Articles and Reviews by Oded Irshai
Roman Anti-Christian Persecutions: Reframing the Paradigm, 2022
Gods and humans cohabited the ancient city. Dedicated festivals, celebrating seasons and times sa... more Gods and humans cohabited the ancient city. Dedicated festivals, celebrating seasons and times sacred to divine patrons both celestial and imperial, punctuated the civic year. The venues of these celebrations -the theatre, the circus, the stadium, the amphitheatre -held altars to and images of these gods. So did the halls of town councils. Household calendars and domestic space replicated in miniature these civic structures, wherein celebrations of the life-cycle -adulthood, marriages, naming ceremonies -also invoked and honored presiding deities. The gods were everywhere, not only in the public and private buildings of ancient municipalities, but also on insignia of office, on military standards, in solemn oaths and contracts, in vernacular benedictions and exclamations, and throughout the curricula of the educated. It was impossible to live in a Greco-Roman city without living with its gods. 2
Published for the JeWish theOlOgical seMinary Of aMerica and the hebreW University Of JerUsaleM b... more Published for the JeWish theOlOgical seMinary Of aMerica and the hebreW University Of JerUsaleM by eisenbraUns Winona Lake, Indiana 2010 Offprint from
The reign of Constantine the Great marked a turning point in the history of the Roman empire, whi... more The reign of Constantine the Great marked a turning point in the history of the Roman empire, which, according to one rabbinic adage, had "turned to heresy. " 1 Among the Jews, however, this era and its aftermath ( which, based on the annals of the empire and its Christian institutions, saw a worsening of conditions for the Jews) merited only a passing reference in rabbinic litera ture. This is indicated by the fact that the emperor Constantine (not to men tion his successors) is referred to in our sources only once, in the later work Midrash Tehillim, and in one context -the founding of Constantinople as the great rival of destroyed J erusalem 2 -suggesting that the actions of this 1 The use of the well-known expression "and the kingdom turned to heresy" {and its assorted variants, which are bey ond the purview of our discussion), which is attributed to R. Nehemiah {late second century; M Sotah 9, 15, with parallel versions in later amoraic texts) is problematic in the context of the incident referred to in the time of Constantine the Great, primarily because it predates it. I work under the assumption that min or minut in the rabbinic sources denotes in many cases, but not exclusively, the notion of Christian or Christianity in its various manifestations (gentile Jewish, etc.). However, there is a future formulation of sorts in the statement in B Sanhedrin 97a ascribed to R. Yitz.Qak (a Palestinianamor a, roughly contemporary with Constantine the Great): "The son of David [Messiah] will not come until all of the kingdom turns to heresy." This statement is sup ported by the fourth-century Babylonian amora, Rava, through a proof from the biblical law regarding lepers, which contains a paradox, to wit, it is only if the leprosy has spread over the entire body that the person becomes cleansed:" From what verse do we learn this? " ... having turned completely white, it is pure . "Rava's use of this analogy raises the question whether it echoes (or perhaps mocks) a legend circulating already dur ing the fourth century concerning the leprosy that struck Constantine and from which he recovered only with the help of Sylvester, bishop of Rome, who baptized him. Regarding the above, see G. Fowden, "The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and Their lnflucnce," ]RS 84 (1994), 146-70. These multiple allusions may nonetheless be references, albeit vague ones, by the sages to the Constantinian experience.
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Articles and Reviews by Oded Irshai