Jewish National Decline and Biblical Figures as Classical Exempla: Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, and Elisha in De Excidio 5.2.1

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-204
Author(s):  
Carson Bay
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
National Decline ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Biblical Figures

AbstractThe fourth century of the Common Era was a period significant for witnessing the effective birth of Christian historiography and the (putatively) definitive separation of ‘Jew’ and ‘Christian’ as distinctive identities. A text emerged, known as Pseudo-Hegesippus or De Excidio Hierosolymitano (On the Destruction of Jerusalem). This text illustrates how Christian historiography and Christian anti-Jewish ideology at that time could engage with the traditions of classical antiquity. In particular, this article argues that Pseudo-Hegesippus deploys figures from the Hebrew Bible in the mode of classical exempla and that it does so within the largely classical conceptual framework of national decline. For Pseudo-Hegesippus, biblical figures presented as classical exempla serve to illustrate the historical decline of the Jews until their effective end in 70 CE (when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple). One passage, De Excidio 5.2.1, and its enlistment of five Hebrew heroes illustrates this point particularly well. The use of exemplarity and the theme of national decline employed there help us appreciate De Excidio as a distinctive contribution to early Christian historiography and anti-Jewish literature in late antiquity; this expands our ability to imagine the ways in which fourth-century Christian authors could conceive of and articulate Jewish history in classical terms.

Defining the Boundaries of Orthodoxy: Eunomius in the Anti-Jewish Polemic of his Cappadocian Opponents

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-723
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Christian Leaders

Scholars have long recognized that the theological arguments of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa against their opponent Eunomius helped to shape the development of Christian orthodoxy, and thus Christian self-definition, in the late fourth-century Roman Empire. The cultural and theological significance of the strong anti-Judaizing rhetoric contained within these Cappadocian authors’ anti-Eunomian treatises, however, remains largely unexamined. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the critical role of anti-Judaizing rhetoric in the arguments that early Christian leaders Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem of Nisibis used against “Arian” Christian opponents in the middle of the fourth century, and the implications of this rhetoric for understanding early Christian-Jewish and intra-Christian relations. Scholars have yet to recognize, however, that anti-Judaizing rhetoric similarly helped to define the terms and consequences of the anti-Eunomian arguments made by Basil, Gregory, and Gregory in the decades that followed. The anti-Judaizing rhetoric of their texts attests to the continuing advantages that these leaders gained by rhetorically associating their Christian opponents with Jews. By claiming that Eunomius and his followers were too Jewish in their beliefs to be Christian, and too Christian in their behaviors to be Jewish, Basil, Gregory, and Gregory deployed anti-Judaizing rhetoric to argue that Eunomians were significantly inferior to both true Christians and Jews. The Cappadocians’ strategic comparisons with Jews and Judaism rhetorically distanced their Eunomian opponents from Christianity and thus strengthened the Cappadocians’ own claims to represent Christian orthodoxy.

Archiatri and the Medical Profession in Antiquity

1977 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 191-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Public Health Service ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
The West ◽  
High Level

How far there was ever in classical antiquity a public health service, organised and paid for by the state, has been often debated by both doctors and classical scholars, with conflicting results. For fifth and fourth century Greece the amount of evidence available is insufficient to permit any certainty, but there can be no doubt that in the Hellenistic age individual cities offered special privileges in order to secure the residence of a qualified physician. But whether and in what ways such a system was carried over into the very different society of the Roman empire, and still more into that of late antiquity, are questions which have never been satisfactorily answered, and the authority of the Roman part of Pohl's dissertation De graecorum medicis publicis, despite its increasing age, has never been seriously challenged—indeed, some more recent studies have only highlighted by contrast its high level of accuracy, judgement and, for its time, comprehensiveness. However, the discovery of three new inscriptions of archiatri from Aphrodisias affords an opportunity to re-examine the institution of public doctors in the Roman empire and thereby to throw light upon a professional designation, archiatros/archiater, which has troubled scholars ever since Herodian the grammarian attempted to settle the position of its Greek accent. By surveying the evidence according to the varied societies in which the archiatri practised—the courts, the Eastern cities, the West and Rome in late antiquity, Constantinople and Roman and Byzantine Egypt—a much clearer picture of the spread of public doctors can be obtained without introducing anachronistic or extraneous attitudes and institutions to provide a single uniform pattern of development.

Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135–700 CE

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eyal Ben-Eliyahu ◽  
Yehudah Cohn ◽  
Fergus Millar
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
European Language ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
Common Era

From major seminal works such as the Mishnah or the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, to Biblical commentaries, translations of Biblical books into Aramaic or relatively little-known mystical, liturgical, or apocalyptic writings, this book is a complete guide to the rich tradition of Jewish literature in the second to seventh centuries of the Common Era. Each work is described in a way that covers its contents, dating, language, and accessibility (or otherwise) in print or online. The aim throughout is to cover all of this literature and to answer the following questions: What Jewish literature, written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, has survived? What different genres of such literature are there? What printed texts or translations into any modern language, or commentaries (either in Hebrew or a European language) are there? And, for those who want to enquire further, what are the manuscripts on which modern editions are based?

Writing the Jews out of History: Pseudo-Hegesippus, Classical Historiography, and the Codification of Christian Anti-Judaism in Late Antiquity

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-285
Author(s):  
Carson Bay
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Latin Work

AbstractScholarly narratives of the development of Christian anti-Jewish thinking in antiquity routinely cite a number of standard, well-known authors: from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr in earlier centuries to Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth and early fifth centuries. The anonymous author known as Pseudo-Hegesippus, to whom is attributed a late fourth-century Latin work called On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), rarely appears in such discussions. This has largely to do with the fact that this text and its author are effectively unknown entities within contemporary scholarship in this area (scholars familiar with Pseudo-Hegesippus tend to be specialists in medieval Latin texts and manuscripts). But “Pseudo-Hegesippus” represents a critical contribution to the mosaic of Christian anti-Jewish discourse in late antiquity. De Excidio's generic identity as a Christian piece of classical historiography makes it a unique form of ancient anti-Jewish propaganda. This genre, tied to De Excidio's probable context of writing—the wake of the emperor Julian's abortive attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, resurrect a robust Judaism, and remove Christians from public engagement with classical culture—renders De Excidio an important Christian artifact of both anti-Judaism and pro-classicism at the same time. This article situates Pseudo-Hegesippus in a lineage of Christian anti-Jewish historical thinking, argues that De Excidio codifies that discourse in a significant and singular way, frames this contribution in terms of its apparent socio-historical context, and cites De Excidio's later influence and reception as testaments to its rightful place in the history of Christian anti-Judaism, a place that modern scholarship has yet to afford it. As a piece of classical historiography that mirrors not Christian historians—like Eusebius and others—but the historians of the broader “pagan” Greco-Roman world—like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus—De Excidio leverages a cultural communicative medium particularly well equipped to undergird and fuel the Christian historiographical imagination and its anti-Jewish projections.

The Early Christian Archaeology of the Balkans

2019 ◽  
pp. 536-556
Author(s):  
William Bowden
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
New Religion

Textual sources attest to the early spread of Christianity across the Balkan region, and archaeological evidence demonstrates how the new religion transformed the built environment and material culture of the area in Late Antiquity, although dating and analysis of these buildings have tended to focus on stylistic and typological approaches. Prior to the late fourth century archaeological evidence of Christianity is mainly found in funerary contexts, but in the fifth and sixth centuries the urban and rural landscapes were transformed by the construction of Christian architecture, including the monumentalization of martyrs’ graves at towns such as Salona and the creation of major episcopal centers at provincial capitals such as Stobi and Nicopolis. These churches were funded by multiple individuals, evidenced by inscriptions that reference ecclesiastical and lay donors of both sexes. The location and design of many of the churches also reflect the increasingly militarized nature of the Late Antique Balkans.

The Offering of Isaac in Jewish and Christian Tradition

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin M. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
General Audience ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
The Sacrifice

AbstractUntil recently, early Christian artistic representations of Abraham offering Isaac for sacrifice have been understood as symbols of Christ's passion and (simultaneously or alternately) typological references to the Eucharistic offering. This interpretation has been influenced by early Christian writings which understand Isaac to have been a type of Christ and his offering a prefigurement of Jesus' passion. In the past two decades some scholars have challenged that interpretation, particularly with reference to images that were made before the mid-fourth century CE, partly by offering arguments regarding the place of the artistic image in the religion's social matrix, and partly by distinguishing different purposes for images and texts. This paper examines the images themselves and re-opens the question of the artistic presentation of this biblical narrative and its interpretation. The first section of the study presents the most exemplary images, and then examines both early Christian and Jewish literature regarding the sacrifice of Isaac. The last section of the paper critiques various scholars' interpretations of the images' meaning in early Christian times by reflecting on the integration of text and image, as well as the methods and problems of iconographical study. Of particular concern is the question of what characterizes "popular" communication. The paper concludes that, although presented in a different form and possibly more available to a general audience, early Christian artistic representations may be vehicles for the same symbolic and allegorical typologies that are presented in documents from the same time period and geographical region.

scholarly journals The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (33) ◽  
pp. 19780-19791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fuks ◽  
Guy Bar-Oz ◽  
Yotam Tepper ◽  
Tali Erickson-Gini ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
International Scope ◽  
Common Era

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival–subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.

The Syrian–Palestinian Milieu in Late Antiquity

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-262
Author(s):  
Michael E. Pregill
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Anti Jewish

This chapter focuses on a unique corpus of early Christian literature in Syriac that reflects a synthesis of older patristic views of the Calf episode with specific themes that seem to have circulated widely in the Eastern Christian milieu, shared in common between communities of Jewish and Christian exegetes in this period. While continuing the tradition of anti-Jewish arguments predicated on the abiding impact of Israel’s sin with the Calf, authors such as Ephrem, Aphrahat, and Jacob of Serugh also developed a unique view of Aaron that dictated a more apologetic position regarding his culpability; this precisely paralleled the development of similar views of Aaron in Jewish tradition. This material provides us with a lens through which to examine the phenomenon of exegetical approaches that are held in common by different communities, yet deployed for opposite purposes. The chapter concludes by considering a possible historical context to Syrian Christian polemic against Jews based on the Calf narrative: the revival of priestly leadership, or at least interest in the priesthood and its role, among contemporary Jewish communities, especially in late antique Palestine.

Echoes of Universalist Testament Literature in Christian and Rabbinic Texts

2016 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Malka Z. Simkovich
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Theological Differences ◽  
Testament Of Abraham

The ancient text known as the Testament of Abraham is preserved in Coptic in the same codex as two other works, the Testament of Isaac and the Testament of Jacob. These testaments were probably written in the late first or early second centuries CE by Jewish writers, although the manuscript of the Coptic codex containing them is dated to 962. These books were considered part of the “testament” literary genre, which featured a biblical hero imparting his last words of religious wisdom to his family gathered at his bedside. Scholars agree that the stylistic and theological differences among these three testaments indicate that they were not written by the same author. Yet a close reading reveals that the Testament of Isaac is dependent on the Testament of Abraham, and that the Testament of Jacob is dependent on the two earlier texts. Moreover, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac share similarities that distinguish them from the Testament of Jacob: unlike the Testament of Jacob, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac reflect a universalist worldview that depicts a God concerned for all humankind, not only for his chosen people. This God reigns over all people, and themes specific to the Christian and Jewish faiths are virtually absent. Later Christian and Jewish literature concerning the theme of divine judgment exhibits elements that may reflect an awareness of a written or oral tradition that appears in the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac. The images of judgment and punishment, especially those in the Testament of Abraham, appear in the second-century Apocalypse of Peter and the fourth-century Vision of Paul, which is also known as the Apocalypse of Paul. Likewise, midrashic traditions regarding Abraham and Moses are reminiscent of traditions found in these testaments, particularly the Testament of Abraham. The possibility that early Christian apocalyptic texts were aware of these testaments is grounded in the fact that scholars give these texts a common place of origin, Egypt. The provenance of the midrashic texts is more difficult to identify, but because they share literary elements and theological concerns with the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac, I suggest that the authors of these midrashic traditions had access to written or oral traditions prominent in these testaments. This paper will examine early Christian apocalyptic and early Jewish midrashic texts that modify some of the traditions prominent in these testaments in order to accommodate their nonuniversalist rabbinic or early Christian worldviews.

The Sign of the Cross in Late Antiquity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Imperial Culture ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Christian Discourse ◽  
Ritual Practices ◽  
Late Roman

The first section provides a synopsis of early Christian discourse on the symbolism of the cross, and emphasizes the importance of the emergence and the dissemination of the cult of the Holy Cross for the increasing public profile of the cross sign in late Roman culture from the mid-fourth century onwards. The second section overviews the appropriation of this sign by Theodosian empresses and emperors as a major imperial symbol of authority, and its rise to paramount importance for imperial culture in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries. The final section underscores beliefs in the apotropaic power of the sign of the cross as an important factor contributing to its growing popularity in late antiquity. It also points out that in this function the sign of the cross was similar to other apotropaic devices, alongside which this sign was often employed in textual amulets and ritual practices.

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