How well integrated were Jews in the Mediterranean society controlled by ancient Rome? The Torah's laws seem to constitute a rejection of the reciprocity-based social dependency and emphasis on honor that were customary in the ancient Mediterranean world. But were Jews really a people apart, and outside of this broadly shared culture? Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? argues that Jewish social relations in antiquity were animated by a core tension between biblical solidarity and exchange-based social values such as patronage, vassalage, formal friendship, and debt slavery. Seth Schwartz's examinations of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the writings of Josephus, and the Palestinian Talmud reveal that Jews were more deeply implicated in Roman and Mediterranean bonds of reciprocity and honor than is commonly assumed. Schwartz demonstrates how Ben Sira juxtaposes exhortations to biblical piety with hard-headed and seemingly contradictory advice about coping with the dangers of social relations with non-Jews; how Josephus describes Jews as essentially countercultural; yet how the Talmudic rabbis assume Jews have completely internalized Roman norms at the same time as the rabbis seek to arouse resistance to those norms, even if it is only symbolic. Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? is the first comprehensive exploration of Jewish social integration in the Roman world, one that poses challenging new questions about the very nature of Mediterranean culture.

A collection of articles published previously. The following deal with antisemitism:

In this fascinating book, Knohl shares his understanding of how the Torah was edited into its final form. He bridges the gap between ancient Israel (c.1400-586 B.C.E.) and Second Temple times (c.536 B.C.E.-70 C.E.) by showing the continuity between these eras and the gradual evolution of the biblical worldview, which formed the foundation of later rabbinic Judaism. The book focuses on the editing of the Torah, interpreting the textual evidence, most notably contradictions and redundancies, to show that the idea of a pluralistic understanding of Revelation can be traced back to the editing of the Torah itself. Knohl’s interpretation of biblical composition challenges a popular trend in contemporary biblical scholarship: the idea that ancient Israel never existed as a historical reality, but was invented and “retrojected” back in time by later Israelite priests as part of their national myth.

In a world of relentless and often violent change, what does it take for a culture to survive? Steven Weitzman addresses this question by exploring the "arts of cultural persistence"--the tactics that cultures employ to sustain themselves in the face of intractable realities. Surviving Sacrilege focuses on a famously resilient culture caught between two disruptive acts of sacrilege: ancient Judaism between the destruction of the First Temple (by the Babylonians) in 586 B.C. and the destruction of the Second Temple (by the Romans) in 70 C.E. Throughout this period Jews faced the challenge of preserving their religious traditions in a world largely out of their control--a world ruled first by the Persians, then by the Hellenistic Seleucid Kingdom, and finally by the Roman Empire. Their struggle to answer this challenge yields insight into the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity of a distinctive period in Jewish history, but one with broad implications for the study of religious and cultural survival. Detecting something tenaciously self-preserving at the core of the imagination, Weitzman argues that its expression in storytelling, fantasy, imitation, metaphor, and magic allows a culture's survival instinct to maneuver within, beyond, and even against the limits of reality.

Subtitled Essays on the formation of Judaism, dating sayings, method in the history of Judaism, the historical Jesus, publishing too much, and other current issues. Among the topics of the 18 essays are a phenomenological theory of the historical formation of normative Judaism, the conception of the Original Tradition, and the Mishnah in philosop

What kind of a God singles out a particular people for special favours and punishments? What does being chosen by God mean to both parties? What are the opportunities and temptations of such a relationship? Writing from a secular point of view, Jacobson offers a profound and serious meditation that sheds a new light on biblical scholarship and orthodox theology. On first publication, The Story of the Stories was at once perceived to be a seminal work.

"Across almost the entire expanse of Jewish history, Jews have had to adjust to being ruled by empires. In antiquity alone Jews lived under a succession of imperial powers - Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleucid - before having to deal with the Romans. Judaism (of course) was shaped by each successive encounter with an imperial power. But as Katell Berthelot argues in this book, Rome and Roman imperialism presented Jews with unique ideological challenges, and compelled Jews to rethink key aspects of their own self-definition. Long before Rome became Christian, Jews recognized pagan Romans as unprecedented rivals because of some striking similarities between the two peoples. Previously Jews were ruled by empires associated with kingdoms and kings. By contrast, "Rome" was first and foremost a city and a people - and Romans thought of their city and themselves as a people in ways uncomfortably close to the ways Jews defined themselves: as an Israelite people tied to a capital city, Jerusalem. Moreover both Romans and Jews conceived of themselves as a pious people with a divine calling; both thought they possessed the most perfect laws ever written; and both believed themselves to be entrusted with a universal mission that implied bringing peace to the world. This was too close for comfort. The disturbingly close parallels led some Jews to feel that Rome was in fact trying to take Israel's place in God's plan for the world. Revealingly, the ancient rabbis depicted this rivalry by turning to the famous biblical story of the sibling rivals Jacob and Esau, associating the Jews with the former and the Romans with the latter. The perceived rivalry led to a series of innovations in Jewish self-perceptions in late antiquity in several areas that Berthelot will discuss in a series of book chapters: innovations in Jewish understandings of power, citizenship (or membership in a people), and law. Berthelot argues that in some cases the Jewish sources imitate or mimic Roman representations (of, e.g. legal thinking and practice), and in other cases propose a countermodel"--