The Portrayal of Pagan Worship in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient JudaismAuthor: Jesse Mirotznik, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Published: April 2026
Availability: Available
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9781009691970£95.00 GBP
Hardback£95.00 USD
Adobe eBook ReaderDescription
How did Jews in the ancient world depict the practices of their pagan contemporaries? In this study, Jesse Mirotznik investigates the portrayal of pagan worship in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish literature. Scholars have assumed that the portrayals in these corpora are consistent over time. Mirotznik, however, shows that there is a fundamental discontinuity between earlier and later depictions of pagan worship. In the Hebrew Bible, these forms of worship are, for the most part, simply assumed to be sincere. By contrast, in ancient Jewish texts from approximately the end of the third century BCE and onward, such worship is increasingly presented as insincere, performed only instrumentally in the service of an ulterior motive. While the worshipers of other gods seem genuine in their devotion, these texts contend, they too must recognize the folly of such worship.
- The book introduces a distinction between the normative elements of ancient Jewish views of the Other and the descriptive elements
- Introduces the concept of Bad Faith as a lens through which to understand rhetoric about the Other
- Examines the influence of Classical Studies on scholarship in ancient Judaism
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