From the Maccabees to the Mishnah

by Shaye J.D. Cohen

fester

First,

Second,

Third,

“blood libel,”

bestow

Most of them, like the vast majority of the people of antiquity, were very poor.

cursed

The Christians, too, were accused of atheism, and since they could not defend their refusal by appeal to ancestral custom, they were persecuted.

but anti-Judaism did.

The persecution of Judaism by Epiphanes, the attack on Alexandrian Jewry by the mob, and the destruction of the temple by Titus were each caused by local factors and not by some deep-rooted “anti-Judaism.”

was the age of philo-Judaism (love of Judaism) as well as anti-Judaism, of conversion to Judaism as well as hatred of Judaism.

birth (natio

expelled

“resident alien”

All of these are landless and powerless, and all are the potential victims of abuse.

European analogy is the Turkish labore...

Greece (known as metics)

organized as clans, not tribes.

The Jews began to redefine themselves as a culture, a way of life, a religion, and it was Judaism, not the religion of preexilic Israel, that prohibited intermarriage but permitted conversion.

refrain

Intermarriage was a threat to the religious community.

Several prophets predicted that in the end of days, foreigners would join in the worship

another

even predicted that some gentiles would become priests and Levites (Isa. 66:21)!

So he was circumcised, and joined the house of Israel, remaining so to this day”

but the Bible as a whole generally ignores it and nowhere regards it as the essential mark of Israelite identity or as the sine qua non for membership in the Israelite polity. It attained this status only in Maccabean times.

Jewish identity that upon conquering various sections of the Holy Land they incorporated the inhabitants into the Jewish polity, a step that meant first and foremost circumcision.

For Paul, circumcision represents subjugation to the demands of the Torah

According to rabbinic law, transmitted in the name of authorities who lived in the second century CE, a convert must also be immersed in water

in the Second Temple period the ritual requirements for conversion were three: circumcision, immersion, and sacrifice.

The fact that gentile converts to Christianity were baptized is the strongest argument for the view that gentile converts to Judaism must have been baptized already in the first century.

It remains unclear whether the baptism was initiatory, purificatory, or some combination of the two.

Joining the house of Israel. The third element in Achior’s conversion

“half-Jew”

sneer

the Jews’ God was not the god of their fathers—

after all, their fathers were gentiles!

belief in the one God

circumcision

integration into the Jewish...

Other gentiles became God-fearers not so much through religious observances but through social connections;

The book of Acts calls these people “those who fear” (phoboumenoi) or “those who venerate” (sebomenoi) the Lord (Acts 13:16, 26; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7). Modern scholars call them “sympathizers” or “semiproselytes,” but these terms lack ancient attestation.

how can gentiles become a “little bit Jewish”?

Many Greeks and Romans adopted the gods (e.g., Isis, Cybele, Mithras, Jupiter Dolichenus) and practices of various “barbarian” nations without converting or losing their identity.

resemble

Observance of the Sabbath and holidays, attendance at synagogue, and the veneration of God were parts of Hellenistic culture.

Judaism

has no mysteries, no secrets that it keeps hidden from curious observers.

Josephus narrates that in the middle of the first century CE, the royal house of the kingdom of Adiabene became Jewish under the tutelage of itinerant Jewish merchants.