Review of McDowell et al. (eds.), Diversity and Rabbinization

GENIZA FRAGMENTS BLOG: Book: Diversity and Rabbinization, edited by Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Nadia Vidro).

... Recent research suggests that the majority of post-70 CE Jews in Palestine and in the Diaspora may have been non-rabbinic and understood in many different ways what it meant to be Jewish. How then did it happen that by the second millennium CE most Jews became rabbinic?

This question takes centre stage in a new Open Access book Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE, edited by Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. This collection of articles surveys the cultural and religious diversity in Near Eastern and European Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages and tackles the difficult question of the rabbinization of Jewish society.

I noted the publication of the book here.

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