Jordan D. Rosenblum. The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, 2016.Excerpt:
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World, Rosenblum is meticulous in contextually analyzing his evidence, from Hellenistic Jewish sources such as Philo of Alexandria, who overwhelms with allegorical readings of these laws, while continuing to recommend their practice, to Christians such as Clement, who “is more interested in teasing out the moral application of the laws than in the literal practice thereof” (153). Rosenblum’s thorough approach to his sources, coupled with his tight focus on questions of justification of these laws, make this book invaluable as both a reference for the varieties of interpretive approaches to Jewish eating in Antiquity and as a methodological model for comparative analysis of quite disparate materials, across Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources.I noted an earlier review of the book here.
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