Late Antique (Roman and Byzantine) History
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0057
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0057
Introduction
This bibliography surveys the span from the middle of the 2nd century to the first half of the 7th century. Already before the 2nd century, the number of Jews in the Diaspora probably exceeded the number in Palestine. During the time under review, the significance and apparently the geographic scope of the Diaspora grew. The geographic range covered is thus from Spain to Iraq. Not all periods and regions in this long time span and range are equally well documented, and some matters have attracted greater scholarly attention than others. Discussion of the rabbis greatly exceeds their numerical significance in Antiquity, for instance. This is due not only to their lasting importance (Jewish denominations in the 21st century trace their origins to the rabbinic movements of Palestine and Babylonia) but also to the volume and richness of rabbinic material. Similarly, the impact of the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the changing status of Jews in Late Antiquity and the history of Jews in Palestine have received considerable attention. By contrast, the late 2nd and the 3rd centuries, especially in the Mediterranean Diaspora, are underdocumented and understudied. The sections in this article aim at both representing the field and providing readers with the resources to gain a somewhat fuller view of the period under discussion. To that end, Geographies and Populations includes sections on the geographic regions covered. Jews as Roman Citizens and Subjects deals with material and issues not included in Roman codes and offers some material on the 3rd century. Society and Culture includes material on gender and draws attention to both rabbinic and nonrabbinic material. Because rabbis feature so prominently in other sections, The Rabbinic Movement is largely limited to a brief finding aid for rabbinic texts and to references to the history of the rabbinic movement as such.
Introductory Works
Few introductory works on the field of Late Antique Jewish history are available, and none that covers the full geographic, political, religious, and cultural dimensions of the period. Avi-Yonah 1984 (originally published in 1962) is now quite dated and is limited to Palestine. Schäfer 1995 is quite brief and also limited to Palestine. Cohen 2006 is broader in its scope, but it focuses on the period up to about 200 CE. The background it provides and the treatment of earliest rabbinic literature are helpful for Late Antiquity. Readers may also wish to consult Strack and Stemberger 1996 (cited under The Rabbinic Movement).
Avi-Yonah, Michael. The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule: A Political History of Palestine from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest. New York: Schocken, 1984.
This work in many ways represents the normative picture of Jews in Palestine in Late Antiquity, arguing for inexorable demographic decline, continued collective leadership and activity on the part of Jews, and a strongly conflictual relationship with the Christian empire.
Cohen, Shaye J. D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. 2d ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
First published in 1987 and revised and reissued in 2006, this book offers a survey of Jewish religion and society in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods through approximately 200 CE. Given this endpoint, it is useful primarily as background to Late Antiquity. After a broad chronological overview, Cohen covers such topics as Jews’ relations with gentiles and with “Hellenism,” religious beliefs and practices, and community institutions and sectarianism.
Schäfer, Peter. The History of the Jews in Antiquity: The Jews of Palestine from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Translated by David Chowkat. Luxembourg City, Luxembourg: Harwood Academic, 1995.
A very brief survey of a very long period. As is frequently the case, the book disproportionately focuses on the period up to the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE) and so offers useful background.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abraham Isaac Kook
- Aggadah
- Agudat Yisrael
- Ahad Ha' am
- American Hebrew Literature
- American Jewish Artists
- American Jewish Literature
- American Jewish Sociology
- Ancient Anti-Semitism
- An-sky (Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport)
- Anthropology of the Jews
- Anti-Semitism, Modern
- Apocalypticism and Messianism
- Aramaic
- Archaeology, Second Temple
- Archaeology: The Rabbinic Period
- Art, Synagogue
- Austria, The Holocaust In
- Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918
- Biblical Archaeology
- Biblical Literature
- Bratslav/Breslev Hasidism
- Buber, Martin
- Buczacz
- Bukharan Jews
- Canada
- Central Asia, Jews in
- Chagall, Marc
- China
- Classical Islam, Jews Under
- Cohen, Hermann
- Culture, Israeli
- David Ben-Gurion
- David Bergelson
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Death, Burial, and the Afterlife
- Debbie Friedman
- Demography
- Deuteronomy
- Dietary Laws
- Dubnov, Simon
- Dutch Republic: 17th-18th Centuries
- Early Modern Period, Christian Yiddishism in the
- Eastern European Haskalah
- Emancipation
- England
- Environment, Judaism and the
- Eruv
- Ethics, Jewish
- Ethiopian Jews
- Feminism
- Film
- Folklore
- Folktales, Jewish
- Food
- Forverts/Forward
- Frank, Jacob
- Gender and Modern Jewish Thought
- Germany, Early Modern
- Ghettos in the Holocaust
- Goldman, Emma
- Golem
- Graetz, Heinrich
- Hasidism
- Hasidism, Lubavitch
- Haskalah
- Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Literature
- Hebrew
- Hebrew Bible, Blood in the
- Hebrew Bible, Memory and History in the
- Hebrew Literature and Music
- Hebrew Literature Outside of Israel Since 1948
- History, Early Modern Jewish
- History of the Holocaust
- Holocaust in France, The
- Holocaust in Germany, The
- Holocaust in Poland, The
- Holocaust in the Netherlands, The
- Holocaust in the Soviet Union, The
- (Holocaust) Memorial Books
- Holocaust Museums and Memorials
- Holocaust, Philosophical and Theological Responses to the
- Holocaust Survivors, Children of
- Humor, Jewish
- Ibn Ezra, Abraham
- Indian Jews
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Israel Ba'al Shem Tov
- Israel, Religion and State in
- Israeli Economy
- Israeli Film
- Israeli Literature
- Israel's Society
- Italian Jewish Literature (Ninth to Nineteenth Century)
- Jewish American Women Writers in the 18th and 19th Centuri...
- Jewish Bible Translations
- Jewish Culture, Children and Childhood in
- Jewish Diaspora
- Jewish Economic History
- Jewish Folklore, Chełm in
- Jewish Genetics
- Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
- Jewish Names
- Jewish Studies, Dance in
- Jewish Territorialism (in Relation to Jewish Studies)
- Jewish-Christian Polemics Until the 15th Century
- Joseph Ber Soloveitchik
- Josephus, Flavius
- Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
- Karaism
- Khmelnytsky/Chmielnitzki
- Kibbutz, The
- Ladino
- Languages, Jewish
- Late Antique (Roman and Byzantine) History
- Latin American Jewish Studies Latin American Jewish Studie...
- Law, Biblical
- Law in the Rabbinic Period
- Life Cycle Rituals
- Literature Before 1800, Yiddish
- Literature, Hellenistic Jewish
- Literature, Holocaust
- Literature, Latin American Jewish
- Literature, Medieval
- Literature, Modern Hebrew
- Literature, Rabbinic
- Magic, Ancient Jewish
- Maimonides, Moses
- Maurice Schwartz
- Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
- Medieval Anti-Judaism
- Medieval Islam, Jews under
- Meir, Golda
- Menachem Begin
- Mendelssohn, Moses
- Messianic Thought and Movements
- Middle Ages, the Hebrew Story in the
- Midrash
- Minority Literatures in Israel
- Minsk
- Modern Germany
- Modern Hebrew Poetry
- Modern Jewish History
- Modern Kabbalah
- Moses Maimonides: Mishneh Torah
- Music, East European Jewish Folk
- Music, Jews and
- Nathan Birnbaum
- Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht: The November Pogrom 1938 in
- Neo-Hasidism
- New York City
- North Africa
- Orthodoxy
- Orthodoxy, Post-World War II
- Palestine/Israel, Yiddish in
- Palestinian Talmud/Yerushalmi
- Philo of Alexandria
- Piyyut
- Poetry in Spain, Hebrew
- Poland, 1800-1939
- Poland, Hasidism in
- Poland Until The Late 18th Century
- Politics and Political Leaders, Israeli
- Politics, Modern Jewish
- Prayer and Liturgy
- Purity and Impurity in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism
- Queer Jewish Texts in the Americas
- Rabbi Yeheil Michel Epstein and his Arukh Hashulchan
- Rabbinic Exegesis (Midrash) and Literary Theory
- Rashi's Commentary on the Bible
- Reform Judaism
- Revelation
- Ritual Objects and Folk Art
- Rosenzweig, Franz
- Russia
- Russian Jewish Culture
- Sabbath
- Sabbatianism
- Sacrifice in the Bible
- Safed
- Sarah Schenirer and Bais Yaakov
- Scholem, Gershom
- Second Temple Period, The
- Sephardi Jews
- Sexuality and the Body
- Shlomo Carlebach
- Shmuel Yosef Agnon
- Shulhan Arukh and Sixteenth Century Jewish Law, The
- Sociology, European Jewish
- South African Jewry
- Soviet Union, Jews in the
- Space in Modern Hebrew Literature
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Sutzkever, Abraham
- Talmud and Philosophy
- Talmud, Narrative in the
- The Druze Community in Israel
- The Early Modern Yiddish Bible, 1534–1686
- The General Jewish Workers’ Bund
- The Modern Jewish Bible, Facets of
- Theater, Israeli
- Theme, Exodus as a
- Tractate Avodah Zarah (in the Talmud)
- Translation
- Translation in Hebrew Literature, Traditions of
- United States
- Vienna
- Vilna
- Warsaw
- Weinreich, Max
- Wissenschaft des Judentums
- Women and Gender Relations
- World War II Literature, Jewish American
- Yankev Glatshteyn/Jacob Glatstein
- Yemen, The Jews of
- Yiddish
- Yiddish Avant-garde Theater
- Yiddish Linguistics
- Yiddish Literature since 1800
- Yiddish Theater
- Zamenhof
- Ze’ev Jabotinsky
- Zionism from Its Inception to 1948