Jews and Others
to the diaspora is precisely one of the large open issues which remain to be
decided. And, secondly, the Jewish community of the Holy Land itself lived
in a Graeco-Roman world from which pagan practises had by no means dis-
appeared, and which was also increasingly invaded by Christian churches
and congregations, as well as by streams of curious and devout pilgrims.^47
One of these was Jerome; and it is unfortunate in the context of an enquiry
about diaspora Judaism that, of all the Christian writers of this period, the
one who engaged in much the most active exchanges with Jewish teachers
did so in the Holy Land; none the less, one clear revelation of his reports of
these exchanges is that the ‘‘rabbinic Judaism’’ of the Holy Land was itself a
bilingual activity which could be described and expressed in Greek (see text
to nn. – below).
By contrast, as the long and fruitless debate as to whether theminimmen-
tioned in rabbinic writings were or were not Christians itself shows that
explicit observation of other religious systems is not a prominent feature of
these works.^48 So, for instance, the tractateAvoda Zarahin the Jerusalem Tal-
mud, like the tractate of the Mishnah on which it comments, is not about
the nature of pagan worship, but about how to conduct a Jewish life in a
largely pagan context. It is very interesting indeed to see how entirely pagan
is the context from whose impurities protection was deemed to be neces-
sary, whether it was the presence of idols, or the question of buying goods
sold at a pagan fair.^49 Even the impact of pagan imagery and popular tradi-
tion makes itself felt: ‘‘Said R. Jonah: ‘When Alexander of Macedon wanted,
he could swing upward, and he would go up. He travelled upward until he
saw the world as a sphere and the sea as a dish. That is why they represent the
world as a sphere in the hand [of an idol].’ ’’^50 The reader would find it diffi-
cult to guess, reading this work, that in the contemporary Holy Land there
were churches, bishops, and Christian congregations. Nor is the wider his-
tory of the time more than subliminally visible, though Neusner has argued
that the rabbinic works of this period do show, under the unspoken influ-
ence of Christianity, a concern with history which had been absent from the
Mishnah.^51 Talmudic writings contain no more than a couple of oblique ref-
. E. D. Hunt,Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire,..–().
. M. Simon,Verus Israel: études sur les relations entre Chrétiens et Juifs dans l’empire romain
(–)^2 (; English trans.,Verus Israel, ), chap. .
. Jerusalem Talmud,Avoda Zarah..
. Jerusalem Talmud,Avoda Zarah., trans. J. Neusner.
. J. Neusner,Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel and
the Initial Confrontation().