heave offering to all the produce of the biblical land of Israel. Obviously, by
the beginning of the third century CE, such a conception of the land of
Israel totally within Israelite franchise is a utopian fantasy; it is doubtful
that it could ever have been a historical reality. Again, the Mishnah’s utopian
character comes to the fore. The distinction between the land of Israel and
the Diaspora in Tosefta Avodah Zarah1:1 seems to be unrelated to Mishnaic
considerations of the biblical laws of territorial inheritance and agricul-
tural gifts to the priestly and levitical classes.
This does not nearly exhaust the social spheres differentiated by the
Toseftain mapping out a world co-inhabited by Jews and Gentiles. Again,
taking the Mishnahas its point of departure, the Toseftadifferentiates within
such spheres as medicine and wet nursing (that is, biophysical/nurturing
service roles and institutions), civic and administrative institutions (pub-
lic registries and courts for socio-economic regulation and suits), wayfar-
ing and way-lodging (that is, travel between domains), military and penal
institutions, institutions of public entertainment (stadiaand circuses), and
civil-public institutions of hygiene (e.g., bathhouses) and of leisure (e.g.,
parks and gardens). Within all of these social spheres, separately and in var-
ious degrees of overlap, the Toseftan authors must define the mode of rela-
tions between Jews and Gentiles as a pattern of either social avoidance or
social co-participation.
Understanding inter-religious rivalry, competition, or avoidance within
a larger socially constructed context comprising multiple, overlapping
mapped spheres appears, then, to help us understand apparent contradic-
tions within any one community’s attitudes toward the other. This is so
because, in some mapped spheres (such as cultic activity), total avoidance
might be the norm, while in other spheres, other religious groups may be
perceived as co-participants. Again, this was the key conceptual-theoreti-
cal point argued at the outset of this chapter. However, several corollaries
follow from this point, and merit further discussion.
The first corollary derives from the observation that, for many reli-
gious communities, not all others are equal. Thus, the task of understand-
ing inter-religious rivalry in any one time and place is not only best carried
out within a methodological frame that views the socially mapped human
and physical landscape as comprising many overlapping spheres, each with
its own rules regarding interaction with or avoidance of the other; but it also
requires each of various others to be differentiated from one another. How?
By determining whether, in this particular sphere or that one, all others are
equally to be avoided (or equally treated as co-participants), or whether
some distinctions are made among them.
My Rival, My Fellow 99