Jews And Christians In Their Graeco Roman Context

A collection of essays, most of which were published previously. Partial contents:

The aim of this book is to give access to sources which illustrate Graeco-Roman views on Jews and Christians from 200 BC to AD 200. Passages range from longer extracts written by historians to short incidental references by disparate authors which throw light on attitudes towards beliefs and social customs. The pagan religious background, especially the Mystery religions, is also described and illustrated by selected passages, so that the reader may have some idea of the general religious climate during this period. Every quotation is prefixed by a brief biography of the author and all passages have been translated into English, with explanatory comment when necessary. Connecting essays act as summaries and focus the attention on essential issues. These, together with a chronological chart and maps should enable a student coming fresh to the subject, without previous specialized knowledge, to see the period in historical perspective.

Judith Lieu's study explores how a sense of being a Christian was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. By exploring this theme she reveals what made early Christianity so distinctive and separate.

In Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts experts from various fields analyze the process of transformation of early Christian ethics because of the ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman and Christian traditions.

This volume explores the fascinating phenomenon of noble death through pagan, Jewish and Christian sources. Today's society is uncomfortable with death, and willingly submitting to a violent and ostentatious death in public is seen as particularly shocking and unusual. Yet classical sources give a different view, with public self-sacrifice often being applauded. The Romans admired a heroic end in the battlefield or the arena, suicide in the tradition of Socrates was something laudable, and Christians and Jews alike faithfully commemorated their heroes who died during religious persecutions. The cross-cultural approach and wide chronological range of this study make it valuable for students and scholars of ancient history, religion and literature.

In the period of Roman domination there were communities of Jews, some still in Palestine, some dispersed in and around the Roman Empire; they had to face at first the world-wide power of the pagan Romans and later on the emergence of Christianity as an Empire-wide religion. How they coped with these dramatic changes and how they influenced the new forms of religious life that emerged in this period provide the main themes of The Jews Among Pagans and Christians. Essays by the leading scholars in the field together with the introduction by the editors, offer new approaches to understanding the role of Judaism and the pattern of religious interaction characteristic of the period.

This volume revisits issues of empire from the perspective of Jews, Christians, and other Romans in the third to sixth centuries. Through case studies, the contributors bring Jewish perspectives to bear on longstanding debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity.

This book contains studies of the social, cultural, and religious history of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman world. Some of the sixteen contributors are specialists in Jewish history, others in classics. They tackle from different angles the extent to which Jews in this period differed from other peoples in the Mediterranean region, and how much Jewish evidence can be used for the history of the wider classical world. The authors make extensive use not only of types of evidence familiar to classicists, such as inscriptions and the writing of Josephus, but also Jewish religious literature, including rabbinic texts. The various studies demonstrate that, although Jews lived to some extent apart from others and with distinctive customs, in many ways this showed the cultural presuppositions and preoccupations of their gentile contemporaries. The book aims to encourage wider use of the Jewish evidence by classicists and will be important for all students of the classical world.