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This is the first full treatment of Jewish childhood in the Roman world. It follows minors into the spaces where they lived, learned, played, slept, and died and examines the actions and interaction of children with other children, with close-kin adults, and with strangers, both inside and outside the home. A wide range of sources are used, from the rabbinic rules to the surviving painted representations of children from synagogues, and due attention is paid to broader theoretical issues and approaches. Hagith Sivan concludes with four beautifully reconstructed 'autobiographies' of specific children, from a boy living and dying in a desert cave during the Bar-Kokhba revolt to an Alexandrian girl forced to leave her home and wander through the Mediterranean in search of a respite from persecution. The book tackles the major questions of the relationship between Jewish childhood and Jewish identity which remain important to this day.
Hagith Sivan offers an unconventional study of one corner of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, weaving around the theme of conflict strands of distinct histories, and of peoples and places, highlighting Palestine's polyethnicity, and cultural, topographical, architectural, and religious diversity. During the period 300-650 CE the fortunes of the 'east' and the 'west' were intimately linked. Thousands of westerners in the guise of pilgrims, pious monks, soldiers, and civilians flocked to what became a Christian holy land. This is the era that witnessed the transformation of Jerusalem from a sleepy Roman town built on the ruins of spectacular Herodian Jerusalem into an international centre of Christianity and ultimately into a centre of Islamic worship. It was also a period of unparalleled prosperity for the frontier zones, and a time when religious experts were actively engaged in guiding their communities while contesting each other's rights to the Bible and its interpretation.
Wedding in Gaul (414) -- Funerals in Barcelona (414-416) -- Making of an empress (417-425) -- Restoration and rehabilitation (425-431) -- Bride, a book, and a pope (437-438) -- Between Rome and Ravenna (438-450).
An original study of Palestine in late antiquity, a time when the fortunes of the 'east' and the 'west' were intimately linked. Thousands of westerners flocked to what became a Christian holy land, while Jerusalem grew from a sleepy Roman town into an international centre of Christianity and ultimately into a centre of Islamic worship.
In the burgeoning field of late classical antiquity the authors of late Roman Gaul have served as a mine of information regarding the historical, cultural, political, social and religious developments of the western empire, and of Gaul in particular. Ausonius is outstanding among these authors for the extraordinary range of material which his writings illuminate. His family exemplifies the rise of provincial upper-classes in Aquitania through talent, ambition and opportunism. Fusing historical method with archaeological, artistic and literary evidence, Hagith Sivan interprets the political message of Ausonius' work and conveys the material reality of his lifestyle.
Between the fourth and the eight century, a number of 'experimental' polities had to create new forms of legitimacy and organisation to overcome a Roman world based on Empire, city and tribe. In the course of time, a new world developed that relied on Christendom, kingdom and people to pull an increased variety of local communities together. Of these three factors, the ethnic one certainly is the most elusive. This volume discusses the process of construction of ethnic identities. What did names, law, language, costume, burial rites, rhetoric, culture, royal representation or ideology mean, and to whom? This is the question that is common to the papers assembled here. Even though they span several centuries, and a geographic area from the Iberian peninsula to the Black Sea steppes, they all deal with the ways how ethnic distinction became a political factor in the post-Roman world.
According to the demands of the Decalogue, manhood entails the avoidance of stealing, killing, and coveting, not to mention apostasy and violation of the Sabbath and other men's property. What, then, would be the essence of womanhood, if different? By selecting female characters' narratives as interpretative clues for the "law," this book presents a legal, behavioral, and representational reading of the Decalogue. Beginning with an analysis of the legal contents of each Commandment through allied legal texts which relate to women and to the feminine, each chapter continues with an investigation of the ways in which the activities of the female and male protagonists of select narratives elucidate the range of Commandments.
This volume results from a conference held at the University of Kansas in 1995. The papers it encapsulates cover frontier studies from the third to the seventh century. It takes in the Roman world from Spain to Syria and from Britain to Dacia, clarifying the boundary role of Late Antiquity.
This volume revisits issues of empire from the perspective of Jews, Christians, and other Romans in the third to sixth centuries. Through case studies, the contributors bring Jewish perspectives to bear on longstanding debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity.