Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome's Challenge to Israel
Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Maps -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Note on Translations -- Introduction -- 1. Recontextualizing Israel's Encounter with the Roman Empire in the Longue Durée -- 2. A Survey of Scholarship on "Rome and Jerusalem" -- 3. Responses to...
| Summary: | Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Maps -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Note on Translations -- Introduction -- 1. Recontextualizing Israel's Encounter with the Roman Empire in the Longue Durée -- 2. A Survey of Scholarship on "Rome and Jerusalem" -- 3. Responses to Empire: Theory, Terminology, and Method -- Empire, Imperialism, and Imperial Ideology -- Analyzing Responses to Empire: Coping with Diversity -- Jewish Responses to the Roman Empire -- Chapter 1 Coping with Empires before Rome: From Assyria to the Hellenistic Kingdoms -- 1. The Neo-Assyrian Empire -- 1.1 The Nature of Neo-Assyrian Imperialism -- 1.2 The Legacy of Neo-Assyrian Imperialism in the Bible -- The Notion of a Universal God -- God's Kingdom and Divine Kingship -- The Covenant between God and Israel -- Specific Laws of the Covenant -- Human Kingship -- 2. The Neo-Babylonian Empire -- 2.1 The Nature of Neo-Babylonian Imperialism -- 2.2 The Legacy of Neo-Babylonian Imperialism in the Bible -- The Emergence of Monotheism: Foreign Gods as Idols -- The Election and Salvific Role of the People of Israel -- Human Kingship -- 3. The Persian Empire -- 3.1 The Nature of Achaemenid Imperialism -- Local Cults and Imperial Propaganda -- Persian Imperial Ideology: Universalism, Dualism, and Soterio logical Mission -- 3.2 Achaemenid Imperialism in the Bible and in Second Temple-Period Jewish Sources -- Further Monotheistic Developments: The Rejection of Dualism -- The Creator God -- Human Kingship -- The Rise of the Torah -- The Development of an Apocalyptic Worldview and Literature -- Eschatology and Ethics -- 4. The Hellenistic Kingdoms -- 4.1 Seleucid Rule and Royal Ideology -- 4.2 The Legacy of Seleucid Imperialism in Ancient Jewish Sources -- Human Kingship -- Territory: Defining Israel's Relationship to the Promised Land in Legal-Historical Terms "Across almost the entire expanse of Jewish history, Jews have had to adjust to being ruled by empires. In antiquity alone Jews lived under a succession of imperial powers - Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleucid - before having to deal with the Romans. Judaism (of course) was shaped by each successive encounter with an imperial power. But as Katell Berthelot argues in this book, Rome and Roman imperialism presented Jews with unique ideological challenges, and compelled Jews to rethink key aspects of their own self-definition. Long before Rome became Christian, Jews recognized pagan Romans as unprecedented rivals because of some striking similarities between the two peoples. Previously Jews were ruled by empires associated with kingdoms and kings. By contrast, "Rome" was first and foremost a city and a people - and Romans thought of their city and themselves as a people in ways uncomfortably close to the ways Jews defined themselves: as an Israelite people tied to a capital city, Jerusalem. Moreover both Romans and Jews conceived of themselves as a pious people with a divine calling; both thought they possessed the most perfect laws ever written; and both believed themselves to be entrusted with a universal mission that implied bringing peace to the world. This was too close for comfort. The disturbingly close parallels led some Jews to feel that Rome was in fact trying to take Israel's place in God's plan for the world. Revealingly, the ancient rabbis depicted this rivalry by turning to the famous biblical story of the sibling rivals Jacob and Esau, associating the Jews with the former and the Romans with the latter. The perceived rivalry led to a series of innovations in Jewish self-perceptions in late antiquity in several areas that Berthelot will discuss in a series of book chapters: innovations in Jewish understandings of power, citizenship (or membership in a people), and law. Berthelot argues that in some cases the Jewish sources imitate or mimic Roman representations (of, e.g. legal thinking and practice), and in other cases propose a countermodel"-- |
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| Item Description: | Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources |
| ISBN: | 0691220425 |