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In this work the reader is introduced into the fascinating world of Jewish funerary epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman period. The information that can be gleaned about Jewish life and thought from more than 1000 tomb-inscriptions is presented here in a systematic way. Aspects covered include languages, forms, motifs, values, epithets, functions and professions, age at death, views on death and afterlife, and the role of women. Of special interest is a chapter dealing with the relevance of these epitaphs for the study of early Christianity. The monograph ends with a selection of inscriptions in their original language with translation and notes as well as an extensive bibliography, which is updated in this 2nd printing.
In Saxa judaica loquuntur (‘Jewish stones speak out’), Pieter W. van der Horst informs the reader about the recent boom in the study of ancient Jewish epigraphy and he demonstrates what kinds of new information this development yields. After sketching the status quaestionis, this book exemplifies the relevance of early Jewish inscriptions by means of a study of Judaism in Asia Minor on the basis of epigraphic material. It also highlights several areas of research for which this material provides us with insights that the Jewish literary sources do not grant us. Furthermore, the book contains a selection of some 50 inscriptions, in both their original languages and English translation with explanatory notes.
This collection of essays deals with the rise and development of early Christian poetry, discussing its techniques and its theoretical foundation. The individual papers concern specimina of Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Latin poetry and study the various and partly conflicting traditions from which it originated. The biblical examples, e.g. of the Psalms, held great authority, but on the other hand it was impossible to break away from the models of classical Greco-Roman poetry, although these were deemed dangerous because of the pagan content and excessive cult of literary art. The book shows how the problems involved were solved in different ways, which justified the use of pagan literary accomplishments for singing the praises of the Lord.
Joseph S. Park examines the various indications of belief in or denial of afterlife in the Jewish funerary inscriptions found throughout the Mediterranean world, mostly during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. He reveals a wide variety of conceptions of and attitudes toward death and afterlife. Besides such well-known ideas as resurrection and the peaceful state of the deceased prior to it, there also seem to be indications of a denial of meaningful afterlife, often associated with a generally Sadducean alignment on the part of the deceased.These findings are then compared with corresponding indications in the Pauline epistles. The comparison shows, after taking into account the basic diffe...
This book collects all known Jewish inscriptions in Egypt between the third century BC and the sixth century AD. The entry on each inscription provides text, translation, bibliography and commentary. Hitherto, it has been necessary to refer to an older collection (1952, but essentially pre-war) together with a separately published revision (1964), with very limited indexing. Here the aim has been to include inscriptions not in the earlier collection, to bring together the necessary information on each inscription, and to supply full indexing. The inscriptions form a vivid primary source for Jewish history and religion.
The first readily-accessible and completely up to date survey of the Jewish inscriptions of Western Europe.
It was long believed that Roman Jews lived in complete isolation. This book offers a refutation of this thesis. It focuses on the Jewish community in third and fourth-century Rome, and in particular on how this community related to the larger, non-Jewish world that surrounded it. Jewish archaeological remains and Jewish funerary inscriptions from Rome are examined from various angles, and compared to pagan and early Christian material and epigraphical remains. The author has shown great comprehensiveness, thoroughness, and accuracy in examining this epigraphic evidence. He also discusses the enigmatic legal treatise called the Collatio. This volume proposes a new way in which the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in late antiquity can be studied. As such, it is an important and useful addition to the literature on Roman Jewry in the middle Empire.
This volume contains the papers of a workshop on Jewish epigraphy in antiquity organized at Utrecht University in 1992. Among the participants were collaborators of the Cambridge Jewish Inscriptions Project and of the Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients project. Important aspects of ancient Jewish inscriptions are highlighted in the papers, like the connection between documentary and literary texts. Several papers focus on aspects of the history of Jewish communities in the diaspora. Specialists in Jewish epigraphy will find surveys of parts of the corpus of Jewish inscriptions (curse inscriptions, metrical epitaphs, alphabet-inscriptions) and discussions of some fixed opinions, and Jewish inscriptions are discussed in a wider literary and historical contexts as well.
A collection of articles published previously.
E. Leigh Gibson analyses a little-known group of Greek inscriptions that record the manumission of slaves in synagogues located on the hellenized north shore of the Black Sea in the first three centuries of the common era. Through a comparison of this corpus with manumission inscriptions from elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world and an analysis of Greco-Roman Judaism's own interaction with slavery, she assesses the degree to which the Black Sea Jewish community adopted classical traditions of manumissions. In so doing, she tests the often-repeated assumption that these Jewish communities developed idiosyncratic slave practices under the influence of biblical injunctions regarding Israelite own...