Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity

by Karen B. Stern

What ancient graffiti reveals about the everyday lives of Jews in the Greek and Roman world

Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings of Philo and Josephus and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and Talmud. Commissioned art, architecture, and formal inscriptions displayed on tombs and synagogues equally reflect the sensibilities of their influential patrons. The perspectives and sentiments of nonelite Jews, by contrast, have mostly disappeared from the historical record. Focusing on these forgotten Jews of antiquity, Writing on the Wall takes an unprecedented look at the vernacular inscriptions and drawings they left behind and sheds new light on the richness of their quotidian lives.
Just like their neighbors throughout the eastern and southern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt, ancient Jews scribbled and drew graffiti everyplace--in and around markets, hippodromes, theaters, pagan temples, open cliffs, sanctuaries, and even inside burial caves and synagogues. Karen Stern reveals what these markings tell us about the men and women who made them, people whose lives, beliefs, and behaviors eluded commemoration in grand literary and architectural works. Making compelling analogies with modern graffiti practices, she documents the overlooked connections between Jews and their neighbors, showing how popular Jewish practices of prayer, mortuary commemoration, commerce, and civic engagement regularly crossed ethnic and religious boundaries.

Illustrated throughout with examples of ancient graffiti, Writing on the Wall provides a tantalizingly intimate glimpse into the cultural worlds of forgotten populations living at the crossroads of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, and earliest Islam.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

Published June 19, 2018

Reviews

[Michel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers an unusual subject that has become progressively more in-fashion in the last 10 years. Karen Stern discusses the implications of the graffiti likely left by Jews in multiple dimensions: graffiti to communicate about God, graffiti near graves, graffiti as a social statement in civil society, and, finally, a section rethinking modern graffiti in the context of antique graffiti.

I enjoyed the book and the pictures. I was particularly impressed by some specific examples given by the book, and by some limited statistics that were provided. The analysis appeared solid, and did not go too far beyond what the data could reasonably support. I was hoping for more: more dimensions of analysis, use of more statistics to understand better the data we have... I was left hungry for more data when done with the book.

I am looking to reading more about the subject, and counting on the fact that more data will be found. It seems to me that there is much more analysis left to go.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judaism does not lack written documents from ancient times – writings that were usually produced by the elite of the society. The thoughts of the non-elite were rarely passed down through the generations, leaving scholars to puzzle how this group may have differed from those who could afford to pay and/or produce written text and artwork. However, as Karen B. Stern notes in “Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity” (Princeton University Press), one form of communication by the non-elite did manage to survive, although the material has been studied far less than that of the rabbinic elite. That format was graffiti – both textual and pictorial representations that appeared on the wall of synagogues, tombs, market places, municipal buildings and other areas people gathered.
Read the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...