The question ‘‘who is a Jew?’’ has been answered in myriad ways over the generations. Defining Jewish identity in the ancient world involves no less difficulty, and perhaps even more. The rubric ‘‘Jewish’’ (yehudi) which began as a geographical-tribal marker (a person living in the territory called Judaea or belonging to the tribe of Judah) had by the second century bce (2 Mc 2:21 offers the earliest testimony) developed into a signifier of cultural, religious, and national identity. Roman law (and before that Hellenistic imperial correspondence), as well as many non-Jewish authors, acknowledged a Jewish reference group with unique characteristics, and a respectable historical heritage anchored in ancient times (Pucci ben Zeev 1998; Linder 1987; M. Stern 1974-84). These sources confirm the existence of a definable Jewish identity, while at the same time assailing the signifiers of Judaism. But, more importantly for our purposes, the texture and content of that identity continued to be fluid for centuries more. Jewish identifying marks, such as dress and language, that later in history demarcated the boundaries between the members of this group and others, had not yet matured and were not sharp identifiers in antiquity. In a cultural environment in which identity is not hermetic, a person can be a good Jew, at least in his own eyes, while also being an Idumaean and a Roman, all at the same time (S. cohen 1999b; Herod, the Jewish king of the last part of the first century bce, represents a classic example: S. Cohen 1999b: 13-24). Alternatively, a Jew could also be a Christian and vice versa (Boyarin 2004).
Theologically, and with the aid of hindsight, it may be possible to locate clusters of ideas that could epitomize the epistemological nucleus of ancient Judaism, or at the very least denote a certain strand within it. Beyond a very superficial level, however, no consensus has ever been reached on such notions; various groups and sects differed among themselves, and within themselves, about any number of principles. Even if all of them acknowledged the importance of a given tenet in the world of Judaism, such as the belief in the God of Israel and in the traditions that the scriptures convey about him (that he created the world, brought Israel out of Egypt, gave the Torah, and so on), different people perceived the nature and essence of this God in contradictory ways. Philo of Alexandria’s philosophical divinity, for example, modeled on the high god of Greek paideia and his subordinate agent (the logos), was nothing like the concrete, almost flesh-and-blood God that nearly rubs shoulders with Bar Kokhba’s armies, according to some Rabbinic tales (Philo, Quod Deus est immutabilis; PT Ta’an. 68d). Both of these, in turn, are far from the heavenly, sometimes dualistic God that stands out in many mystical and apocalyptic works. Yet it seems to me that if we could bring Philo and Bar Kokhba together (even though historically impossible) and overcome the language gap between them (Philo spoke and thought in Greek, whereas Bar Kokhba’s mother tongue was Aramaic), the two of them would have agreed that they believe in the same deity - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who granted the Torah to Israel.
But even this kind of consensus does not resolve the problem of identity. Diversity and flexibility characterized the ancient marketplace of faiths and views, and people mixed and matched their spiritual groceries eclectically and with no product loyalty (at least not in modern terms). Instances of unabashed gentiles who believed in the God of Israel and took part in his worship in synagogues are well documented (Trebilco 1991: 127-66). Likewise, many of those who professed Jesus’ messianic status retained their adherence to the God of Israel and continued to observe his laws in later generations, even when criticized by other Christians who felt that the very meaning of their faith involved separation from Judaism (Fredriksen, this volume). Finally, many (all, in my opinion) Jews took part in the Roman experience (romani-tas) that pervaded the Mediterranean at one level or another, and did not necessarily see this as something that contradicted their Judaism. For example, some Jews who held official positions in municipal administrations must have actively and centrally participated in the city cult, the common norm in those days, even if certain Roman legislation pronounced their exemption from such obligations (Linder 1987: 103-7, 120-4). Jewish communities that chose to depict the image of the sun god Helios mounted on his chariot and bearing identifying attributes on the mosaic floors of their synagogues offer another example (Goodman 2003). All this points to the messiness of the cultural environment of the ancient world. In such a context, it seems to me that the very act of searching for a coherent ancient Jewish theology is fundamentally mistaken, perhaps an outgrowth of the theological intensity of Christianity. For reasons that lie outside the scope of the current study, Christian thinkers tended, already in late antiquity and even more so in the Middle Ages, to arrange the set of ideas that defined their way of life into an organized system (see Edwards, this volume). In this sense, pre-medieval Judaism was, with a handful of exceptions, a non-theological religion, and to the extent that a certain framework exists it encompassed amorphous and non-compulsory traits.
More than theology, in my opinion, Judaism features a shared historical heritage, based freely and without concrete obligation on the biblical ethos. Jews identified themselves and were perceived by their gentile neighbors as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, members of a nation that had been enslaved in Egypt, that had been taken out of bondage with signs and wonders, that had received the Torah at Sinai, and whose twelve tribes had inherited the land of Canaan.
In this pre-theological environment, Jewish experience centered on a way of life, a long list of details, small and large, that shaped the time and space of the individual and the family, weaving the practitioners, even if only very loosely, into what was called the Jewish people. Aside from the Temple, which in the time under discussion already lay in ruins, and the Jewish God, who naturally attracted much attention, Greek and Roman authors who wrote about the Jews took note of the unique law (the nomos) that set this group apart (a full collection of the material in M. Stern 1974-84); as mentioned before, Hellenistic and then Roman legislation recognized this way of life and alluded to its importance to Jews (Pucci ben Zeev 1998; Linder 1987). Its central components were:
1 The Sabbath, the seventh day of the week on which labor was prohibited, a day devoted to prayer, to family feasts, and to rest;
2 Dietary laws, which proscribed certain foods, in particular specific types of meat and especially pork, a common ingredient in the Roman diet;
3 Circumcision.
These core practices are frequently supplemented in our sources with references to burial practices, the sabbatical year, and annual festivals. Jewish writers of different traditions articulate this almost obsessive tendency to encapsulate Judaism in legal paradigms, and itemize its essence in (what we now call after the Rabbis) ‘‘halakhic’’ details. The roots of this legal propensity go back to the sacred writings that Second Temple Jews revered as their foundation texts; first among them are the Five Books of Moses, known as the Torah. At their core, these scriptures convey the God of Israel’s requirement that his subjects strictly observe his instructions, God’s precepts (the mitsvot). The Torah communicates these guidelines as legal strictures, dictating permitted and forbidden actions for God’s people. Through the mitsvot the Torah endeavors to shape the Jew’s entire way of life - from his diet to his farming, from his family to the marketplace and economy, not to mention his army and its wars. Of course, the Torah also devotes much attention to the laws laying out the proper procedures for the sacrificial process of the Temple, the highest institution in the life of ancient Jews (more on this below). It also specifies a series of annual feasts that created a link between agriculture and the changing seasons of the year on the one hand and the nation’s mythological-historical heritage on the other, producing a Jewish dimension of time, a calendar. These holidays included festivals in memory of the exodus from Egypt (Passover), receiving the Torah (Shavu’ot), and later also the victories of the Hasmoneans (Idanukah), as well as fasts and days of mourning commemorating the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the nation.
Many Jewish writers from the Second Temple period recognize the importance of the divine law. Philo endows the laws with allegorical-philosophical meaning, Josephus explains them in language comprehensible to his Greco-Roman readership, while other books, such as Jubilees, address a solely Jewish audience (Philo, Spec. Leg.; Jos. AJ4.196). The brevity and ambiguity with which the Torah formulates its laws stimulated different Jewish groups in the Second Temple era to interpret and shape them in different ways, each differing and disputing the interpretations of the other. The Judaean Desert (‘‘Dead Sea’’) scrolls provide a lively example of such a legal-polemical discourse (esp. in the text known as the Halakhic Letter [MMT; 4Q394—399]). Many of the messages that the authors of the canonical Gospels put in the mouth of Jesus also express his disagreement with the legal interpretations that the Pharisees, one of the central groups at the end of the Second Temple period, bestowed upon the Torah. Yet, at the same time, they confirm the centrality of legalistic behavior (the mitsvot) in his world (Fredriksen 2000: 98-106; in contrast to later Christian claims that Jesus rejected the Torah’s practical commandments and advocated their replacement with a spiritual doctrine). The sages, as will be shown below, built on this legalistic mentality and enhanced it in the generations after the destruction.
One caveat is necessary in this regard: many modern scholars are not sufficiently sensitive to the distinctions between the function of Jewish law in ancient Judaism and the supremacy of Rabbinic halakha in the medieval and early modern world. Clear-cut and considerable differences set these two historical moments and their legal systems apart. Ancient Jewish law existed in a relatively rudimentary, and therefore amorphous state; consider only the fact that at the time, no one had yet produced a legal code that would regulate Jewish life beyond the important but rather vague statements of the Torah, whereas through the Middle Ages the great Rabbinic legal scholars including Rabbi Isaac of Fez (1013-1103), Maimonides (1135-1204), and Rabbi Jacob ba'al haturim (died c.1340) produced countless codices, each expanding, elaborating and clarifying its predecessors. Jews in antiquity lived in a relatively flexible and unenforceable legal environment. They were able to navigate much more freely than could their medieval descendants, who lived according to a well-organized written system of halakha that predominated and determined Jewish religious experience. Jewish life in antiquity should be seen as a diversified and porous continuum on which individual Jews and groups (families, communities, geographical settings) located themselves differently, appropriating some aspects of Jewish law and rejecting others, either intentionally or obliviously.
Yet another characteristic of Jewish life in the Roman world distinguished it from both later and earlier periods. Like other minorities at the time, and unlike the Jews of the medieval world (when firm boundaries, encompassing many facets of daily routines, alienated Jews from Christians), Jews in the Roman era lived in a relatively seamless cultural environment which extended to even the far edges of the empire and embraced its members regardless of their ethnic or religious orientation. Here are two examples from Asia Minor: at Aphrodisias in Caria some high-ranking non-Jewish city officials (whom this Jewish inscription calls theosebeis, i. e. God-fearers) cooperated with their Jewish neighbors in the establishment of a public kitchen for the needy (Reynolds and Tannenbaum 1987: 5 line 1, 26-7). In the inland city of Acmonia, one Julia Severa, a high priestess of the house of the divine emperors and president of the city’s competitive games, donated the ‘‘house’’ of the local synagogue (Rajak 2002: 463-78).
The same social and cultural dynamics emerge from the examination of the Roman bathhouse. Scholars who have reconstructed Jewish life in the Roman world by applying norms that developed later on could not conceive of Jews being part of the cultural milieu that existed in the bathhouse. After all, this institution encapsulated the very essence of the Roman way of life (romanitas), with its nudity, sports, and the hedonistic fixation on the human body (Fagan, this volume). In fact, the opposite is true: not only did Jews visit the bathhouse regularly, they also lauded its benefits and partook of its cultural proceedings (Eliav 2000). This flexibility applied even to features of Roman life that at first glance seem to be highly problematic for Jews, such as the numerous statues that permeated the Graeco-Roman landscape. Rabbinic literature expresses surprisingly lenient and diverse attitudes to these statues. Even more importantly, the rabbis’ views about three-dimensional sculpture are articulated in accordance with common modes of viewing sculpture throughout the Mediterranean (Eliav 2002). Magic is yet another feature that Jews happily shared with other constituents of the ancient world, as is perfectly apparent from the many magical texts (a full Jewish recipe book of magic formulae survived in the Cairo Genizah - Sefer ha-Razim), amulets, and curse tablets that exhibit Jewish traits, as well as numerous references to magic, not all unfavorable, in Rabbinic literature (Schaefer 1997). Such shared cultural textures undermine the prevalent modern view which reconstructs the encounter between Jews and Graeco-Roman culture as two distinct and predominantly hostile entities that at the most negotiate with and influence each other. At least with regard to late antiquity, this model must be revised.
World History
