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6 - Christianizing the Roman Empire

Jews and the Law from Constantine to Justinian, 300–600 CE

from Part I - The Classical Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

By
Andrew S. Jacobs
Edited by
Steven Katz
Steven Katz
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

The circulation and republication of Christian Roman laws on Jews and Judaism gives us a window into the ways imperial attention to the Jewish “other” – sometimes benevolent, sometimes punitive – created multiple paths for the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Laws on economic status, social interaction, and religious custom ultimately produced a Jewish “religion” analogous to imperial Christianity.

Keywords

lawempireChristianization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism , pp. 100 - 117
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Bonfil, R., et al., eds., Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Leiden, 2011). While many of the essays extend beyond our period, several treat the early Byzantine period, including an essay by Amnon Linder (see below) on “The Legal Status of Jews in the Byzantine Empire.”Google Scholar
Horowitz, E. S., Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ, 2006). A study of the long tradition of imputing violence to Jewish celebrations of Purim, including the long history of the Jewish law of 408 and Socrates Scholasticus’s account.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humfress, C., Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007). A detailed and lucid explanation of how law worked in the late Roman Empire, with particular attention to the “forensic” rhetoric that shaped Christian discourses of orthodoxy and heresy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraemer, R. S., The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews (New York, 2020). A careful sifting of the literary, documentary, and material evidence for Jewish life under the Christian Roman Empire which surveys the transformations and survivals dimly visible to us.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linder, A., Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit, MI, 1987). A collection of all extant Roman laws pertaining to Jews and Judaism in their original languages and English translation with introductions, copious notes, and bibliography.Google Scholar
Monnickendam, Y., “Late Antique Christian Law in the Eastern Roman Empire: Toward a New Paradigm,” Studies in Late Antiquity 2 (2018), 40–83. An important essay on comparative legal history bringing together Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Roman legal texts and theories.Google Scholar
Tolan, J., et al., eds., Jews in Early Christian Law: Byzantium and the Latin West, 6th–11th Centuries (Turnhout, 2014). “Law” in these essays encompasses state law (under Rome, the successor states, and Byzantium) as well as canon law and other religious regulations. Of particular importance for this period is the lucid contribution of R. W. Mathisen, “The Citizenship and Legal Status of Jews in Roman Law during Late Antiquity (ca. 300–540 CE).”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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