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Monday, August 12, 2024

Review of the Irshai Festschrift

ּBRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Essays on Jews and Christians in late antiquity in honour of Oded Irshai.
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Martin Goodman, Essays on Jews and Christians in late antiquity in honour of Oded Irshai. Cultural Encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, 40. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. Pp. 308. ISBN 9782503602455.

Review by
Andrew S. Jacobs, Harvard Divinity School. andrew@andrewjacobs.org

“The world of late antiquity” as a field of study since the 1970s is, perhaps, too often associated with a few specific Anglophone sites of elaboration and primarily with the intersections of early Christian studies (or, in another register, “patristics”) and post-Roman history (or, in another register, “classics”). The present volume, a Festschrift for Hebrew University professor Oded Irshai, is a salutary reminder that creative and generative thinking about late antiquity emerges from other, polyglot sites and can just as easily center Jews and Judaism alongside their Christian and “pagan” neighbors. ...

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