the Judaism which characterized Jewish communities in the urban settings of the
Greco-Roman Diaspora from approximately the mid-first to the mid-fifth centuries ce.
In more recent scholarship, much has been written about Diaspora Jews, their
literature, social history, and cultural traits, and their relations with non-Jewish
authorities – based on the plethora and wide variety of evidence which has come to
be available. However, few, if any, scholarly attempts had been made since the mid-
1980s to describe what we may safely assert about the shape and character of their
Judaism, or about that Judaism’s place in Diaspora Jewish communities’ struggle for
social success and social continuity as a religio-ethnic minority in the Greco-Roman
urban landscape. This chapter has attempted to begin to fill that void.
The precise constructs adopted by Roman Diaspora Judaic society and culture to
address this dual problematic have enjoyed considerable longevity, from late anti-
quity through medieval and into modern times. So normative did these constructs
become that rabbinic Judaism, well before it became dominant in Mediterranean Jewish
societies sometime near or following the rise of Islam, had no alternative but to adopt
these constructs as their own, to “rabbinize” them when they could, and to pro-
mote them as part of the rabbis’ version of the Torah of Moses. Indeed, if one
looks at forms of Jewish communal organization in today’s highly secularized Jewish
communities, it is easy to see much more than mere vestiges of Roman Diaspora
synagogue/communal patterns of organization and authority still at work – with a
contemporary version of a Jewish curial class, benefaction, and honors once again
reflecting other contemporary non-Jewish patterns (see e.g. Weinfeld 2002).
FURTHER READINGFor a general political and to some extent social history of Jews in the late republican and
earlier imperial Roman period, one may turn to Smallwood (2001). Three relatively recent
and very readable works do a good job of tackling the complex evidence from and about
Greco-Roman Diaspora Jews. They are: Barclay (1996), Gruen (2002), and Rutgers (1998).
With respect to the development of the ancient synagogue, the reader will find a compre-
hensive and engaging account in Levine (2000).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTThis chapter was written in the academic year 2004 –5 during a leave of absence granted by
Concordia University (Montreal QC Canada). It was completed in the winter and spring
of 2005 while I was a visiting research fellow at the Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic
Studies at the University of Miami. The research for and writing of this chapter were aided
by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support
my research on the impact of urbanization and the urban environments during the Roman
imperial period on the development of ancient Judaism. I am grateful for the support of all
of these parties.
Roman Diaspora Judaism 377