Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity – serie

This volume - a Festschrift in honour of the renowned Acts-scholar Eckhard Plümacher - contains thirteen articles on Luke's Acts of the Apostles. Presented are essays concerning Luke's language and style (Alexander, Koch, Steyn, Victor), the literary and historiographical technique applied in Acts (Moessner, Koch, Lindemann), on Luke's theology / Christology (Schröter, Vouga) and on the use (and abuse) of Acts for reconstructing aspects of the history of Early Christianity (Breytenbach, Horn, Schmithals) and for constructing theology relevant to modern culture (Vouga). Furthermore it contains a critical edition and commentary of the Martyrdom of Stephen with a discussion of its relationship to Acts (Bovon/Bouvier) and a presentation and discussion of some unknown Coptic Fragments of Acts (Bethge).

Writing the Wayward Wife is a study of rabbinic interpretations of sotah, the law concerning the woman suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11-31). The focus of the book is on interpretations of sotah in tannaitic and amoraic texts: the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash Halakhah, Midrash Aggadah, and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. The body of the work is in-depth analysis of the legal and ritual proceedings. Jewish Greek interpretations (Josephus, Philo, and LXX) also are addressed, along with the Protevangelium of James, and fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Cairo Geniza. Finally, the disappearance of the ritual is discussed, with implications for the development of rabbinic authority.In previous secondary literature, the law of sotah has been understood as either proto-feminist or misogynist. This book argues that neither of these are appropriate paradigms. Rather, this book identifies the emergence of two major interpretive themes: the emphasis on legal procedures, and the condemnation of adultery.

Judaism in the Roman World deals with the religious lives of Jews in the Roman world from late Second Temple times to the Later Roman Empire.***The studies collected here analyse a series of issues important in the development of Judaism in this period: the role of the Temple and pilgrimage in the first century CE; the attitude of Jews to the physical texts of the Torah and to the scribes who produced them; the extent of variety and change within Judaism before and after 70 CE and the nature of the evidence for particular types of Judaism; the role of synagogues and images in Jewish worship; and relations between Jews and Christians in the early centuries.***This book should be particularly useful to students of ancient Judaism and those interested in Christian origins.

Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the Roman province of Judaea / Palaestina, was founded in 10/9 BCE by Herod the Great to serve as an administrative and economic center. It was named after his Roman patron Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor. The book, well illustrated, presents the results of the large scale excavations at the site during the 1990’s and early 2000’s in their wider historical and cultural context: the architectural evolution and transformation of the thriving city from its foundation to its decline caused by the Arab conquest (640/41 CE), its conversion to a Roman colony in 71 CE, aspects of provincial administration, commerce and economy, entertainment and religious life of its communities – Jews, Pagans, Christians and Samaritans.

Buch 1 und 2 bilden innerhalb der disparaten Sammlung der antiken Sibyllinischen Orakel ein zusammenhängendes Werk: eine historische Apokalypse, die den Bogen von der Schöpfung bis in die eschatologische Goldene Zeit spannt und dabei biblische und heidnische Mythologie harmonisiert. Die vorliegende Studie analysiert das in seiner jetzigen Gestalt klar christliche Doppelbuch. Sie rekonstruiert daraus eine vorchristliche Grundschrift, die als literarisches Zeugnis der jüdisch-heidnischen Symbiose im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien gelesen werden kann. In seiner bearbeiteten Form ist das Doppelbuch die vermutlich älteste Sibyllenschrift aus christlicher Hand. Die Studie bietet einen detaillierten Kommentar zu der gesamten Schrift. Dabei untersucht sie auch das umfangreiche Pseudo-Phokylides-Zitat in Buch 2 sowie die Beziehungen der eschatologischen Abschnitte zur Petrusapokalypse.Within the disparate collection of ancient Sibylline Oracles book 1 and 2 form a historical apocalypse reaching from the creation to the eschatological Golden Age. It is unique in integrating biblical and classical mythology. Although Christian in its present form, its origins have been debated for a long time. This study examines its different parts and tries to reconstruct a pre-Christian document. It interprets the original work as a literary evidence of the Jewish-pagan symbiosis in Asia Minor in the imperial period. Its adaption is probably the earliest Sibylline writing produced by Christians. The study provides a line-by-line commentary. It contains a close examination of the tradition of Pseudo-Phocylides included in the Christian document as well as a comparison with the Apocalypse of Peter.

The destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which put an end to sacrificial worship in Israel, is usually assumed to constitute a major caesura in Jewish history. But how important was it? What really changed due to 70? What, in contrast, was already changing before 70 or remained basically – or “virtually” -- unchanged despite it? How do the Diaspora, which was long used to Temple-less Judaism, and early Christianity, which was born around the same time, fit in? This Scholion Library volume presents twenty papers given at an international conference in Jerusalem in which scholars assessed the significance of 70 for their respective fields of specialization, including Jewish liturgy, law, literature, magic, art, institutional history, and early Christianity.

In Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome William den Hollander places under the microscope the Judaean historian's own account of the latter part of his life, following his first encounters with the Romans. Episodes of Josephus' life, such as his embassy to Rome prior to the outbreak of the 1st Judaean Revolt, his prophetic pronouncement of Vespasian's imminent rise to the imperial throne, and his time in the Roman prisoner-of-war camp, are subjected to rigorous analysis and evaluated against the broader ancient evidence by the application of a vivid historical imagination. Den Hollander also explores at great length the relationships formed by Josephus with the Flavian emperors and other individuals of note within the Roman army camp and, later, in the city of Rome. He builds solidly on recent trends in Josephan research that emphasize Josephus' distance from the corridors of power.

J. Cornelis de Vos examines the impact and reception of the Decalogue up to 200 CE, scrutinizing the versions of the Decalogue, and the history of the Decalogue in ancient Jewish writings, the New Testament, and early Christian writings. Almost all texts show an interconnection of identity and normativity: the Decalogue functions as an expression of fundamental moral concepts of socio-religious groups. At the same time, these groups enhance the Decalogue with normativity—sometimes even expanding on it—to make it a text that generates their own identity.This is the first study that presents an in-depth and continuous analysis of the early history of the Decalogue. Der Wirkung und Rezeption des Dekalogs bis 200 n.Chr. widmet sich J. Cornelis de Vos in dieser Studie. Dafür erforscht er zunächst die alten Textzeugen der beiden Dekalogfassungen, um anschließend zu fragen, wie die Zehn Gebote bei antik-jüdischen Autoren, im Neuen Testament sowie in frühchristlichen Schriften aufgenommen wurden. Es zeigt sich eine Verbindung von Normativität und Identität: Der Dekalog gilt zumeist als Ausdruck der moralischen Grundauffassungen sozioreligiöser Gruppen; er wird gleichzeitig von diesen Gruppen mit Normativität aufgeladen – manchmal sogar erweitert – gerade um als Identität stiftend für die eigene Gruppe zu gelten.Dies ist die erste Studie, die eine detaillierte und durchgehende Geschichte des Dekalogs in der Antike beschreibt.

In Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages fifteen scholars offer specialist studies on Jewish education from the areas of their expertise. This tightly themed volume in honour of Philip S. Alexander has some essays that look at individual manuscripts, some that consider larger literary corpora, and some that are more thematically organised. Jewish education has been addressed largely as a matter of the study house, the bet midrash. Here a richer range of texts and themes discloses a wide variety of activity in several spheres of Jewish life. In addition, some notable non-Jewish sources provide a wider context for the discourse than is often the case.

This book explores how early Christian communities constructed, developed, and asserted their identity and authority in various socio-cultural contexts in Asia Minor and Greece in the first five centuries CE. With the help of the database Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (ICG), special attention is given to ancient inscriptions which represent a rich and valuable source of information on the early Christians’ social and religious identity, family networks, authority structures, and place and function in society. This collection of essays by various specialists of Early Christianity, Epigraphy, and Late Antiquity, offers a broad geographical survey of the expansion and socio-cultural development of Christianity/ies in Asia Minor and Greece, and sheds new light on the religious transformation of the Later Roman Empire.

Sources and Interpretation in Ancient Judaism: Studies for Tal Ilan at Sixty, a collection of studies by 14 scholars, is designed to honor an outstanding scholar in the field of Ancient Judaism, Tal Ilan. These studies reflect realms within the broad field of Ancient Judaism that are central to Ilan’s scholarship: Second Temple literary sources and history, Gender, Jewish papyrology and rabbinic literature. The studies within this volume are of an interdisciplinary nature, offering new readings and interpretations of known sources such as Josephus and rabbinic texts, but also introducing the reader to an entirely new body of sources, namely Jewish papyri. The volume therefore aims to introduce specialists and non-specialists to new fields of research.

Ancient Readers and their Scriptures explores the various ways that ancient Jewish and Christian writers engaged with and interpreted the Hebrew Bible in antiquity, focusing on physical mechanics of rewriting and reuse, modes of allusion and quotation, texts and text forms, text collecting, and the development of interpretative traditions.Contributions examine the use of the Hebrew Bible and its early versions in a variety of ancient corpora, including the Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic works, analysing the vast array of textual permutations that define ancient engagement with Jewish scripture. This volume argues that the processes of reading and cognition, influenced by the physical and intellectual contexts of interpretation, are central aspects of ancient biblical interpretation that are underappreciated in current scholarship.

In Israel in Egypt scholars in different fields explore what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world. For generations of Jews from antiquity to the medieval period, the land of Egypt represented both a place of danger to their communal religious identity and also a haven with opportunities for prosperity and growth. A volume of collected essays from scholars in fields ranging from biblical studies and classics to papyrology and archaeology, Israel in Egypt explores what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world.

This volume focuses on Christianity in Attica and its metropolis, Athens, from Paul’s initial visit in the first century up to the closing of the philosophical schools under the reign of Justinian I in the sixth century. Underscoring the relevance of epigraphic resources and the importance of methodological sophistication in analysing especially archaeological evidence, it readdresses many questions on the basis of a larger body of evidence and aims to combine literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence in order to create the outlines of a narrative of the rise and development of Christianity in the area. It is the first interdisciplinary study on the local history of Christianity in the area.

For Jews and Christians in Antiquity beliefs about demons were integral to their reflections on fundamental theological questions, but what kind of ‘being’ did they consider demons to be? To what extent were they thought to be embodied? Were demons thought of as physical entities or merely as metaphors for social and psychological realities? What is the relation between demons and the hypostatization of abstract concepts (fear, impurity, etc) and baleful phenomenon such as disease? These are some of the questions that this volume addresses by focussing on the nature and characteristics of demons — what one might call ‘demonic ontology’.

Roman Judaea, Christian origins, and Roman-Judaean-Christian relations are flourishing fields of endless fascination. Amid the flurry of new research, however, which uses ever new methods in the humanities and social sciences, basic questions about what happened and how people then understood events are easily obscured. This book argues that a simple but consistent historical method can throw new light – and challenge entrenched views – on such familiar topics as Roman provincial governance, the Jewish War, Flavian politics, Judaea after King Herod, Jewish and Christian historiography, Pharisees and Essenes, John the Baptist, the apostle Paul, and Luke-Acts.

The towns and villages of Phrygia, a predominantly rural region of inner Asia Minor, provide richer documentation of their early Christian communities than any other part of the Roman empire. This includes the earliest lengthy Christian funerary text, coin types depicting Noah and the Flood introduced by Christians at the Phrygian emporium of Apamea, the famous ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions, and more than a hundred other pre-Constantinian grave monuments, The abundant evidence for the Christian presence up the Turkish invasions throws new light on continuity between Late Antiquity and the Middle Byzantine period, and on the warfare between the Byzantines and Turks in the 11th century. This is the first exhaustive regional study since 1897.

In this volume Julien M. Ogereau investigates the origins and development of Christianity in the Roman province of Macedonia in the first six centuries CE. Drawing from the oldest literary sources, Ogereau reconstructs the earliest history of the first Christian communities in the region and explores the legacy of the apostle Paul in the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea. Turning to the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, Ogereau then examines Christianity’s dissemination throughout the province and its impact on Macedonian society in late antiquity, especially on its epigraphic habits and material culture.

As allegiance to Jesus Christ spread across the Roman Empire in the second century, writings, practices, and ideas erupted in a creative maelstrom. Many of the patterns of practice and belief that later become normative emerged, in the midst of debate and argument with neighbours who shared or who rejected that allegiance. Authoritative texts, principles of argument, attitudes to received authority, the demands of allegiance in the face of opposition, identifying who belonged and who did not, all demanded attention. These essays explore those divergent voices, and the no-less diverse and lively debates they have inspired in recent scholarship.

Die apokalyptischen Texte erzählen auf kunstvolle Weise eine spannende story des Volkes Gottes in literarisch gefassten Visionen – auch Johannes und er Autor von 2 Baruch, die beide ihre Adressatengemeinschaften in ihrem Israel-Sein ermutigen wollen. Dazu verbinden sie ihr Visionskorpus mit dem kommunikativen Mittel des Briefes, was einen Vergleich beider Werke nahelegt. Mit seinem Werk zur Johannesapokalypse und 2 Baruch legt John Dik erstmals einen ausführlichen motivgeschichtlichen und gattungskritischen Vergleich vor, durch den sowohl die jüdischen traditionsgeschichtlichen Kontexte für das letzte Buch des Neuen Testaments herausgestellt werden als auch die Relevanz der Johannesapokalypse für die jüdische Apokalyptik. The apocalyptic texts skilfully tell an exciting story of God's people in literary visions – including John and the author of 2 Baruch, who both want to encourage their communities to be part of this story and to grasp their Israel-identity more fully. To this end, both works combine their visionary corpus with the form of a letter as a means of communication. In this book on the Apocalypse of John and 2 Baruch, John Dik presents for the first time a detailed comparison of the history of motifs and genre criticism, which emphasises both the Jewish traditional-historical contexts for the last book of the New Testament and the relevance of the Apocalypse of John for other Jewish apocalypses.