Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima ed. by T.L. Donaldson (review)

192 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 After determining how he will use Paul, particularly whether Acts will figure in his reconstruction of Paul=s Jesus, Akenson proceeds to read Saul as evidence for one of the several variant types of Yeshua-faith in the late Second Temple era. That is, Akenson recognizes that there were different forms of faith in Jesus prior to the destruction of the Temple, and that Paul gives evidence for one of them. Saul tells us that Yeshua is the Messiah, and that the resurrection is the point at which his transformation to Messiah occurred. For Paul the resurrection is not a physical event but rather a cosmic one. Yeshua is also for Saul the Son of God. Akenson lists thirteen other aspects of Yeshua=s biography and behaviour that exist in Paul=s letters. Recognizing the paucity of what can be found about Yeshua in Saul, Akenson proposes that we look at the matter differently. Since Saul=s selfproclaimed desire is to live in imitation of Christ, Akenson suggests that we regard his letters as the first recorded instance of a life lived in this imitation. It is Saul=s own imitation of Christ that functions as the key to aspects of the historical Yeshua. What we learn from Saul is the character, not the content, of the historical Jesus, and according to Akenson, that character is summarized in Paul=s phrase: >And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.= Saint Saul is an important scholarly contribution to biblical studies. Moreover, it is great fun. (L. ANN JERVIS) T.L. Donaldson, editor. Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima. Volume 8 of Studies in Christianity and Judaism/ Études sur le christianisme et le judaïsme Wilfrid Laurier University Press. xiv, 398. $29.95 Caesarea was the residence of the governor of the Roman province of Judaea, which was renamed Palestine after the Jewish revolt of 132B35. The city contained four separate religious groups which coexisted peacefully with one another during the second and third centuries of our era B pagans, who constituted the majority of the population until the fourth century, Christians, Jews, and Samaritans. The activities of Jewish rabbis and Christian scholars in the city are well documented in Jewish and Christian literary sources, and they have often been studied to good effect. Since 1960 Caesarea has played an important role in the development of underwater archaeology, and systematic excavation of the ancient city has produced significant discoveries, which are discussed and analysed in several collective volumes from the 1990s. The volume sponsored by the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion and edited by Terence Donaldson, who contributes an introduction and concluding reflections, investigates HUMANITIES 193 >religious coexistence, competition and conflict= in Caesarea in the first three centuries of the Christian era. Collective volumes rarely maintain an equal level of scholarship throughout. This new volume varies enormously in quality: at one extreme, the chapter on the Samaritans in Caesarea by Reinhard Pummer, who is one of the world=s leading authorities on the religion, is a model of precise and accurate learning; at the other, Wendy Cotter offers generalities about the Roman army and its religious practices which scarcely ever rise above the level of an undergraduate essay, and she deliberately shuns (because she clearly does not understand) the serious historical problems inherent in the reference in the Acts of the Apostles to a cohors Italica in Caesarea around AD 40. Several other contributors exhibit either carelessness or technical incompetence of various kinds: Peter Richardson confuses the Roman provinces of Palestine and Syria; Bradley McLean cheerfully mistranslates simple Greek inscriptions; Michele Murray refers to a modern English translation as the >text= of a Greek chronicle; Jackson Painter contributes two chapters that are frequently imprecise in both logic and expression (for example, >Tacitus tells us of Vespasian=s positive encounter with Sarapis=); Richard Ascough tacitly assumes that Constantine conquered the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in 312, not 324, when he alleges that Eusebius of Caesarea became the emperor=s >closest advisor upon the latter=s conversion in 312=; and Dorothy Sly gives >an Alexandrian...