This course will examine the “births” of “Christianity,” “Judaism,” and “Islam,” and challenge narratives that treat these as three self-evidently separate, internally coherent entities with discrete origin points. We will explore modes of interactions between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval Islamic world, and test the utility of terms like “influence,” “cross-pollination,” “symbiosis,” and family tree metaphors, as well as new conceptual frameworks like Heyden and Nirenberg’s “co-production.”

This course is an investigation of two histories: the history of the Jewish people in Greek and Roman antiquity and the history of ancient imperialism. We will seek to understand how each of these histories can illuminate the other. From the sixth century BCE through to the fifth century CE, Jewish populations lived in the shadow of ancient empires (Persian, Hellenistic Greek, Roman). We will look at how this experience shaped Jewish identity, religion and cultural life. At the same time, the rich record for ancient Jewish history can help us understand how subject peoples experienced and shaped imperial rule. The course will involve readings from Jewish and non-Jewish ancient texts in translation (including from the Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, other apocryphal texts, Josephus, Tacitus, Roman imperial laws) and introductions to the archaeological and documentary evidence for ancient Jewish communities.

Repeat Rules