Rethinking Modern Graffiti through Ancient

Abstract

This chapter argues that modern graffiti should be reconsidered through a reformed understanding of ancient examples. It explains how graffiti preserve selective information about the ways that certain Jews operated within their surrounding environments, and serve as a reminder that Jewish life in antiquity may resemble its modern incarnations far less (and in other cases, far more) than we might assume. Writings on walls, whether from from the Dura-Europos synagogue or from burial caves, theaters, and hippodromes, can shed light on how ancient Jews acted, and felt, in ways that were both similar to and different from their neighbors. This chapter asserts that adjusting notions of what qualifies as a source for the historiography of ancient Jewish populations necessitates an expansion of information available for enquiry in the ancient or modern world.