Scholastic Culture in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras

Greek, Latin, and Jewish

Sean A. Adams

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783110657876
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110657999
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: History of Christianity
• Index: Literature

The purpose of this volume is to investigate scholastic culture in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, with a particular focus on ancient book and material culture as well as scholarship beyond Greek authors and the Greek language. Accordingly, one of the major contributions of this work is the inclusion of multiple perspectives and its contributors engage not only with elements of Greek scholastic culture, but also bring Greek ideas into conversation with developing Latin scholarship (see chapters by Dickey, Nicholls, Marshall) and the perspective of a minority culture (i.e., Jewish authors) (see chapters by Hezser, Adams). This multicultural perspective is an important next step in the discussion of ancient scholarship and this volume provides a starting point for future inquiries.

Rabbis as Intellectuals in the Context of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Christian Scholasticism

Catherine Hezser

SOAS, University of London, History, Religions & Philosophies, Thornhaugh Street, WC1H 0XG, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

In Roman and early Byzantine times various types of ‘intellectuals’ constructed an image for themselves in distinction to others by socialising in networks of like-minded scholars, by literary expression, and by creating ‘school’ traditions that continued for several generations. Philosophers, sophists, church fathers, monks, and rabbis were involved in continuous attempts to fashion their own identities and to distinguish themselves from others that claimed to possess superior wisdom.¹ Palestinian rabbinic literature of the first five centuries CE participates in this process by presenting rabbis as a particularly Jewish type of intellectual, as scholars among other scholars in the Graeco-Roman cultural environment of the Near East they lived in.² Palestinian rabbis’ self-understanding as scholars or ‘intellectuals’ is not only evident in the use of the term hakhamim, ‘sages’, that equals the Greek sophos, but also in the envisioned settings in which scholarly encounters took place,³ in attitudes towards earlier traditions, in the modes of compilation,⁴ in the ways in which scholarly disputes are presented (see below), in rabbinic succession, and in the memorialisation of scholars through later generations of students.⁵

Before we examine similarities between Palestinian rabbis and Graeco-Roman intellectuals in more detail, it should be noted that Josephus already presents Pharisees as a ‘philosophical school’ (hairesis) alongside other such ‘schools’ within the Graeco-Roman context (cf. Vita 10 – 12).⁶ Since he allegedly joined that ‘school’ himself (Vita 10 – 12), this definition may represent the self-understanding of those Pharisees who, like Josephus, originated from upper-class Hellenised urban environments. As a scholarly community united on ideological grounds, Josephus compares the Pharisaic ‘school’ to ‘the one called Stoic among the Greeks’ (Vita 12). In his Jewish Antiquities Josephus uses the term again and outlines the ‘philosophical’ beliefs and practices of the Pharisees (A.J. 18.2 – 3).

Although rabbis were not the direct successors of Pharisaic Judaism, they acted in a similarly Hellenised context in Roman Palestine.⁷ Especially late antique rabbis who lived in the cities of Tiberias, Sepphoris, and Caesarea, that is, in urban contexts that are likely to have constituted the nodal points for the transmission, collection, and editing of rabbinic traditions,⁸ would have been interested in presenting themselves to their coreligionists and perhaps also to non-Jews as scholars who were equal or superior to Graeco-Roman and Christian intellectuals whom they encountered in daily life. Rather than claiming a direct influence of late antique scholarly models on Palestinian rabbis, I argue that rabbis, philosophers, sophists, and church fathers represented variant versions of late antique intellectual culture that were partly overlapping and partly distinctive, geared at different constituencies. It should be noted, however, that rabbis do not fit the category of scholastic culture as it was understood from the time of the Renaissance onwards, with its image of the isolated scholar who contemplated metaphysical and philological issues in a merely theoretical way.⁹ Their learning was closely linked to daily life and involved practical implementation as much as theoretical discussions with students and colleague-friends.¹⁰

The Social Contexts of Rabbinic and Graeco-Roman Intellectual Pursuits

Can late antique rabbis be defined as intellectuals? The answer to this question obviously depends on what we mean by ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intellectualism’ in antiquity. As Rita Copeland has already pointed out, ‘[a]ntiquity had no word for intellectuals… When historians of antiquity or the Middle Ages approach the question of intellectuals, it is always in terms of the formation of the social concept of...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Themes in Ancient Scholarship
• Scholastic Research in the Archive? Hellenistic Historians and Ancient Archival Records
• Circulation of Lexica in the Hellenistic and Early Imperial Period
• ‘Bookish Places’ in Imperial Rome: Bookshops and the Urban Landscape of Learning
• Towards a Typology of the Ancient Latin Legal Book
• New Readings in the Text of Herodian
• What does a Linguistic Expert Know? The Conflict between Analogy and Atticism
• Suetonius the Bibliographer
• Translating Texts: Contrasting Roman and Jewish Depictions of Literary Translations
• Rabbis as Intellectuals in the Context of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Christian Scholasticism
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Works Cited