This is part of a 2024 Association for Jewish Studies panel celebrating the publication of Gross, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge Press, 2024). Read the full forum here.UPDATE: I noted the first five essays in the series here and links.... But full solar eclipses, blue moons, and other signs and wonders do happen, with passing rarity. Simcha Gross’s book is that most unlikely occurrence: a first book that actually makes a big revisionist argument, in a structurally elegant and above all largely convincing way. I will not provide a full summary here, but would like to note some things that stood out for me. ...
Let me note some sections that I found especially impressive. Simcha attacks head-on the assumptions that have always informed historiography on Jews in Sasanian Babylonia—among them that the Jews had substantial group-wide autonomy because the empire was organized in corporations, and the king devolved authority onto the leaders of the constituent groups. ...
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