Written by an international and interdisciplinary team of distinguished scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine is an indispensable reference compendium on the day-to-day lives of Jews in the land of Israel in Roman times. Ranging from subjects such as clothing and domestic architecture to food and meals, labour and trade, and leisure time activities, the volume covers all the major themes in an encompassing yet easily accessible way. Individual chapters introduce the reader to the current state of research on particular aspects of ancient Jewish everyday life - research which has been greatly enriched by critical methodological approaches to rabbinic texts, and by the growing interest of archaeologists in investigating the lives of ordinary people. Detailed bibliographies inspire further engagement by enabling readers to pursue their own lines of enquiry.The Handbook will prove to be an invaluable reference work and tool for all students and scholars of ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, Roman provincial history and culture, and of ancient Christianity.

The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (Oxford Handbooks)

History

Hezser, Catherine

Ancient Civilizations

Oxford University Press

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish attitudes towards slavery in Hellenistic and Roman times. Against the traditional opinion that after the Babylonian Exile Jews refrained from employing slaves, Catherine Hezser shows that slavery remained a significant phenomenon of ancient Jewish everyday life and generated a discourse which resembled Graeco-Roman and early Christian views while at the same time preserving specifically Jewish nuances. Hezser examines the impact of domestic slavery on the ancient Jewish household and on family relationships. She discusses the perceived advantages of slaves over other types of labor and evaluates their role within the ancient Jewish economy. The ancient Jewish experience of slavery seems to have been so pervasive that slave images also entered theological discourse. Like their Graeco-Roman and Christian counterparts, ancient Jewish intellectuals did not advocate the abolition of slavery, but they used the biblical tradition and their own judgements to ameliorate the status quo.

Jewish Slavery in Antiquity

Jewish Monotheism and Slavery (Elements in Religion and Monotheism)

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Cambridge University Press

Rabbinic Scholarship in the Context of Late Antique Scholasticism: The Development of the Talmud Yerushalmi (Education, Literary Culture, and Religious Practice in the Ancient World)

Middle East

Bloomsbury Academic

While rabbinic literature enables us to know more about the rabbis than any of the other members of the Jewish population of Roman Palestine, the social structure of the rabbinic movement remained largely unexplored. In the present study Catherine Hezser combines a critical analysis of the available literary, legal, and epigraphic evi-dence with a selective employment of sociological models. She examines the definition of the boundaries of the rabbinic movement, deals with the nature of the relationships amongst rabbis, and investigates the relationship between rabbis and their contemporaries, that is students, the community, and the patriarch.

The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum,)

World

Mohr Siebeck

The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum,)

Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)

Since Judaism has always been seen as the quintessential 'religion of the book', a high literacy rate amongst ancient Jews has usually been taken for granted. Catherine Hezser presents the first critical analysis of the various aspects of ancient Jewish literacy on the basis of all of the literary, epigraphic, and papyrological material published so far. Thereby she takes into consideration the analogies in Graeco-Roman culture and models and theories developed in the social sciences. Rather than trying to determine the exact literacy rate amongst ancient Jews, she examines the various types, social contexts, and functions of writing and the relationship between writing and oral forms of discourse. Following recent social-anthropological approaches to literacy, the guiding question is: who used what type of writing for which purpose? First Catherine Hezser examines the conditions which would enable or prevent the spread of literacy, such as education and schools, the availability and costs of writing materials, religious interest in writing and books, the existence of archives and libraries, and the question of multilingualism. Afterwards she looks at the different types of writing, such as letters, documents, miscellaneous notes, inscriptions and graffiti, and literary and magical texts until she finally draws conclusions about the ways in which the various sectors of the populace were able to participate in a literate society.

This book provides the first comprehensive study of Jewish travel and mobility in Hellenistic and Roman times, based on a critical analysis of Jewish, Graeco-Roman, and early Christian literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources and a social-historical evaluation of the material. Catherine Hezser shows that certain segments of ancient Jewish society were quite mobile. Mobility seems to have increased in the later Roman period, when an extensive road system facilitated travel within the province of Syria-Palestine and the neighbouring Middle Eastern regions. Second Temple Judaism was centralized, with Jerusalem as its central space and seat of priestly authority. In post-70 rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, connections between rabbis could be established through mutual visits and second- and third-degree contacts only. Mobility formed the basis of the establishment of a decentralized rabbinic network in Palestine and Babylonia in late antiquity. Numerous narrative and halakhic traditions indicate the importance of mobility for communication and the exchange of knowledge amongst rabbis. It is argued that the rabbis who were most mobile sat at the nodal points of the rabbinic network and elicited the largest amount of influence. They would have combined business travel with scholarly exchange. Scholars' journeys between Palestine and Babylonia are viewed within the wider context of Rome and Persia's economic and cultural exchange in which Jews, just like Christians, may have played the role of intermediaries.

Jewish Travel in Antiquity (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)

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Books by Hezser, Catherine