(C2-24) Integration and Diversification in the Judaism of Palestine during the Hellenistic-Early Roman Period (300 BCE–135 CE)
Palestinian Judaism of the Hellenistic and Early Roman period is marked by a tension between central and local, between national and sectarian institutions and concepts. Rather than emphasizing the common over the dividing aspects, or vice versa, as dominant positions within the scholarship of the past decades often have done, the present research project attempts to arrive at a more precise relationship between integration and diversification in the Palestinian Judaism of this period through a series of test-cases.
In pursuing this task, the following areas will be studied:
- the relationship between ethnos and sects
- the relationship between Temple, synagogues, and assemblies
- forms of social organization as recognizable from the texts from Qumran; and
- forms of political, religious, and juridical authority and administration (sub-project Kimberley Czajkowski).
In doing so, the project will search, on the one hand, for potential similarities and connections between localized and sectarian practices – which scholars are often quick to keep apart from one another – and, on the other hand, for the relationship of these two areas of practice with central and overarching institutions and concepts.
Methodologically, the approach is multi-perspectival and considers literary, papyrological, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence. In particular, mention should be made of an increased database for Palestinian synagogues from the Second Temple period, new approaches in the archaeology of Graeco-Roman Israel/Palestine, as well as new insights arising from an improved analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, both from Qumran and from other places in the Judaean Desert.
The overarching aim of this project is to gain building blocks for a new theory of ancient Judaism, which accounts both for its socio-political and religious unity and for its diversity.