2002 - Gruen - Everywhere at Home

8/13/2019 2002 - Gruen - Everywhere at Home

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ts, and

hat four or eight years of Repub-ied by such extreme efforts to keep itsenerosity fro m public scrutiny, will pre-are the American public to appreciatehy government is necessary and why itsolicies must, above allelse,befair.The next chapter in tb e way our politicsreats the rieh and the poor is unlikely toake the forms th atit hastaken in the past.If Kevin Phillips's book is any indication,populism has run out ofgas.No crediblecoalition ean be built on the basis ofnationalistic anger in this age of globaleapitalism, lea\dng populists sputteringwdthimpotentrage.A nd if Michael Moorespeaks for what passes for the Americanlefthe mustbespeaking for someone, as

bis book is a best-sellerno help canbe expected from that quarter either. Butthis should be taken as a sign of hoperather than a sign ofdespair.It opens tbe

political territory' for a challenge from aRoosevelt-style Republican sueh as JohnMcCain. It also suggests to Democratsthat theywdllneedtoaddre ss direetly, andwdth considerable passion, the war ^ing ofpriorities that occurs when governmentshifts so decisively in favor ofthe rich .Neither task will be easy. For McCain,it would mean, as it did for TheodoreRoosevelt, a break with his own partynot exactly the easiest path to the presi-dency. For Dem ocrats, it means findin g away to capitalize on the gains tbat Clin-ton's centrism bequeathed to the part\'while breaking with his all-too-frequentsubsei'vience to big business, a trick thatno potential D emocratic candidate for the2004 nomination has yet pulled off. Butthere is every reason to believe that thereexists a hunger for leadership in Americaeven though not much leadership is ine\ddenee. Finding ways to do what seemsdifficult if not impossible is a crucialaspect of leadership. Any Republican orDenioerat eapable of overcoming thoseodds would, if elected, be in a good posi-tiontorepair the damage do ne by the elee-tion of 20 00 and its aftermath.

verywhere at HomeF R E D R I K S E N

Diaspora:Jews Am idst Greeks and Rom ansby Erich S. Gruen(Harvard Un iversityPress,3 86pp., 39.95)

XILE, DISPLACEMENT, wan-dering, loss: in Biblieal ti 'a-dition and in later rabbiniccommentary, in the medievalpoems of Yehudab ha-Leviand the modern politieal screeds ofTheodor Herzl, the idea of diaspora hasdom inated Jew ish identity. In its religiousmode, "diaspora," perceived as punitive,has served as a penitential devdce. Thepeople sin, and God uses foreign armies(Babylonians for the first exile, Romansfor tbe second exile) as the instrum ents ofbis WTath,tocallthe peopletorepentance.In its secular m ode, "diaspora" has servedas Zionism's foil. Modem Jews renouneetheir exile, take control of their history.PAULA FREDRI KSENisahistorian ofancient Christianity at B oston University.Her new book,Augustine and the Jewswdllbe published by Doubleday.

and re-found their commonwealth intheir own land.In both equations, guiltisaconstant: in the first instance, guilt about"causing" the d iaspora; in the second, guiltabout choosingto livethere.Few ideas ean give so mueh eohereneeto so many centuriestwenty-five, to beexaetof Jewish experience.Yetthis con-struct, as Erich S. Gruen points o ut, has aproblem : it is historically false. Eloqu ent-ly, learnedly, persuasively, Gruen invitesthe reader of his new book to considerfamiliar evidence from the .Jewdsh pastfrom a newone might say a non-diasporaperspeetive. His point is sim-ple,but its historieal implications are pro-found. As he observes, in the nearly fourhundred years that stretch betweenAlexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.E.) andtbe em peror Ne ro (d. 6'8 C.E.), Jews couldbe found in large numbers, and in well-established communities, throughout the

Mediterranean. Neither militaiy compul-sion nor the vicissitudes of capti\dty badbrought most of them to those places. Tostate the point a liftle difierently: theRoman destruction of Jerusalem and itsTemple in 70C.E.did notcausethe seconddiaspora. Many ancient Jewsprobablymost aneient Jewsbad by that pointlived outside the land of Israel for een-turies. Tbey did so, evidently, beeausethey wanted to do so.Why did these Jews leave their home-land? Whatwerethey doing abroad? Howdid they continue to live as Jews and,thus,to th ink of themselves as Jews? Andhow did their non-Jewdsh neighbors livewith and think of them? Tbe answers toeach of these questions are various andsurprising. Various, because no blanketexplanation (like that conjured by invok-ing the idea of aneient "anti-Semitism")can speaktoso many different local situa-tions. Suiprising, because this vast andvigorous Mediterranean Jewdsh civiliza-tion, a m ajor force in the development ofWestem culture, has been until recentlyalmost invisible to th e non-specialist.

THIS INVISIBILITYISitselfasignif-icant part of the story. Its reasonsare linked to each other, and to th eBible. The two major religious traditionsthat descended from this periodGentileChristianity and rabbinic and post-rabbinic Judaism-have constructed theirrespective historieal identities and tbeirrespective scriptural canons in ways tliatcaused these ancient Jews to disappear.Consider,for example, the double canonofthe Christians, the Old and New Testa-ments.These concentrateon eventsoccur-ring in and around territoria Israel. Thetrajectoiy of the Christian hiblical storystretchesfr omAdamtoAbraham throug hMoses to David, then to the pro phets, andthen to Jesus of Nazareth. The narrativetime of the Old Testament stops some-where in the mid-fifth century B.C.E.,w-hen exiles retu rnin g iironi Babylon try toreconstitute their lives back in Jerusalem .(Some texts, sueh as Daniel and Esther,were in fact written later, but they presen tthemselvesasmuch earlier.) The narrativetime of the New Testament begins withthe birth of Jesusaround 4 B.C.E. ifyou rely on Mafthew", around 6 C.E. ifyourely onLuke.T he Greek-speaking Jews ofthe western diaspora simply vanish intothis four-century-long narrative lacunabetween the Testaments. The loss is notwithout irony, for the Gospels and the let-ters of Paulthe eore eanon ofth e Christ-ian Testamentare the literaiy productsof this effaced comm unity.

Jewdsh religious memory does no bet-ter. Judaism , too, has a double canon. TbeTanakhthe biblical scripturesinHebrew


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comprising tbefive books ofMoses{Torah), theprophets {Nevi ini), andsundry writings (Ketuvi ifn)~iormsthe o lder p ortion . .Jewish biblicjil n ar-rative ends with the end ofthe Baby-lonian exile, in the 530s B.C.E.,though other writings within the col-lection takethestory uptopost-exile.Jerusalem.Thenewer portionoftheJewish canon is the Talmud, the vastantholog}' of rabbinical traditionsin H ebrew or its linguistic cousin Ara-maic.The earliest Talmudic text,theMishnah, was redacted around200C.E.; the Gemara (later com mentarieson the Mishntih), redacted separatelyin I'alestineandBabylonin the fifthand sixth centuries C.E.,completesthe collection. To close the gap of theslx-pluH centuries between 2Chroni-cles (thebustbook of the Tanakb) andthe Misbnah (the oldest part of thcTalmud),therabbis invoked ora tra-dition. Thc torah ("teaching") thatMoses did no t write down hes]3oketoJoshua, whoin turn passedit to thcciders,whogaveit to theprophets,who then gaveit to the sages. I heterminus of tliis oral Torah, saidthcrabbis,was themselves.

As now,so then: most Jews werenotrabbinicJews.Butunlike their kinsm eninother Jewish subcultures, thc rabbis artic-ulated their social and religious visionthrough ahuge, compelling,andcoordi-nated body of writing that became a vitaliterary legacy. Eventually the movementformed academies whose students dis-seminated rabbinic learning and practicewidely. By the High MiddleAges,rabbinieJudaism was Judaism toutcourt Thc pat-rimony of Hellenistic Judaism , in the rab -binie view, had been hijacked by theGcnti es, now embodied in the hostilechurch,who had based theirOldTesta-ment on the Septuagint. (A late traditionin the Ta mud recounts thaton thc daythc Biblewas translated into Greektheangelswept:heaven had foreseen this dis-aster.) Themediumof"authentic" tradi-tion, then , was Hebrew. Thus th e rabbinicJewish commxmity, which might mostnaturally iave been expeetedtopresencesomething of the social and religiouslegacy of its Greek-speaking sibling, for allpractical purposes erasedit.

The third reason forthe virtual invisi-bilityofthe Jewsoft ie ancient westerndiaspora is the overwhelming impactthat theyhad on all ofsubsequentEur-opean culture. What impact, andbow?Since they were Jews, they had the Bible.WhenLheymigrated West, and their ver-nacular shittedtoGreek, their scripturesshifted with them. By about the year 200B.C.K.,Jews in Alexandria had com pletedthe trtuislationuf their sacred texts:the

You Made Me Read You AndI Didn t Want To Do tAtfirst thcpage wasonlyafurnished room.Youwere theonewhofurnishedit.Ared couch gaudyas aparty mask.Crooked shelving.And then, afterabit,weathercmneinto the room.The dou ds "skittering,"you wrote, "like suds."Andso weprouounced your novelakiu to au ancientIrave guidewith its fussy certainty about fares,iidequatehotels,loeal cisterns.H(iwcan't the bookbe shyhefore onr eyes?It's our fault, nut the book's.Itwas soembarviissed forus.

Lee Upton

Tanakh had become the Septuagint. Thusthe idiosyncratic revelations of the Jewsof a God who ereated th e entire universe;who refused to be worshiped throughimages;wholinked socialethics,religiousritual, jurispruden ce, sexitalandalimen-tary prescriptions, tinic-keepiiig, torts,and taxes in his commandments;whochose Israelandwho promised redemp-tion to his people and indeed to the wholeworldeameto hebi'oadcast in the in-ternational linguistic frequency. The Godof Israel, through theSeptuagint,con-quered tbe West. No Greek-speakingdiaspora,noSeptuagint.NoSeptuagint,no Christianity. No Christianity, no West-ern civilization. This Hellenistic Jewishcommunity hasbeen invisibleto all buthistorical cognoscentiinpartas aconse-quence of its cultural success.

SoWERETURN to our q uestio n: w howere these people?And what werethey doingsofar from home?Ancient wartare,asGruen pointsout,regularly involved deportati(jn and dis-location. Conquered peoples eould sufferforced resettlement elsewhere; slave trad-ers routinely aeeompanied armies;warproduced refugees. Jews, like other peo-ples in an age of empire, migrated becausethey were eoin]:)e led tomigrate, becausethey were deported. But, again like otherpeoples, Jews aiso migrated because theywanted tomigrate. They were enticedbythe wider horizons and the increasedopportunities ibr tnide that, empire alsobrought.

One post-Alexandrian king movtvvo thousand Jewish families frMesopotamia to garrison coloniesAsia Minor. They relocated volunily, with inducements, assupporof the regime. Aetive service in feign militaries,asmereenariesorenlisted men. also aided Jewishsettlement. Opportunities in businand agriculture beckoned, and .Jewlikeothersresponded. And in Rothe Jewish population there by eliovvas incre^used when Jewish slavbrouglit Westin thew'akeofKomvietories in Judea, were eventuamanumitted and took their plaeethe cit\- iis freedmen. 1MaccabeeJewish text eoniposcd in thelate .ond century B.C.E., mentionssustantial western Jewish populatioin Egypt, Syria, the eities and tprincipalities ofAsiaMinor (roughmodern Turkey),theAegean islanCireeee jiroper, Crete, Cyprus. C\'roThe Aetsofthc Apostles,a late tieentury C.K.text in the New Tement, claims that Jews eame pilgrimage to .Jerusalem from allcnersofthe world: "I'arthians, Med

Elamites ... men of Cappadoeia, ofPOtusandAsia,ofPhrygia. and PamphylStrabo,theancient historian and geogpher and the elder contemporary of Jeof Nazareth, noted that "this people hmade its way into every city,and it is easy to Itnd anyplaee in tbe habitaworld which has not reeeived [the m]. "Ancient cities were religious institions.Theworkiugs ofgovernment,tprocess ofeducation, the public expenee of art and eultureinvarious LlieaI'al, nuisieal, and athletic curnpetiti{)ns:these activities, whiehwethink ofii-sselar and thus religious y neutra , werefact embedded in traditional w orship. Tgods looked after th e city; and tlie citizetoensure the eitj's well-being, lookedathe gods. Processions, hymns, libatioblood sacrifices, eommunat drinking aeating: a these were thoug httoeontrute direetiytothe well-beingofthe co

monw ealth. (In our term s, these aetiviwere authorizedin the defense budgThese forms of worship expressed aereated tlie bonds that bound citiztogether, and established the necessrelations with powertul patri:)ns bcelestial and imperial, sinee rulers,towere deities. Pub ie picLy was theinof patriotism.Living in foreign eities thus putJein a potentially awkward position.Teveryone else, Jews had their own anetral god; but unlike anyone else, Jewerein principle restrictedto worship(inly that god. Some pagan obsei-veommented irritably on this tact,eo


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plaining of Jewish disloyalty, or at least ofJewish discourtesy. But ancient religious-ness wasmuchmoreflexible th anitsmod-ern avatars. Respect for ancestral tradi-tion was the bedrock of Mediterraneanreligious, politieal, an d legal cu lture, bothpagan and Jewish. Thus ancient paganswere prepared to respect Jewish religiousdifference, and even to make social andlegal allowances ibr it, precisely becauseof Judaism's antiquity and ethnicity. Andancient Jews, though they were as con-vinced as the next ethnic group of theintrinsic superiority of their own customsand rites, respected pagan religious differ-ence, too. Contacteven fairly intimatecontact, such as worshiping and eatingtogetherdid not lead to missionaryefforts to convert the heathen, who were,after all,the vast majority of humank ind.

H ow DID JEWS and pagans "wor-ship'" together? Participation incivic culture was itself a kind ofworshipthough,asGruen illuminatinglypoints out, .lews had many choices be-tween the extremes of isolationist pu rity oroutright apostasy. IndividualJewsbecamemembers of the cit}' councils where theylived, despite the p rotocols of pagan wor-ship that were attached to such service:they negotiated exemptions and foundwaysto serve both their eity and the tra di-tionsoitheh- phylos(tribe)orgenos (race,nation). Eventually, once Rome oversawthe entire Mediterranean, sueh exemp-tionswerewritten into imperial law.Jewish adolescents received good Greekeducations in their cities'gymnaMa andjoined the ranksof ephebes,young adoles-cent males whose municipal duties in-eluded participation in the competitionsoffered to traditional gods. Their train-ing inpaidciahigh eultural learning-emphasized rhetorie, musie, and philoso-phy as well as athletics; and here Jewsparticipated, ascontestants and as spec-tators, in the contests that displayed ex-cellence in all parts of this eurriculum.(Again, given th e religious na ture of theseevents, the mod ern analogy- is less to theSuper Bowl or to Carnegie Ha tha n toHigh Mass.) Wealthy Jews sponsoredgames, such as the Olympics, that werededicatedtoGreekgods.Jewssei-vedGen-tile rulers as advisers and generals. Andwhile Jews did not join actively in theruler cults native to He llenistic and , later,Roman political eulture, they dedicatedtheir synagoguestotheir paganrulers,andprayed not to them bu t for them .Two institutions, one proximate, onedistant, served to express and to inculcateJewish identity within these far-flungGentile communities while providingyet another context for shared social andreligious activity. The proximate institu-

tion was the synagogue. In a particularlyrich chapter, Gruen surveys the variedevidenceliterary, ep igraphical, arch aeo-logicalattesting to the ubiquit}'and thevitality of this peculiarly Jewish organiza-tion. Remnants of these foundations havebeen recovered in settlements stretchingfrom Italy to Syria, from the Black Sea toNorth Africa.Synagogemight designate the assem-bly of the local Jewish communityitselfwhile another term, proseuehe ("prayerhouse"), specifically implies a building.Synagogues shunned standardization, asGruen obsei-ves: no uniform pattern oforganization ean be teased from the his-torical record sueh as it is. Yet eertaineommon activities seem clearly attested.Synagogues served as a 1ype of ethnicreading-house, where Jews could assem-ble onedayou t of seventohear instructionin their ancestral laws. Rulers granted tosvTiagogLies the status of serving as placesof asylum. Synagogues sponsored commu-nal fasts, feasts, and celebrations, and theyserved as an archive for community' rec-ords and as collecting points for funds tobe sent to the Temple in Jerusalem. Theysettled issues of community' interest-announ cing th e calendar of festivals, nego-tiating access to appropriate foodstuffs,adjudicating disputesand served, as didloca pagan tem ples, as places to enact and

to record the manum ission ofslaves.Theyhoused schoo s, political assemblies, andtribunals. They had officers (women aswell as men), administrators, an d steeringcommittees. They sponsored fimd drives,and they honored conspicuous philan-thropy with public inscriptions.An intriguing number of these bigdonors were not Jews at all. They werepagans. Given the capacious character ofthe ancient Mediterranean society, thismakes sense. The ethn ic and religious dis-tinctiveness of the synagogue entailed nosocial isolation, and the religious tem-perament and practice of majority culturewere famously eatholie. Interested pagansinvolved themselves in synagogue activi-ties, including listening to the storiesand t he psalms of Jewish tradition , whichwere, after all, delivered in Greek. WhileJews might have scruples about worship-ing pagangods,no such scruples inhibitedGentile worship ofIsrael'sGod.Loeal pol-iticsas well as the presumptions nativeto this culture in its pagan and its Jewishmodes, namely, that gods traveled in theblood, and so eaeh people naturally hadits own godsexplains why diasporaJews would weleome such participation,andwhythey would impose no demand ofexclusive worship (given to them alone bytheir God) on interested Gentiles.Pagan benefactions to the Jewish

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community met with gratefal publicacknowledgment. One especially strikinginscription, from Acmonia in Phrygia,recalls the earlier generosity of a first-century Roman noblewoman named JuliaSevera. Tbis distinguisbed lady, a bighpriestesy of tbe imperial cult (thus publiclyresponsible for the worship accorded theJulian emperors), had evidently erectedthe synagogue buildingitself.Wlien laterJewish benefactors restored the building,tbey were bonored in tbeir turn in goodGreek fashion witb a decree and a gildedshield. As Gnicn n otes, the conventionswere Greco-Roman; the objectives wereJewish.The institution distant from these dias-pora communitieswhich nonethelessservedtofocuslocalJewish identity and toinspire the atlmiration and tbe participa-tion of interested Gentileswas the Tem-ple in Jerusalem. The Jewish militarycolony in Elephan tine in Egypt had had atemple there, perhaps as far back as tbesixth century B.C.E.; four centuries later,Jerusalem priests disaffected from theMaccabean enterprise founded anothertemple, modeled on Solomon's, also inEgypt, in Leontopolis. And Josepbus, tbeJewish historian contemporary witb tbeevangelists, alludes to perhaps anotherextraterritorial temple in Transjordan. Nomatter. Jerusalem was tbe holy place tha tcommanded the loyalty and thc pride ofthe far-flung nation. It was to Jerusalemthat Jews journeyed to celebrate tbe pil-grimage holidays, and it was to Jerusalemthat communities everywhere voluntarilypaid an annual contribution to defray theoperating costs of tbe Temple.

The sheer volume of different types ofevidence concerning this tax and theenormous amounts of money (throughindividually tiny donations) that it annu-ally raised is perhaps tb e best index of thewidespread loyalty to the Temple. Jewsthroughout the Mediterranean soughtlegal protection to guaran tee their right tocollect and to send this donation: tbeircities of residence, tempted by the quan-tities of casb thus collected, occasionallyattempted to appropriate tbe fiinds formore local use. But pagan rulers h onoredJewish ancestral custom, and tis a resultof these voluntaiy donations, Jerusalemran in tbe black for as long as tbe Templestood.Under Herod, wbo was king of Judeafrom 37 to 4 B.C.E., the Temple reachedits acme of splendor. He expanded thearea aroimd the sanctuary- to some thirty-five acres,enclosed by a magnificent wallrunning nine-tenths of a mile along tbeperimeter. The internal organization ofsacred spaceconcentric courtyards ofvarious sizesarticulated tbe social reali-ties of Me diterraneanpublicworship. Tbe

empty innerm ost sanctum w as given overto th e people's God; and next, for his ser-vice, stood the altar in the court of bispriests. Circumscribing the priests wasthe court for Jewisb males; and just out-side tbat, the women's court. But thewhole was surrounded by the vast andbeautifial stone tundra of the Gentiles'Court, or Court oftheNations.As in diaspora synagogues, so in tbeTemple in Jerusalem: pagans as paganshad a place to worship Israel's GodinJerusalem, in the largest court ofall.Th epriests mean while mad e offerings at God'saltar on behalf of the imperial family andtbe Empire. TVaditional piety, nationalpride,intemational politics, tourism, pub -lic pomp: it all came together in Herod'sextraordinary building. Tbe synagogue,then, was neither a substitute for nor acompetitor to the Temple. Both institu-tions served to strengthen, coordinate,inculcate, and express Jewish identity inall its multiplicity, and in its unan imity.

G RUEN PRESENTS HIS trc.nchantanalysis of four centuries ofdias-pora Jewisb experience in twocycles. The first, Jewish Life in the Dias-pora, sur\'eys discrete communitiesJews in Rom e, in Alexandria, and in AsiaMinorconcluding witb a chapter ana-lyzing civic and sacral institutions, andhow Jews participated in or maintainedthese. His storytellingisas gripping as hisinterpretation . Jewish life in each of theselocales was hardly untroubled. In Rome,elusive evidence indicates various expul-sions and actions against the communityin the period between 139 B.C.E. and 49C.E. In Alexandria, anti-.Iewish violenceconvulsed the cily in 38 C.E. and again,sometbiitj'years later, in the wake of tberevolt against Rome. Cities in smMinoroccasionally impounded Jewish funds orsuspended or abridged privileges thattheir Jewish residents bad long ago nego-tiated. The universe was not friction-free.But Gruen puts these incidents into theiroverarching Greco-Romancontext andsohe understands them inwaysthat contrastsharply with earlier traditions of academicwTiting {jnJewish life in this p eriod.

Where other w riters have seen vaguelysystemic, readily identifiable ancient anti-Semitism, Gruen sees various localsporadic episodes, variously motivated.Much of the Roman evidence, regardedfrom th eangleof senatorial politics, seemsmore like posturing for reasons of statethan concerted and spcciflcally anti-Jewish activit}'.The Roman govemment,be concludes, engaged in no systematicpersecution ot Jewsnor indeed any per-secution at all; and Roman salon culturcwas not so much anti-Jewish but anti- foreign. Life in Rome, for Rome's Jewish

citizens, was stable and secure.In Alexandria, a particularly toxic cofiguration of Greek anti-Roman resement and Egyptian nativist agitation tgeted Jewish residents w hen the politifortunes of the Roman governor flucated wildly in tb e transfer of power froTiberius to Caligula. All hell broke looOrder was restored only eventually, undClaudius, and only after some beads (cluding the governor's) badrolled.'ITielence was unprecedented, but its sourcwere over-determined. Some pagan Alandrians complained, reasonably enougthat Jewisb Alexandrians tailedtoworsAlexandria's gods and therefore were nentitled to full citizenship. Claudius edently concurred, re-affirniing the Jewestablished rights and urging them notpush for more. Gruen's scrupulous reviof the imperfect evidence enhances conclusion: Anti-Semitism [was] not tissue here.So,too, with the situation in com muties in Asia Minor. Set within the largcontext of political relations between tcapital city and tbe provincesespeciain periods when Roman strongmen btled each other for power in the seesaofcivilwarwhat has been presentedancient pagan anti-Semitism seems moplausibly construed as local happestance . The Jews of Asia rarely requirdefense against the Greeks, Gruen oser\'es. 'And the Romans had bigger fto fr>'. In bis summary c hapter on ciand sacral institutions in the diasporagjTimasia and synagogues, town councand temples, baths, ephebates, am phitbatersGruen concludes with an overviof social life, and of the ways .Tews apagans interacted, intimately and irecally, not always but mostly, in thc citwhose life they shared.

THE SECOND CYCLE of Grucstudy explores .Jewish Con struof Diaspora Life, tbat is, the wathat Greek-speaking Jews used thc coventions of Hellenistic culturc to descrithat culture and their place in it. Hre\iew begins with an investigation Jewisb humor in two modes: historifictions (Esther, Tobit, Judith, S usannMaccabees) and biblical recreations (Ttament of Abraham, Testament of Joworks by Artapanus). Eew things kiljoke as fast as analyzing it; and the creation of tone from a written text, all readers ofe-mailknow, can be a tricbusiness. Yet the parade of charactpopulating these talesstimningly beatiful Jewish alpha females, overworkangels, deeply stupid Gentile potentatdeeply stupid Gentile generals, htscivio.Jewish elders, smart young Jewlawyers, herds of drunken elephants (


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genre of humor: Jewish foiblesas often

ors felt freeto exposethe blemishesof

enemies." The implication of Gruen'sat themselves less.Gruen's discussion of Jewish constructsGreeks and Hellenism, the chapter that

e emergesagain:what theGreeksgot rightHow so? Here other fictionsprolif-

Alost Greek translation of theh w riter has Abraham as the bring-

ent for su perior antiquity', in a cul-

at Ptolemy'srequest:he wanted

e Egyptians and the Greeks, but ofMosesteachesmusic toOrpheus.

s, Euripides, and other h eroes of

Jews neither rejected not adoptedthey thoug ht was best in Greek cul-

and m ade it Jewish.RUEN CONCLUDES HI Swith a lucid and powerful consid-eration of the place occupied by

that h aunt Jewish history and set theearly Rom an p eriod. We loseGreeks,Romans,

Semitism, or religious tolerance or intol-erance, provide the plumbline of histori-cal interpretation.One fundamental aspect of ancient re-ligion, for example, is its tie to ethnicity.All ancient peoples had their own gods.These gods dwelled in various locales-Olympus, Jerusalem, Deloson earth andin heaven; and they were passed withinethnic groups from one generation to thenext. Forthisreason,totranslateioud iosas "Jew" already risks d istortion. "Judean"might work better. Their aniconism andtheir exclusiveness of worship set Jewsapart; but their allegiance to particulardietary and ritual traditions, to revealedcalendars, to their God's Temple and hisholy cityall designated, with brain-numbing tone-deafriess, as "nationalism"bymany students of the New T estam ent-just makes them ancient people.If individual peoples had their particu-lar gods, moreover, then successful em-pire meant that many gods by definitionexisted within asinglepolitical bound ary.Ancient culture, in other words, did notpractice "religious tolerance." It presup-posed religious difference.To seeviolencebetween ethnic groups as outbreaks ofreligious "intolerance" is to misdescribethe phenomenon, to bring it tenden-tiously into line with modern phenom-ena. It obscures the novelty and theanomaly of principled religious persecu-tion when it does come, long centuriesafterthisperiod.Finally, the focus on Jewish resettle-ment as displacement masks the priormigration that caused it and indeed madeit possible: the Greek diaspora thatbroug ht th e Jeviish one in tow. Alexanderthe Great's conquests contributed to thewholesale resettlements of Greek veter-ans, merchants, and travelers in his newterritories. Like a magnet, they drewnew immigrants with them, amongthem ancientJews.For these Jews, Greekculture became their own, despite thoseaspects of it that, in their view, the paganshad gotten wrong. Loyalty to the home-land, devotion to the ancestral templethese commitments were normal amongall immigrant groupsco-existed withloyalty to their cities of residence. Jeru-salem, said the first-century Jewishphilosopher Philo,was theJews'metropo-lis;bu t Alexandria, for him andhisimme-diate community, was their patris their"patrimony" and hom e.The concept of diaspora as an insecure,doleftil, and punitive mode of existencewasthe creation ofalatertime,and of w olater religious cultures: second-eenturyGentile Christianity and late second-century rabbinic Judaism. Some GentileChristians, defining themselves and theirnew communities over and against the

synagogue, read their sacredtext the Sep-tuagint, in increasingly anti-Jewish ways.Current events seemed to confirm theirview: why would God have let Romedestroy the Temple (in 70 C.E.) or Jeru-salem itself (in 135) unless he, too, con-demned the Jews? And why did he con-demn the Jews, if not for their refusalto beeome, in effect. Gentile Christians?Rome, they said, as Babylon earlier, hadbeen the agent of God's will: Israel wasnow in exile forever for having refusedChrist. Therabbis,meanwhile, also had tomake sense of a world where Hadrian'spagan Aelia sat on top of what had onceheen Jerusalem. They, too, turned to theirreligious traditio n for answers. And they,too, saw in the central biblical event ofthe Babylonian Captivity a spiritual m odelfor present reality. Israel's sin had drivenGod, once again, to punish Israel: onceagainuntil he sent a redeemer, the mes-siah, to gather them upGod had drivenhis people into exile. The world becamecaptivity, galut.Hellenistic Jews,as Gruen importantlyargues, would not have recognized theirown existence from these later descrip-tions.Rather they thrived in the centuriesthat preceded these eventsand theythrived for centuries afterward, until tar-geted by the late Roman imperial church.For these Jews, the difference betweentheir ancestral homeland and their cur-rent homeland was neither a dichotomynor a contradiction. It was a fact of theirexistence that th eyembraced.

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