The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity examines the fate of Jews living in the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora after the Roman emperor Constantine threw his patronage to the emerging orthodox (Nicene) Christian churches.
By the fifth century, much of the rich material evidence for Greek and Latin-speaking Jews in the diaspora diminishes sharply. Ross Shepard Kraemer argues that this increasing absence of evidence is evidence of increasing absence of Jews themselves. Literary sources, late antique Roman laws, and archaeological remains illuminate how Christian bishops and emperors used a variety of tactics to coerce Jews into conversion: violence, threats of violence, deprivation of various legal rights, exclusion from imperial employment, and others. Unlike other non-orthodox Christians, Jews who resisted conversion were reluctantly tolerated, perhaps because of beliefs that Christ's return required their conversion. In response to these pressures, Jews leveraged political and social networks for legal protection, retaliated with their own acts of violence, and sometimes became Christians. Some may have emigrated to regions where imperial laws were more laxly enforced, or which were under control of non-orthodox (Arian) Christians. Increasingly, they embraced forms of Jewish practice that constructed tighter social boundaries around them. The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity concludes that by the beginning of the seventh century, the orthodox Christianization of the Roman Empire had cost diaspora Jews--and all non-orthodox persons, including Christians--dearly.
Author(s): Ross Shepard Kraemer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: xxiv+492
The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1 The Absence of Evidence as the Evidence of Absence
Absence of Evidence as Evidence of Absence?
Laws, Letters, and Literary Accounts: The Non- Material Sources
Why Only the (Mediterranean) Diaspora?
2 “Five hundred and forty souls were added to the church”
3 “You shall have freedom from care . . . during my reign”: From Constantine to the Death of Julian (312–363)
4. “The sect of the Jews is prohibited by no law”: Valentinian, Gratian and Theodosios I (363–395)
5 “Their synagogues shall remain in their accustomed peace”: Arkadios, Honorius, and Gamaliel VI (395–408)
6 “No synagogue shall be constructed from now on”: Honorius and Theodosios II, 408–423
Barsauma
St. Salsa and Marciana
St. Sergius
7 “We deny to the Jews and to the pagani, the right to practice legal advocacy and to serve in the state service”: Theodosios in His Majority, 423–450
Barsauma in Jerusalem I
Barsauma in Jerusalem II
8 “We do not grant that their synagogues shall stand, but want them to be converted in form to churches”: In the Aftermath of Theodosios in the East, 450–604
John Malalas on the Jews of Antioch
Justinian and the Jews
9 “In what has been allowed to them, [the Jews] should not sustain any prejudice”: In the Aftermath of Theodosios in the West, 450–604
10 “Here rests Faustina, aged fourteen years, five months. . . . Two apostoli and two rebbites sang lamentations”: The Price of (Christian) Orthodoxy
They Converted
They Emigrated
They Resisted
They Entertained Messianic Possibilities
They Adapted
Women’s Religious Offices as Adaptive Strategy?
They Retrenched
Rabbinization
Epilogue
References
Index of Persons, Places and Subjects
Index of Ancient Sources Cited
Index of Modern Authors Cited
