Women on the Move in the New Testament

This article discusses the relation between gender and migration in the New Testament. Six cases of women on the move are presented: Mary, the mother of Jesus; the women in the Jesus movement; three women from the first generation of Christ-believers, Prisca, Lydia and Phoebe; and the unnamed slave woman from Acts 16:16. It is argued that these cases reveal a variety of causes for migration and also depict women who are quite different when it comes to social location and power. The article also discusses the importance of migrant networks in the first century, including religious networks such as the Jewish diaspora. It is argued that women played a key role in the migrant networks presented in New Testament texts.

„tὴν ἀρχαίαν ἐπιζητοῦμεν πατρίδα”: Creștinii în căutarea patriei celei dintâi – încercări de definire a unei teologii a migrației

Migration, as the displacement of peoples, triggered throughout the centuries by wars, natural disasters, political oppression, poverty and famine, religious persecution is a profound human experience and an intimate part of the biblical saga from the beginning, along with the social, anthropological and spiritual issues it raises. The history of Israel is rooted in migration and the Jewish Diaspora is the most extensive and well documented migrations in antiquity. The wandering of the patriarchs, the Exodus, the exile, the dispersion and the return to Jerusalem are embedded in the consciousness of the people of Israel and helped define their character as a people and the nature of their relationship to God. For the Christian Church, migration was a phenomenon that configured its history and forced it to define itself and to specify the eschatological goal of its missionary. The patristic writings of the first centuries indicate that Christians have always considered themselves pilgrims to the heavenly homeland, not having a particular homeland here on earth, although they have always managed to adapt to the social and political conditions of the times. Starting from these historical, social and spiritual premises, the present study proposes a reflection both from a biblical and patristic perspective on the migration phenomenon, trying to offer the premises of a debate in the space of orthodox theology on this current topic.

Jewish Languages

This chapter discusses the use of language varieties in the Jewish diaspora experience in the framework of sociolinguistic studies. Wherever Jews have lived and either wished to distinguish themselves from their neighbors or were encouraged or forced to distinguish themselves, they did so through clothing, food, ritual, and also through language: they have spoken and written somewhat differently from their neighbors around them. Examining the Jewish linguistic spectrum through theories of language continuum, distinctiveness, and repertoire allows us to recognize patterns and commonalities across time and a space. Sociocultural and sociolinguistic analysis of Jewish religiolects demonstrates a tight connection between language and religion, while also helping elucidate the ways in which Jews—as well as non-Jews—have crossed religious boundaries.

Philanthropy and the Jewish Diaspora in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The rise of nationalism in Europe, the mass migration to the United States, and the dramatic transformations in the world following World War I were accompanied by an ongoing deterioration in the position of East European Jewry and led to changes in the patterns of governance in the Jewish world. The importance of the organizations addressed in this chapter transcended their philanthropic and political activity in France, Britain, Germany, and America. This manifested in the international nature of their activity, their power to shape the various Jewish communities, and the sense of international Jewish solidarity that they nurtured through their very existence. These Jewish organizations endeavored to create a Jewish nationalism that played down elements of territorial concentration and political sovereignty, opposed the concept of rejection of the diaspora, and emphasized the moral components of Judaism.

Turning to Jerusalem from the Exile

Until modern, liberal Jews revised it, the consciousness of living in diaspora, in exile from the ideal Jewish life in the Land of Israel, permeated Jewish liturgy. This trope only intensified as the exile grew longer. The prayers, some recited multiple times a day, shaped Jewish diaspora identity into one yearning for its ancient home. The various forms of modern Judaism have negotiated this heritage, with some revising the prayers, either to express positive understandings of the diaspora or to integrate the new realities of Jewish life in the land of Israel. At the other end of the spectrum, others have considered the diaspora and exile to persist so long as they live in the pre-messianic world, even if geographically in the land itself.

Introduction

Not only has diaspora been one of the key realities of the long history of the Jews, but it also has dominated historical thinking about that phenomenon. Historians have divided over the origins of the Jewish diaspora, debating how much it reflected the negative forces of expulsion and persecution or how much new opportunities in places more conducive to their security and prosperity opened up to them. Historians have also debated the impact of diaspora as either a source of strength and creativity as opposed to a clearly negative side effect of the lack of territorial sovereignty. Either way, the history of the Jews cannot and has not been told without an understanding of the centrality of diaspora.

Saving Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora

Soviet Jews were once an object of Israeli, American, British, and other Jews’ efforts to get the Soviet government to “free them,” since the borders to the Soviet Union were closed without permission. With the collapse of the country, post-Soviet Jews went from being a group in need of other Jews’ assistance to active subjects of their and others’ destinies. Post-Soviet Jews speak multiple languages and hold dual citizenships, which gives them financial, social, and political capital with which they shape the global Jewish future. They have done so by forming political parties in Israel such as Yisrael ba’aliya to the far right Yisrael beiteinu, whose politics have become mainstream in the Israeli electorate. Wealthy post-Soviet Jews have used their vast financial resources and connections with political power to shape the future. They have done this by donating huge sums of money to cultural institutions and universities as well as by forming large-scale Jewish philanthropic endeavors like the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the Blavatnik Archive to put issues of concern to former Soviet Jews on the global Jewish communal agenda. This has not been without consequences for the future of global Jewish life.

The Jewish Diaspora in Christian Thinking

This chapter summarizes the most important historical developments in Christian thinking about the Jewish diaspora, from antiquity to the present. It considers the apocalyptic Jewish perspectives of Jesus and Paul, the rise of adversus judaeos literature, Augustine’s innovative witness doctrine, and the fate of that doctrine in Catholic thinking up until its ostensible elimination during the papacy of John Paul II. In its examination of Protestantism, the article pays particular attention to developments in the Reformed traditions, especially the restorationist aspirations in the seventeenth century and the more recent rise of Christian Zionism.