A Companion Roman Religion - Spiritual Minds

of the people’s liberation from Egyptian bondage again by the agency of Moses (and Aaron) figured prominently in their identity. ...

as an ephebein the appropriate athletic contests. And as Barclay himself points out, Philo’s “familiarity with theatrical and sp ...

One cannot dismiss such evidence by asserting that such Jewish theurgists oper- ated at the fringes of the Diaspora Jewish commu ...

Diaspora Jews in the Greco-Roman world practiced not only infant (male) circum- cision, but also circumcision of adult male conv ...

observances and calendrical intercalations made in the Land. As with so many early rabbinic injunctions, it is difficult to know ...

and north Africa all relied on local Jewish authorities’ determination of the dates of Passover for their Greco-Roman Jewish com ...

use in, the Temple service itself, and poetic texts from the biblical prophetic litera- ture provided – in Greek, and perhaps in ...

Diaspora communities, which Philo describes as “colonies” of Jerusalem, a concept which Roman authorities (and all Hellenized pe ...

normative alternatives to the sacrificial cult in the Jerusalem Temple. Indeed, with the destruction of the Temple, and with the ...

Roman Diaspora Jews’ repatterning of the biblical “world” Fundamentally, Roman Diaspora Jews and Judaism seem to have perceived ...

Roman Diaspora Jews opted similarly to construct and to perceive their “world” as dotted with multiple locations where privilege ...

part, the synagogue was holy because the sacred scrolls of scriptures (the relic of YHWH’s word) were kept there. John Chrysosto ...

The synagogue as a typical Roman civic institution To this point, I have discussed the synagogue as a holy place for communal pr ...

In sum, the Roman Diaspora “synagogue” is not simply a Jewish civic building (let alone a Jewish cultic building only); the syna ...

rulers of the synagogue (archisynagogues, e.g. Noy 1993–5: 1. nos. 4, 14, 20; Epiphanius, Panarion30.11.1– 4; Levine 1999: 90); ...

We grant to all the curias [i.e. city councils] in a general law that the Jews shall be nominated to the curia[l offices, if the ...

have been as apparent to a non-Jewish city dweller looking at the synagogue community, as it would have been obvious to a member ...

the Judaism which characterized Jewish communities in the urban settings of the Greco-Roman Diaspora from approximately the mid- ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Creating One’s Own Religion: Intellectual Choices Attilio Mastrocinque Substitutes for State Religion In the ...

Creating One’s Own Religion 379 exotic cults, astrology, archaizing Augustan inventions, and emperor worship to more traditional ...