Review of Hezser (ed.), The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity.

Catherine Hezser, The Routledge handbook of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity. Routledge handbooks. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2024. Pp. 568. ISBN 9781138241220.

Review by
Elsa Laurenzi, Centro Cardinal Bea per gli Studi Giudaici, Pontificia Università Gregoriana. e.laurenzi@unigre.it

This volume brings together 34 papers by 31 contributors, in addition to the editor, to highlight the major issues and debates in the study of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity (from the third to the seventh century C.E.). It analyzes the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as well as internal Jewish developments, both in Roman Palestine and in the diaspora, and compares these two worlds. Its main purpose, as Catherine Hezser remarks in her introduction, is to integrate the study of Jews and Judaism into a more complex and balanced assessment of Late Antiquity, within the wider context of the late Roman, early Byzantine and Sasanian Persian empires, and of the Graeco-Roman, Christian and Zoroastrian cultures, whose interrelationships are based on exchange as well as on competition and conflict.

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I noted the publication of the book here.

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