THE RABBIS AND URBAN CULTURE 163intothelifeoftheircities,giventhattheintegrativepressuresexertedonthem,
as would-be elites, were fairly strong?
But the rabbis were emphaticallynotnormal elites or subelites of the east-
ern part of the Roman Empire. All the efforts of scholars over the last 150
years to detect significant similarities in social role and status between rabbis
and sophists, philosophers,iurisprudentes, or other easily recognizable high
imperialtypeshaveonlyhighlightedthefactthattherabbiswerenotsophists,
philosophers, oriurisprudentes. One reason these parallels (and one could
easily think of others that have never been suggested: certain types of pagan
priests and Roman senators, for example) have not proved convincing is that
the rabbis combined elements of all of these functions in a way that no one
elseintheGreco-Romanworlddid,except,mutatismutandis,Christianbish-
ops. This, in turn, is because the rabbis were unique in deriving their self-
understandingfromtheTorah,whichintheirviewwastherepositoryofevery-
thing worthwhile. Although in reality their wisdom may sometimes have had
aStoicorCynicaltinge,theirlegislationmayhaveowedsomethingtoRoman
civil law, and their miracles (or miracle stories) resembled those performed
by (or told about) such figures as Apollonius of Tyana, as far as the rabbis
themselves were concerned, the source of all wisdom, law, and numinosity
was the Torah alone. In this way they closely resembled their predecessors in
theSecondTempleperiodandrabbiniccolleaguesinMesopotamia,andthey
were at odds with their nonrabbinic contemporaries and counterparts in the
Greco-Roman cities.
Correspondingly, the search for parallels in for mand patterns of thought
between rabbinic and contemporary pagan and even Christian literature has
yielded mainly frustration. Perhaps most promising is the very recent work of
Catherine Hezser, who has detected significant formal similarities between
the Palestinian Talmud and the Digest. But of course these similarities are
restricted to the Talmud’s legal material, and they may tell us mostly about
the working methods of the editors and such social questions as the extent of
the institutionalization of the rabbinic class in the late fourth century; direct
influence, in either direction, is obviously out of the question. Otherwise, the
searchhasyieldedlittleofinteresttoanyonebutantiquarians,lexicographers,
and experts in “realia.”
Therabbiscannotreadilybe“normalized.” Itmustfinallybeadmittedthat
the culture of the Greco-Roman city and the Judaism of the rabbis contra-
dicted each other both essentially and in superficial detail. As far as we can
tellfromthesurvivingliterature,therabbis,nolessthantheirChristiancoun-
terparts,largely rejectedhighimperial urbancultureandoffered theirfollow-
ers a radical and coherent alternative to it.^4
(^4) Indeed, it can even be argued that some imperial Greek elites, in their devotion to religion
and the Greek past, were carving out for themselves a space in which to resist the realities of the