The first two themes deal with Roman Diaspora Judaism’s general appropriation
and adaptation of late biblical Judaism and that biblical literature upon which late
biblical Judaism is founded and in which it finds legitimacy. In so dealing, we explore
the diachronicdimension of Roman Diaspora Jews’ social construction of a “plaus-
ible” “world” for themselves. As we shall see in the first section below, the evidence
for and from Roman Diaspora Judaism indicates, on the one hand, that its depend-
ence upon late biblical Judaism is profound and provides the foundation of their
religious-ethnic identity and practice.
On the other hand, we argue (in the second section below) that the core pat-
terning of biblical Judaism’s “world” is significantly at odds with the synchronic require-
ments of Roman Diaspora Jewish communities for a religion and way of life the patterns
of which not only sustained their ethnic and religious identity as a minority but also
reflected the dominant normative patterns of the host urban societies in which they
had significantly to participate, and be accepted as significant participants. But, as
we shall argue, biblical Judaism’s social “mapping” places non-Jewish nations at its
periphery and Jews exclusively at its center, hardly a recipe for a viable minority social
and cultural construct. The last three of our five themes examine those constructs
which together served to create these synchronic homologies. The section on our
third theme shows that Roman Diaspora Judaism radically recontextualizes those ele-
ments that it appropriates from late biblical Judaism. We shall see that Diaspora Judaism
imagines a world in which non-Jews are ubiquitous, in which Jewish communities
“dot” the essentially non-Jewish social map, and in which Jews meaningfully parti-
cipate in non-Jewish society – albeit within certain limits, for example, by continu-
ing to practice endogamy or by avoiding directparticipation in, or support of, pagan
cults. The sections on our fourth and fifth themes, therefore, deal with the principal,
characteristic institutions and roles by which Diaspora Jews and Judaism organized
and effected their religious-communal life together in the “pagan” (later Christian)
cities of the Roman Mediterranean. These institutions were central to these Jewish
communities’ response to the requisites of social formation and the construction of
a “new” context in which their array of appropriated and adapted elements of late
biblical religion could be melded with elements of their own invention. Equally import-
ant, they mimicked normative forms of urban social organization and governance in
Greco-Roman cities of the period, and even permitted “crossover” activities; Jews
as groups and as individuals could be benefactors of urban institutions, and, at times,
pagans acted as benefactors and patrons of Diaspora Jewish institutions.
Before proceeding to the exploration of these five themes, it is worth stressing
one point. Although the evidence for Roman Diaspora Judaism, particularly the archae-
ological and inscriptional evidence, dates in large measure from the third century ce
and later, the literary evidence, especially from pagan writers, early Christian lit-
erature, Josephus, and Philo, indicates that all of the main features of Roman Diaspora
Judaism were already well established during or before the first century ce. These
Diaspora Judaic constructs were not a response to the destruction of the Jerusalem
Temple in 70 ceand the consequent demise of late biblical Judaism. Nor were they
the innovations of the early rabbinic movement, who in popular contemporary Jewish
imagination are understood as the group that “saved” Judaism by formulating a
Roman Diaspora Judaism 355