A variety of different but interrelated factors undermines the historian’s efforts to recount straightforwardly the story of ancient Judaism and the Jewish people in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple (in 70 ce). First and foremost stands the situation of the sources. The last three centuries bce and the first two generations of the first century ce - a time span known in Jewish history as the Second Temple period (more broadly dated from 586 bce to 70 ce) - produced a large number of documents that have come down to us, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. These include historiographical works, such as the books ofthe Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus, as well as a rich variety of other writings - wisdom literature, philosophy, exegesis, polemics, apocalyptic works, fiction, and poetry (Stone 1984; Schurer 197387: 3: 177-889). This wealth of sources enabled scholars to reconstruct a vibrant picture of an era riven with controversies, some of them violent.
After 70 ce, the evidence soon becomes far less plentiful. True, we have a series of compositions that articulate the world of those who believed in Jesus as the messiah - people who should, through most ofthis period, be viewed as Jews in every sense ofthe word (Fredriksen, this volume). But other than texts relating to the followers of Jesus, and a small number of other works, most of what has survived is the corpus known today as Rabbinic literature. This category comprises some 40 documents of various sizes, most ofthem ofalegal nature (called halakha, from the Hebrewverb ‘‘to go’’ - in the sense of ‘‘the way in which we live’’). Some of these, labeled ‘‘midrash,’ are commentaries on the scriptures; the other non-legal material - stories, homilies, parables, proverbs, and other genres - are grouped under the general heading of aggadah (‘‘telling’’). Through a long and convoluted process spanning the first centuries of the common era, about which much remains a mystery, the figures we call rabbis produced, and then gathered, collected, and edited these works (S. Safrai 1987; Strack and Stemberger 1996). The utility of these sources for the reconstruction of Jewish life at this time poses grave challenges to the modern historian.
The ‘‘Rabbinic Movement’’ (in Hebrew IHAZAL, an acronym for ‘‘our sages may their memory be blessed'') is the anachronistic term given to the men who created this literature. The term intends to exalt and set them apart as a homogeneous group with a distinct ideology and systematic philosophy of life that shaped the character of Judaism, its institutions, and its way of life from then until now. According to this view, Rabbinic literature contains within it the essence of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, a way of life developed, honed, and led by those who wrote these works - the rabbis. Hence the common label of the centuries after 70 ce in collective Jewish memory - the Rabbinic Period (or, in some cases, the Period of the Mishnah and the Talmud[s], after the two major Rabbinic texts). The foundation of this view lies in the Middle Ages, when most segments of the Jewish population accepted Rabbinic literature as a cornerstone of Jewish life and as the very soul of Judaism. The leaders of Jewish communities in the medieval Jewish Diaspora (and in many cases until our day) viewed themselves as the successors and followers of the Rabbinic sages (the loakhamim) who created this literature. Accordingly, they adopted for themselves the collective title of‘‘rabbi’’ that they had bestowed on their predecessors.
The veneration of Rabbinic texts ensured their preservation from one generation to the next - first as hand-written codices, and finally printed in thousands of copies. Yet this very process of perpetuation undermined the ability of modern scholars, many of whom came from circles that revered the rabbis, to reconstruct the context in which their texts were composed. In fact, the process of composition often completely distorted that context. The result is that most members of the current generation of scholars now reject the view that emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, that Jews in the ancient world defined themselves and lived their lives according to the ideas and instructions to be found in Rabbinic literature (Hezser 1997: 1-42, 353-404). To this we must add the recognition that the Rabbinic literature was never intended to be read as if it were history. The sages sought mostly to record and document their intellectual, legal, and midrashic discussions, not to tell future generations what happened during their time. This makes even more challenging the work of the modern investigator who seeks to draw out details from Rabbinic literature and assemble them into a historical narrative.
The sages’ status in antiquity was much more modest and their authority - if they had any at all - more meager than the traditional view would allow. The creators of Rabbinic literature were learned Jews - scholars - who were active in Palestine in the generations after the destruction of the Second Temple, and later, from the third century, also in the Persian Empire (‘‘Babylonia’’ as they called what is now Iraq and Iran). Like other intellectuals (whether Jewish or not) throughout history, the rabbis were animated by their personalities, in particular the natural proclivity towards learning that singles out some individuals early in life. They devoted their lives to scholarship and erudition. The focus of their studies, the foundation texts of their curriculum, consisted of the Jewish scriptures, which later became the Bible. Their preferred ‘‘field’’ of study centered on legal discourse (unlike other ancient Jewish scholars, who engaged in other branches of learning, such as philosophy and mysticism). Accordingly, Rabbinic sages endeavored to channel what they believed to be the eternal truth of God, as articulated in the Torah (the first five, most important, books of the Bible), into meticulous and well-structured legal formulae. In a long and gradual process, extending well beyond the limits of this chapter, Rabbinic legal scholarship grew into an all-embracing legal system. They named it Halakha, ‘‘the way’’ - God’s way of life (cf. S. Safrai 1987: 121-209).
The small group of intellectuals who crafted the Rabbinic tradition had limited, if any, impact on the Jewish public in Palestine, and even less on the Jewish communities elsewhere in the Mediterranean regions. There were never more than a few dozen of them active at any given time, and sometimes even fewer (L. I. Levine 1989: 66-9). Moreover, it is not at all clear, during the 150 years after the Temple’s destruction, whether the sages were an organized movement, with self-awareness, well-defined political goals, and a coherent conceptual outlook on Jewish life. It seems more likely to me that the opposite is true (Hezser 1997: 185-224). At first, and through several generations, the sages functioned as individual scholars, teachers who gathered small numbers of students around them on a personal basis. Whatever links existed among them were loose and limited, and generally restricted to intellectual interests and scholarly debates. The situation began to change, slowly, only at the beginning of the third century ce with the project of redacting and publishing the Mishnah, the first comprehensive compilation of Rabbinic legal material. Judah the Patriarch, the official political leader of Jewish Palestine, who exercised considerable authority and prestige among Diaspora communities as well, initiated, and to a great extent funded, this huge undertaking. It was only by chance that this particular patriarch also belonged to the circle of the sages. In my view the Mishnah was the creator rather than the creation of the Rabbinical movement.
These seemingly minute nuances greatly affect our interpretation of Rabbinic texts. For one, they clog the traditional channels of information about this period. Almost no one in scholarly circles nowadays would accept Rabbinic material as a straightforward representation of contemporary Jewish life in antiquity; many Rabbinic depictions tend to exaggerate (or idealize) the role and stature of the rabbis, their practices, and their legal rulings. Other material, also of a legal nature, addresses highly theoretical issues, far removed from real life. This does not mean that one should ignore Rabbinic sources altogether. On the contrary - Rabbinic material, if properly used, contains a wealth of information about Jewish life in antiquity. But it must be studied with caution and within the wider context of the ancient world.
Downgrading the role of the rabbis in ancient Jewish society requires rethinking the nature ofthe Jewish world in the High Empire and Late Roman periods. Ifthe sages did not set the agenda for Jewish life, and if their worldview was not generally held by their coreligionists, how did Jews live in those days? As it happens, these questions are much more complicated than we once thought. Although we would now tend to reject the centrality of Rabbinic thought to Judaism in the Roman and Byzantine periods, it must also be conceded that efforts to replace that model have not won universal assent. For example, Jacob Neusner, one of the first and sharpest critics of the old view, reconstructs many ‘‘Judaisms’’ that, in his view, existed side by side in those days. His approach, based on methodology from the school of intellectual history (heavily influenced by Protestant scholarship) links texts to social groups. According to Neus-ner, different works, even within the Rabbinic corpus, as well as certain artistic depictions (for example the mosaic floors of synagogues), represent all-inclusive religious and even social entities with independent conceptions and identities of Judaism. This equation is artificial and forced, and thus has not found many supporters in the scholarly community (e. g. Neusner 1995: 1: 117-72; S. Cohen 1983).
Archaeological discoveries add another important layer to our understanding of the period, but do not reduce its ambiguities. The most significant remains belong to ancient synagogues (L. I. Levine 2000), a subject I will deal with in greater detail below. The synagogue originated as an institution during the Second Temple period, but after 70 ce it gradually filled the vacuum left by the destroyed Temple as the central space for the performance of Jewish ritual and worship and as the prime location for communal organization. But even here the picture remains vague. Archaeologists differ about the dating of the dozens of synagogues that have been excavated throughout the Mediterranean basin, many of them in modern Israel. The artwork found in these structures presents researchers with another series of challenges. Many of the mosaic floors contain manifestly pagan motifs. The image of Helios mounted on his chariot, or the 12 signs of the Zodiac, all quite popular images in synagogue iconography, often accompany biblical motifs and narratives (such as the binding of Isaac), depictions of Temple vessels (such as the Menorah and other objects associated with this institution), and illustrations of its liturgy. What conclusions are we to draw from this about the character of the Jews who used these buildings and about the nature of the Judaism they practiced? Seth Schwartz has proposed that Judaism entirely evaporated in the early centuries after the destruction of the Temple, and was reborn only under the sponsorship and at the initiative of the Byzantine rulers. He bases his claim largely on, first, a late dating of most of the excavated synagogues and, second, on the ‘‘pagan’’ character of the early material evidence, such as coins from cities generally thought to have had vast Jewish populations (such as Tiberias and Sepphoris), and burial inscriptions from the 150 years after the destruction (Schwartz 2001). But his view is equally untenable (Eliav 2004). Beyond some serious methodological flaws that undermine Schwartz’s thesis, many sources, especially Roman legal material (such as Linder 1987: 103-6), as well as abundant archaeological information, demonstrate a vibrant Jewish existence during this period.
Figure 28.1a Mosaic ‘‘carpet’’ from the fourth-century synagogue at Ilamat Tiberieas featuring in the top panel the Ark of the Torah surrounded by liturgical items (the Temple menorah, the four species of Sukkot, and more); in the central panel is the zodiac with month signs and the four personifications of the seasons at the corners identified with Hebrew terms, and at the center Helios mounting a chariot and holding a globe; the bottom panel (the closest to the entrance) shows two lions embracing a Greek inscription mentioning the donors (one of which is designated as ‘‘Friend of the Patriarchs’’)
Another question that causes researchers a great deal of trouble is the nature of Jewish-Christian encounters. Modern scholars have often projected the medieval picture of two diametrically opposed religions separated by a theological abyss, not to mention hostility, loathing, and violence backwards into the Roman period. Excessive reliance on the contentious rhetoric of the church fathers has also contributed to the common view that colors the religious and social milieu of late antiquity in bold shades of segregation and conflict. Many of these dichotomies have come under attack in the last generation. The problem, as Daniel Boyarin states, is that Judaism and Christianity in this period ‘‘shared crisscrossing lines of history and
Figure 28.1b The interior of a fourth-century synagogue at Sardis which is built into a huge gymnasium/bath complex. The picture looks east at the three entrances to the main hall; in the back of the central door one can still see the marble basin for washing that stood in the atrium (probably the ‘‘fountain of the Jews’’ that is mentioned in one of the city’s municipal inscriptions); flanking the central portal on the inside are two aediculae, one of which surely functioned as an Ark for the Torah scroll (archaeologists debate the function of the other). At the front of the picture is a massive stone table, perhaps for the reading of the Torah, with two eagles engraved to its legs (not shown) and a pair of lions flanking its sides. A closer look shows also the remains of pillars that divided the interior space into a central nave and two aisles, as well as the remains of the numerous mosaics that decorated the floors
Religious development.’’ Therefore, he wrote, ‘‘one could travel, metaphorically, from Rabbinic Jew to Christian along a continuum where one would hardly know where one stopped and the other began’’ (Boyarin 1999: 8-9; Becker and Yoshiko-Reed 2003).
All this leads, in my opinion, to the need for a radical change in our historiographic expectations. We must recognize that, given the sources currently available to us, certain questions, some of them central and fundamental, must remain unanswered. On the other hand, such an understanding allows for a more cautious, and thus more balanced, evaluation of Jewish history in this era.
World History
