Review of Stebnicka, Identity of the Diaspora

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

Krystyna Stebnicka, Identity of the Diaspora: Jews in Asia Minor in the Imperial Period. JJP Supplement, 26. Warszawa: Journal of Juristic Papyrology, 2015. Pp. xi, 380. ISBN 9788393842568. €60.00.

Reviewed by Søren Lund​ Sørensen​, Freie Universität Berlin​ (josephus70@zedat.fu-berlin.de)
Table of Contents

The book under review is a translation of Krystyna Stebnicka’s work published in Polish in 2011.

In the introduction (3-13) Stebnicka concisely addresses the issue of sources. No preserved literary texts can with certainty be said to have been written by Jews of Asia Minor, and the scholar is thus heavily reliant on non-literary texts, i.e. the many inscriptions collected in IJO II.1 Ameling’s corpus, Paul Trebilco’s monograph on Jews in Asia Minor 2 and more recent studies have shown how different the Jewish communities were in the various diasporas. This, then, serves to justify the present study, which seeks to ask questions concerning Jewish identity in the diaspora of Asia Minor.

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