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Diversity and Rabbinization

Diversity and Rabbinization
Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE
Edited by Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra







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© 2021 Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors.
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Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (eds), Diversity and Rabbinization Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures 8 . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0219
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Semitic Languages and Cultures 8.
ISSN (print): 2632-6906
ISSN (digital): 2632-6914
ISBN Paperback: 9781783749935
ISBN Hardback: 9781783749942
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783749959
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783749966
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783749973
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783749980
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0219
Cover image: Zodiac motif and figure of Helios on the mosaic floor of the fourth-century Hammat Tiberias synagogue. Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), plates 10/11. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society. © All rights reserved.
Cover design: Anna Gatti

Contents
Contributors
ix
Introduction
xv
Part 1. The Synagogue
1
Lee I. Levine (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
1. Diversity in the Ancient Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine Palestine: Historical Implications
3
Michael D. Swartz (Ohio State University)
2. Society and the Self in Early Piyyut
33
José Costa (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3)
3. Some Remarks about Non-Rabbinic Judaism, Rabbinization, and Synagogal Judaism
67
Part 2. Evidence For Non-Rabbinic Judaism: The Near East
119
Geoffrey Herman (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL)
4. In Search of Non-Rabbinic Judaism in Sasanian Babylonia
121
Robert Brody (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
5. Varieties of Non-Rabbinic Judaism in Geonic and Contemporaneous Sources
139
Yoram Erder (Tel Aviv University)
6. Karaites and Sadducees
153
Christian Julien Robin (CNRS, Membre de l’Institut)
7. The Judaism of the Ancient Kingdom of Ḥimyar in Arabia: A Discreet Conversion
165
Part 3. Evidence for Non-Rabbinic Judaism: Europe
271
Capucine Nemo-Pekelman (Université Paris Nanterre)
8. The Didascalus Annas: A Jewish Political and Intellectual Figure from the West
273
Giancarlo Lacerenza (University of Naples “L’Orientale”)
9. Rabbis in Southern Italian Jewish Inscriptions from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages
291
Michael Toch (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
10. Jewish Demographics and Economics at the Onset of the European Middle Ages
323
Part 4. Rabbinization
337
Ron Naiweld (CNRS)
11. The Rabbinization Tractates and the Propagation of Rabbinic Ideology in the Late Talmudic Period
339
Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL)
12. Who is the Target of Toledot Yeshu?
359
Gavin McDowell (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL)
13. Rabbinization of Non-Rabbinic Material in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer
381
Günter Stemberger (University of Vienna)
14. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah: Rabbinic Tradition for a Non-Rabbinic Society
413
Ra‘anan Boustan (Princeton University)
Afterword: Rabbinization and the Persistence of Diversity in Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity
427
List of Illustrations
451
Index
457

Contributors
Ra‘anan Boustan (PhD, Princeton University, 2004) is a Research Scholar in the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Before coming to Princeton, he was Associate Professor of Ancient and Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Boustan’s research and teaching explore the dynamic intersections between Judaism and other ancient Mediterranean religious traditions, with a special focus on the impact of Christianization on Jewish culture and society in Late Antiquity. Boustan is the site historian for the Huqoq Excavation Project in lower eastern Galilee and collaborates on the publication of the mosaic floor of the Huqoq synagogue. He is Editor-in-Chief of two journals, Jewish Studies Quarterly and Studies in Late Antiquity .
Robert Brody (PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1982) is Professor Emeritus of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His many publications in the field of rabbinic literature have focused mainly on Geonic literature, Mishnah, and Tosefta. He is currently completing a commentary on tractate Ketubbot of the Babylonian Talmud.
José Costa is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Fontenay St-Cloud, 1995). He holds a PhD (University of Paris 8, 2001) and a ‘habilitation à diriger des recherches’ (École Pratique des Hautes Études, 2011). Costa is currently Full Professor at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. His teaching and research focus both exegetically and historically on ancient rabbinic literature within the wider Jewish, pagan, Christian, and early Islamic contexts. He has published extensively on eschatological issues. He is co-editor of the Revue des études juives and the Collection de la Revue des études juives.
Yoram Erder (PhD, Tel Aviv University, 1989) is Professor of Jewish History at Tel-Aviv University. He has published widely on Jews, Rabbanites, and Karaites in the Medieval Arab world, among other subjects. His publications include Studies in Judaeo-Arabic Culture (ed. 2014, in Hebrew), Studies in Early Qaraite Halakha (2012, in Hebrew), the Festschrift Moshe Gil (2018, in Hebrew) and The Karaite Mourners of Zion and the Qumran Scrolls: On the History of an Alternative to Rabbinic Judaism (2017).
Geoffrey Herman (PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006) is Directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (EPHE-PSL), where he holds the chair of Ancient Judaisms and Classical Rabbinic Literature. The recipient of the Bertel and Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal Prize for Talmudic Scholarship in 2015, he spent 2018 as a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research is focused on the Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era, which he seeks to understand in the light of the broad Sasanian culture. His publications include A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era (2012); the recently edited volume, together with Julia Rubanovich, Irano-Judaica VII, Studies Relating to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture throughout the Ages (2019); and ‘Priests without a Temple: On Priests and Rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia’, Journal of Ancient Judaism 11 (2020), 148–60.
Giancarlo Lacerenza (PhD, University L’Orientale, Naples, 1994) is Full Professor of Biblical and Medieval Hebrew at the University of Naples L’Orientale, where he is carrying out a long-term project concerning the Jewish epigraphs and antiquities of Venosa. His main research interest is the history and culture of the Jews in Italy between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Lee I. Levine received his doctorate from Columbia University and his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught in the Department of Jewish History and the Institute of Archaeology. He has taught as a Visiting Professor at Yale, Harvard, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Pontifical Gregorian University at the Vatican, and he has lectured widely throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. His scholarship encompasses a broad range of