The Jews of Ancient Rome

by Harry J. Leon, Carolyn Osiek

The Jews of ancient Rome played an interesting and important role during those critical junctures in Jewish and world affairs - when the Jewish State was destroyed, when Judaism and Christianity parted company, and when new diaspora communities were established in the Roman world. The literary sources for the history of the Roman Jews have yielded but little information - certainly not enough for a convincing picture.
Professor Harry J. Leon achieved an authentic portrait of that community by means of thorough investigation of the Jewish catacombs. The brief inscriptions reveal a wealth of significant the language of the people, their labors, their religion, and their manner of life. Many of the inscriptions are reproduced in photographs. The reader, whether layperson or scholar, will find Dr. Leon's synthesis of this information absorbing, as both ancient Rome and the ancient Jewish community come to life.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jarrett Vandiver · Rating 4 out of 5]

My nerdy walk through ancient Roman Jewish catacombs, following my spark of interest after going to Christian catacombs in Rome this summer. This book is super thorough on what it would have been like to have been a Jewish immigrant moving into Ancient Rome, and what their first communities would have been like.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I had thought might be a social history or ethnigraphy turned out to be a statistical analysis of data gathered from ancient Jewish catacombs in and around Rome. This was nevertheless very interesting, albeit it very dry and scholarly.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good review of Roman Jewish history, though outdated and in need of serious qualifications. Most interesting for its summary of Jewish catacomb data.