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16 - The political and social history of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel, C. 235–638

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
David Goodblatt
Edited by
Steven T. Katz
David Goodblatt
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of California, San Diego
Steven T. Katz
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The chronological boundaries of this chapter are based on well-known events in world history. The year 235 saw the end of the Severan dynasty of Roman emperors, while the Muslim invasion of Palestine began in 634. These dates also have some logic in terms of the traditional periodization of Jewish history. The beginning of our period more or less coincides with the end of the tannaitic and the start of the amoraic era, conventionally marked by the death of the Patriarch Judah I, around 225. and the transition from Byzantine Christian rule to that of Muslim Arabs is generally seen as a major turning point, though recently scholars have emphasized both material and cultural continuities between late Byzantine and early Islamic Palestine. Still, discussing the Jewish community of Late Roman and Byzantine Palestine as a unit makes more sense than any alternative.

One reason it makes sense to treat this era as a unity is the abundance and variety of sources at our disposal, in contrast to both the preceding and following years. These include Jewish, pagan, and Christian literary material, Roman legal texts and an ever-growing corpus of epigraphical and archaeological data. While the evidence is relatively abundant and varied, it also is unevenly distributed and often of uncertain value. Even when the data overlap chronologically, it is not always clear what conclusions to draw. The debate over the events of 351/2, discussed below, illustrates this problem.

Keywords

PatriarchateIsraelJewish CommunityRoman EmpireRoman-Byzantine Palestinepolitical historysocial history
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Judaism , pp. 404 - 430
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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