Cultures of the Jews, Volume 1: Mediterranean Origins (National Jewish Book Award)

The editor David Biale explains in the preface that the cultural histories of the Jews are marked by a pattern of assimilation and adaptation to their surrounding cultures. Not remarkable, since this happens with any people group, but more than others the Jews have always insisted upon their distinctiveness. This distinctivesness can only be realized, however, within the context of their cultural assimilation to the majority culture wherever they are found. It's somewhere in this dynamic that aids in setting a culture of Jews apart.After reading the preface and introduction to this work explaining the project of the book along these lines, I was eager to continue only to be disappointed in the first chapter by Ilana Pardes, entitled 'Imagining the Birth of Ancient Israel: National Metaphors in the Bible'. Far from anything to do with Jewish cultural history, this essay comprised a wholly narrative-critical reading of the biblical account of Israel's origins, which the author presupposes were indeed imagined. While narrative criticism is indeed important, the author was heavy on quasi-poetical language in her description of the stories in Genesis and exodus, reading metaphors that probably, it seemed to me, weren't intended by the authors, e.g., reading the crossing of the Red Sea as an 'initiation rite' or as a 'rebirth'. The essay was illuminating, however, as Pardes (I think aptly) sees the story of Israel in these early books as constituting somewhat of a 'national biography'. Collective Israel seems to be indeed portrayed as a character in the biblical narrative. Its biography parallels that of individual characters in the course of the story, such as Abraham and Moses. Pardes also illuminates the stories in light of comparative ancient mythological literature. The approach was valid, it just seemed to overdraw itself on its heavy metaphorical readings.What was I in for? Was the rest of the book going to emulate this essay in kind? Ronald Hendel quickly salvaged the book for me with his historical approach to the question of Israelite culture at its origins. We read, for example, of the archeology of the first Israelite settlements in Canaan that, 'The material culture in general is a local, rural development of Canaanite culture. This evidence indicates that early Israel was largely a local culture, a variant of regional Canaanite or West Semitic cultural traditions.' (46). Ethnicity, the idea of common descent in contrast to other ethnic groups, we learn is often an artificial construct. Genealogical relations, for example, were often fluid and didn't always reflect biological reality. They're a way to mark off a sense of 'us' versus 'them', even if two groups are quite similar or even share a common heritage, as with the Israelites and Canaanites. Israelite religion is also continuous with Canaanite or West Semitic religion, in both concepts and practices. The high god of the Canaanites, El, for example, shared many essential characteristics with Yahweh: father, creator, wisdom, kindness, etc., and they shared many of the same epithets and imagery. We learn that the Israelites emphasized certain ritual distinctives to express their uniqueness, like circumcision and pork abstinence, probably in light of their Philistine xenophobia (who ate a lot of pork and didn't practice circumcision). These ethnic distinctives were also a way of demarcating boundaries vis a vis other peoples, even if they weren't essentially unique. Most of Israel's Semitic neighbors, and even the Egyptians, practiced circumcision, for example. The Sabbath was a distinctively Israelite institution, however. The prophets, remarkably, often criticized Israel's ethnocentricism in favor of a more universal view of Yahweh's relation to the nations of the earth. Israel turns out to be not so special afterall. 'Are you not like the children of the Cushites to me, O children of Israel?, declares Yahweh', the prophet Amos states. 'Did I not bring Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?' (Amos 9.7).A variety of Jewish texts show a complex interplay between Judaism and Hellenism, one that calls standard dichotomies between Judaism and Hellenism into question. So argues Erich Gruen in his essay, 'Hellenistic Judaism'. He surveys fragments of a number of Jewish authors who wrote in Greek, as well as the books of the Maccabees, the story of Joseph and Asenath, Pseudo-Aristeas, and Philo and Josephus, among others. These writings show that Jewish stated antipathy towards Greek ways was more polemical than reality. These writers utilized Greek modes of thought, genres, and language to express the theological and moral superiority of Judaism. Aspects of Hellenistic culture were a natural vehicle for their emphases. Indeed, some writers in the midst of this cultural superiority play fictionally attributed what was good among Greek thought and practice to the influence of their Hebrew ancestors and cited non-Jewish acknowledgment (real or invented) of Jewish values. Other questions are broached, such as the role of women in Second Temple Jewish society, and the false or irrelevant divide of 'elite' thought and concerns versus 'popular' thought and concerns when reading Second Temple Jewish texts. Finally, Gruen questions the hastily sweeping notion of Diaspora Jews living in a state of discontent and longing for the homeland. Far from it. While various sources show their allegience to their cultural center and its defining symbol, the Temple in Jerusalem, they also demonstrate that Diaspora Jews felt no dejecting sentiments about their state of affairs abroad in the world and that there was equal commitment to flourishing in their own local Diaspora communities.Eric M. Meyers covers some overlapping ground, but his essay, 'Jewish Culture in Greco-Roman Palestine', is broader in its topical scope, though the geographical scope is limited to Palestine. The chronological scope is also broader, from the 5th century bce to the formative rabbinic period. A subtle Greek influence in Palestine can already be detected in the early Persian period, which steadily increased and was not effaced even in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt or among the rabbis. The Hasmoneans continued the process of Hellenism. They took Greek names, titles, and minted coins with Greek inscriptions alongside Hebrew ones. Hellenistic architecture begins to proliferate. One remarkable ostracon from Sepphoris in lower Galilee from around 100bce contains a Greek word written in Hebrew characters, and 1/3rd of all inscriptions from Jerusalem contain Greek inscriptions. The rabbis' exegetical techniques have exact antecedents in Greek methods of exegesis. Rabbi Judah the Prince is remembered as saying, 'Why speak Syriac in Palestine? Talk either Hebrew or Greek'. More than Greek/Jewish interactions, however, Meyers discusses the formation of Jewish sects, Herod the Great's political and architectural achievements, and the gospels as evidence for popular, rural Judaism. We also discover that ossuaries and the practice of secondary burial (often taken to indicate belief in resurrection among Jews) were not exclusive to Judaism, and that in the time of Jesus women could hold prominent or equal places in public synagogue worship. In fact, we know of heads of synagogues who were women. The rabbis, however, tried to suppress the role of women (one inference I draw from this was that Paul's infamous statements about women in worship may reflect his stricter Pharisaic views). The ideological context for the invention of the Oral Law of the rabbis and the notion of an unbroken chain of tradition from Moses is also astutely discussed by Meyers.Oded Irshai, 'Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium', explores the plight of Jews both in Palestine and the Diaspora as Christianity conquered the Roman empire. Already a process begun after the First and Second Revolts with the relocation of early rabbinic authority to the north, by the 4th century ce, the Jewish demographic of Palestine was largely contained within Galilee. Palestine had become an attraction for Christian pilgrimage and the seat of a major See in Jerusalem as well as Caesarea. Intense polemic and conflict followed as the Christians attempted to arrogate the heritage of Israel. The Jewish patriarchate instituted by the Romans which governed the affairs of Jews in Palestine and maintained a strong influence in the Diaspora was dissolved by the 5th century ce. With it, the activity and influence of the Palestinian rabbis was in a state of decline, leaving a vacuum for priests, which had survived 70ce, to fill in the synagogues when religious authority shifted there from the academy. Synagogues flourish during this period, despite official edicts against their construction and acts of demolition against them. They become elaborately decorated with paintings and mosaics of images, many incorporating pagan motifs which the Jews had made their own. The effects of Hellenism had pervaded rabbis as well as the masses. A variety of apocalyptic and messianic motifs, contemporaneous with similar Christian developments, find their way into Jewish traditions in the hope that Rome would be overthrown. The struggle of Palestinian and Diaspora Jews with Christians in the Byzantine era gave way to a different center of Jewish tradition outside of the Roman empire to gain itself ascendancy in the Jewish world: Babylonian Jewry.In the next chapter, 'Babylonian Rabbinic Culture', Isaiah Gafni analyzes the influences of living outside the Roman empire in the realm of the Parthians and subsequently the Sassanians. For the Jews in this eastern Diaspora it was generally a tolerable environment, although for centuries conditions there are obscure. Little textual information survives antedating the Talmudic period. Babylonian Jewry had a sense of belonging more to their environment ultimately, as Gafni posits, because of the nation's origins there through Abraham according to the Bible. The extent to which Persian language and religion influenced Babylonian Jewry is also discussed at some length. Not as much can be detected as Hellenism affected Palestinian Jewry, but there is a notable influence in the realm of demonology. For the earlier Second Temple era scholars are divided, and the beliefs posited to be of Persian derivation are found in Palestinian, not Babylonian, pre-Talmudic literature. However, interaction between the two communities helps to account for that.Finally, Reuven Firestone, 'Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam', is as enlightening about early Islam as it is about Arabian Jewry, the subject of this chapter. Firestone pores over several Islamic texts, many of which contain earlier pre-Islamic elements, to extrapolate otherwise unattested aspects of Arabian Jewry and to explain how Judaism helped to shape Islam as much as Islam and pre-Islamic Arab traditions helped to shape Arabian Jewry. Some Jews were receptive to the new prophet Muhammed's revelation. Many were not and were exiled or slaughtered. It is not known when the Arab Jewish community was established. Legends take the place of the historical realities, but while the Jews fit neatly ethnically and culturally among the Arabs, they still maintained a sense of individual identity.Good, profitable, accessible reading.

Not bad but I expected some more info from this book.

This was a required textbook that I never opened. If there was a neutral option for it, I would choose it because I didn't actually interact with the book.

David Biale is a leading researcher for Jewish Studies in the United States. This book, like most of his works, provide in-depth research that includes both religious and secular sources. Those looking for an objective view of Jewish development would find this book interesting for both personal research and passive reading. Highly Recommended.

The editor and contributors would have the reader believe that their non-sensical mental meanderings result from their broad-mindedness. But unless you believe, like them, that the Bible has only limited value, you are in for some very irritatingly baseless conjectures trying to masquarade as erudition.