Diversity and Rabbinization [electronic resource] : Jewish texts and societies between 400 and 1000 CE / edited by Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra.

At foot of cover: University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

At head of front cover: Cambridge Semitic languages and cultures.

Available through Open Book Publishers.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Contributors -- Introduction / Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra -- Part 1. The Synagogue. 1. Diversity in the Ancient Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine Palestine: Historical Implications / Lee I. Levine ; 2. Society and the Self in Early Piyyut / Michael D. Swartz ; 3. Some Remarks about Non-Rabbinic Judaism, Rabbinization, and Synagogal Judaism / José Costa -- Part 2. Evidence for Non-Rabbinic Judaism: The Near East. 4. In Search of Non-Rabbinic Judaism in Sasanian Babylonia / Geoffrey Herman ; 5. Varieties of Non-Rabbinic Judaism in Geonic and Contemporaneous Sources / Robert Brody ; 6. Karaites and Sadducees / Yoram Erder ; 7. The Judaism of the Ancient Kingdom of Ḥimyar in Arabia: A Discreet Conversion / Christian Julien Robin -- Part 3. Evidence for Non-Rabbinic Judaism: Europe. 8. The Didascalus Annas: A Jewish Political and Intellectual Figure from the West / Capucine Nemo-Pekelman ; 9. Rabbis in Southern Italian Jewish Inscriptions from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages / Giancarlo Lacerenza ; 10. Jewish Demographics and Economics at the Onset of the European Middle Ages / Michael Toch -- Part 4. Rabbinization ; 11. The Rabbinization Tractates and the Propagation of Rabbinic Ideology in the Late Talmudic Period / Ron Naiweld ; 12. Who is the Target of Toledot Yeshu? / Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra ; 13. Rabbinization of Non-Rabbinic Material in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer / Gavin McDowell ; 14. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah: Rabbinic Tradition for a Non-Rabbinic Society / Günter Stemberger -- Afterword: Rabbinization and the Persistence of Diversity in Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity / Ra'anan Boustan -- List of Illustrations -- Index.

Open access resource providing free access.

"This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received sufficient attention in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the vantage point of the synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respectively, the Near East and Europe; the final part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of "rabbinization" as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinization is a welcome contribution to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspectives on critical questions and allows us to rethink the tension between multiplicity and unity in Judaism during the first millennium CE."--Publisher's website.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). For more detailed information consult the publisher's website.

This volume contains Hebrew and Syriac text.