Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (review)

Imperialism and Jewish Society is a diachronic study of the impact of foreign domination on ancient Jewish society in Palestine from 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. The author divides this extremely wide sweep of Jewish history into three epochs, presenting time-lapse photographs of ancient Jewish society from the loosely centralized, ideologically complex society of the late Second Temple period (200 B.C.E.-70 C.E.) through the collapse of Judaism in the wake of the failed Bar Kochba revolt and the imposition of direct Roman rule (135-350 C.E.) and culminating with the reformation of Judaism which became centred on the synagogue in response to the Christianization of the Roman Empire (350-640 C.E.). This work covers a much broader period than conventional studies on Judaism. Its compass is extremely ambitious, but the author exudes both a well-grounded confidence and an enviable competency in his handling of the diverse range of Graeco-Roman, patristic, and rabbinic literary sources and in his interpretation of the archaeological data.

Schwartz quite rightly rejects the atomistic reading of texts which justifies the characterization of late Second Temple Judaism in Palestine as multiple and radically diverse. The three main sects provide evidence of Judaism's ideological mainstream, and the vast majority of Jews in this period adhered to the Torah and at least the idea of a Temple. The author contends that imperial support for the Temple and Torah explains why they became the chief symbols of Jewish corporate identity. Succeeding emperors patronized the Temple, supported the cult, and favoured priests as a class. While the Torah was the constitution of the Jews in Palestine, its authority did not rest on the consensus of the Jews but on the might of the imperial rulers in Palestine.

Archaeological remains and some literary hints suggest that during the two centuries following the Great Destruction and the failed Bar Kochba revolt Jewish society in the cities and large villages in Palestine had disintegrated and was replaced by the religious, cultural, and social norms of the Graeco-Roman city. The central institutions of Temple and Torah had collapsed. Pilgrimages and obligatory gifts to the priests had ceased. All formal constitutional authority of the Torah was abrogated and now resided almost exclusively in the Roman administration. The author shows that rabbinic and patriarchal influence was marginal in the urban centers and practically non-existent in rural Palestine during the third century.

Perhaps even more controversial is the author's hypothesis that the late antique revival of Judaism was not a product of rabbinic influence but rather the result of the Christianization of the empire in the fourth to seventh centuries. An innovation of the 380s and 390s was that Christian emperors now explicitly recognized Jews as a legitimate religious organization. Prior to this period Jews were subjects, and after 212 citizens, of the empire like all the others and not a separate category of humanity. Having been branded, the Jews became marginalized and excluded from the networks of patronage that held the empire together. Jewish communities were compelled to withdraw, turn inwards, and develop their own social structures. Interestingly, a lot of the distinctive features of the Jewish rejudaization was "repackaged Christianity." The dominant forms of Jewish social organization comprised of internal hierarchies of independence, local autonomous and self-enclosed communities, synagogues (a significant characteristic of late antique Judaism), and patterns of expenditure and euergetism were all appropriated by Jews from the common late antique (i.e. Christian) culture.

The author's main thesis that any attempts to interpret the remains of ancient Judaism must consider the shifting types of imperial domination is convincing and well-argued. In supporting this thesis the interpretation of the diverse data is necessarily complex, and the results are in many ways revisionist. As the author concedes, the work is unlikely to make him popular in the Jewish academic circles which espouse...