Looking back at early Christian history in the news in the past year, this particularly articulate piece from Adele Reinhartz is worth a read: As the Pew Report and many previous surveys and sociological studies have shown, Jewish identity includes the same elements — including ethnic, political, cultural, genealogical, and, yes, geographical — that, in Mason’s view, are conveyed by the Greek terminology. To define Jew solely or even primarily in religious terms is simply wrong. Further, erasing Jews from Jewish antiquity, while presumably solving one historical problem, creates another historical dilemma: how to account for the sudden appearance of Jews in late antiquity as a fully-formed ethnic and religious group that saw itself — and was seen by others — as continuous with the ioudaioi of the Greco-Roman era? Scholars of the Greco-Roman period may not feel called upon to answer such questions, but the dilemma cannot be ignored. marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/vanishing-jews-antiquity-adele-reinhartz/ #Judaism #religion #ethics
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 16:14:01 +0000
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