 792-820
    • By Isaiah Gafni, Sol Rosenbloom Professor of Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The fall of the Parthian monarchy and the succession of the Sasanian dynasty mark a major turning point in the political and religious history of Iran. The nature of the Parthian monarchy certainly encouraged a degree of Jewish self-rule, and geonic sources speak in general terms of the existence of the office during the Second Temple period. In truth, only in talmudic literature does a more complete picture of this office emerge, one that draws much from a comparison of the Exilarchate with the Patriarchate of Roman Palestine. The economic life of Babylonian Jewry was not segregated from the surrounding population, and the Babylonian Talmud suggests not only the proximity of Jews and Gentiles but also a large measure of daily interaction and co-operation. Social interaction between Jews and other groups assumes a common language of discourse, and, in the case of Babylonia, that language was Babylonian Aramaic.
  • 32 - The history of the Babylonian academies
    pp 821-839
    • By David Goodblatt, Department of History, University of California, San Diego
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Medieval Baghdad was home to academies for the study of talmudic tradition called yeshivot/metivata. This fact is relevant because the historiography that has dominated modern scholarship on the subject originated in Baghdad in the ninth through the eleventh centuries. That historiography asserted that the yeshivot of Sasanian Babylonia were similar to the talmudic academies of Islamic Iraq. The only contemporary evidence available on Jewish education in Sasanian Babylonia appears in talmudic literature. Two medieval documents contain information on the history of the Babylonian academies in Sasanian times. One is Seder Tannaim VeAmoraim. The other work is an account of the yeshivot of Baghdad by Nathan son of Isaac the Babylonian. The attempt to base the history of the academies on contemporary evidence and thereby to minimize the possibility of anachronism has resulted in an account quite different from the one presented in traditional historiography.
  • 33 - The formation and character of the Babylonian Talmud
    pp 840-876
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, was composed by rabbis who flourished from the third to the sixth or seventh centuries CE. Much of the Bavli is a commentary on the Mishnah, a tannaitic work of Palestinian origin consisting primarily of legal statements by rabbis who lived between the first and early third centuries CE. The majority of midrashic statements in the Bavli, and evenmore so in Palestinian compilations, are attributed to Palestinian rabbis. The Bavli, according to "theory of audience", is intended almost exclusively for a rabbinic audience, which explains the inner-directed character of the rabbis it depicts. Close reading of texts from the Bavli illustrates the claim that the Talmud is composed of distinct sources (tannaitic, amoraic, and unattributed) from diverse places and time periods. The first sugya is found on TB Bava B. 168b-169a, a section of the Talmud which deals with property rights.
  • 34 - Talmudic law: a jurisprudential perspective
    pp 877-898
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Talmudic law was formulated over a period of several hundred years, and undoubtedly considerable evolution occurred in its treatment of the issues to be discussed in this chapter. In general, the Talmud manifests a conception of halachic history as stable. Natural law is not an empirical theory about causal links, but rather an attempt to justify the authority of the law. In talmudic jurisprudence, three levels of binding halachic statements can be distinguished, namely, law (halachah), law to be applied (halachah lemaase), and concrete judicial rulings. The chapter begins by considering the distinction between law and the law to be applied. Alongside the dialogue and debate that characterize study of the Talmud, there is also the normative determination of what constitutes the law (halachah). The description of talmudic jurisprudence in the chapter would be incomplete without mentioning that the society that made talmudic jurisprudence possible is very different from contemporary western society.
  • 35 - Torah in rabbinic thought: the theology of learning
    pp 899-924
    • By Marc Hirshman, The Melton Center of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Rabbinic literature is a complex anthology of more than half a millennium of Jewish thought, stretching from the sparse statements of the last two centuries BCE to the ample oeuvre of the first five centuries of the Common Era. This chapter selects the most powerful expressions of various rabbinic positions on the meaning and significance of the Torah and Torah study, culled from the classical period of rabbinic literature. These sources will be amplified by selections from contemporaneous Graeco-Roman and Christian literature on the one hand and by modern critical scholarship on the other. One can imagine that the struggle with the Church over the correct interpretation of Scripture led the Rabbis to emphasize the status of the oral law. The Torah, oral and written, was God's word, and closeness to God could be measured not simply by obedience to God's word but by constant recitation and study of the word.
  • 36 - Man, sin, and redemption in Rabbinic Judaism
    pp 925-945
    • By Steven Katz, Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and Department of Religion, Boston University
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The religious anthropology of the Sages of the rabbinic era, that is, their conception(s) of man, sin, and redemption, is one of the absolute foundations of Judaism both as a theological Weltanschauung and as a lived religious practice. This chapter attempts a reasonable summary and exploration of these views. God's creative, omnipotent and sustaining power over against humankind's dependency and finitude necessarily, and rightly, places men and women in a position of subordination. In rabbinic Judaism, redemption is conceived of as an "earned response" - human beings merit redemption through their good deeds and through their "repentance". The dialectic of the covenantal bond, of God as a member of the community in relation, is nowhere more evident than in the repentance - redemption sequence. The repentance of men and women may seem, in the larger order of things, an insignificant matter compared to God's mighty act of redemption.
  • 37 - The rabbinic theology of the physical: blessings, body and soul, resurrection, and covenant and election
    pp 946-976
    • By Reuven Kimelman, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The rabbinic worldview focuses on the significance of the physical, whether it be the created world, the body, or the People of Israel. It affirms the physical as a medium of the spiritual. The rabbinic appreciation of the religious significance of the physical world comes through in their theology of blessings. In concretizing the biblical affirmation of the world, the Rabbis mandated blessings for just about everything in the sensual, aesthetic, and religious realms of life. Rabbinic Judaism's position on the body-soul relationship stands in contrast to that of Hellenistic Judaism. The tighter the link between body and soul, the greater the possibility of refining the body into a medium of the spiritual life. Moves toward death anticipate death as moves toward life anticipate resurrection. Clustering together the affirmations of the physical world, the physical body, the physical resurrection, and the election of physical Israel makes clear their interrelationship.
  • 38 - Christian anti-Judaism: polemics and policies
    pp 977-1034
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Church endorsed by Constantine in the early fourth century represented a form of Christianity that drew most directly upon the traditions and Scriptures of Israel. To understand imperial Christianity's policies toward Jews and Judaism requires an appreciation of its foundational history in the second century, when the younger community fought doctrinal diversity within and persecution without. During this earlier period, the seeds of orthodoxy's anti-Judaism, which flourished especially from the late fourth century onward, developed and became established. Orthodoxy's awareness of and insistence on a historical connection between Judaism and Christianity had expressed itself both theologically and socially in various ways from the second to fifth centuries. Religious and social mixing between different types of Jews and Christians, between Christians of different sorts, and between Christians, Jews, and pagans all continued. Church and state collaborated in the Christianization of late Roman culture; however, no immediate correspondence between law, theology, and society can be presumed.
  • 39 - Jews in Byzantium
    pp 1035-1052
    • By Steven Bowman, Department of Judaic Studies, University of Cincinnati
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Byzantium was founded in the seventh century BCE as a Greek colony on the western shore of the Bosphoros. While individual Jews had occasionally attained Roman citizenship, most Jews became Roman citizens with the decree of Emperor Caracalla in 212. This citizenship characterized the status of the Jews in Byzantium until its conquest by the Ottomans and determined the status of the Greek speaking or Romaniote Jews of Istanbul under the Ottomans. Archaeological data and later references in the Theodosian and Justinianic codes attest to Jewish communities in North Africa where Jews had lived since Punic times. Jewish demographic expansion and demographic growth continued through the fourth century, when it began to be curtailed by the legitimization of Christianity and the latter's increasing attacks on the Jews. The lack of Hebrew inscriptions outside Palestine alongside the monumental Greek remains is one indication of the acculturating effect of the dominant Greek society.
  • 40 - Messianism and apocalypticism in rabbinic texts
    pp 1053-1072
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter seeks to understand a striking and extremely significant feature of rabbinic Judaism in the amoraic period, namely the resurfacing of a set of apocalyptic messianic ideas that had typified various trends of Second Temple Judaism. Many investigations of the history of Jewish messianism assemble in chronological order, beginning with the Hebrew Bible and extending through the rabbinic corpus, and maintain that such an assemblage of data constitutes a history. The messianic ideal is based on the doctrine of the Bible that David and his descendants had been chosen by God to rule over Israel until the end of time. After the failure of the Great Revolt of 66-74 CE and the catastrophe which came in its wake, utopian views come to the fore in the literature of the period. It is in the Babylonian Talmud that the most developed form of messianic speculation in rabbinic literature occurs, and there one shall encounter a re-emergence of the utopian approach.

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