Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel by Katell Berthelot (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel by Katell Berthelot Daniel H. Weiss Katell Berthelot. Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. 552 pp. Katell Berthelot’s monograph sets out an ambitious goal: to correct for previous scholarly tendencies to downplay the impact of the “pagan” Roman Empire on Jewish history and thought. While various lines of scholarship have highlighted political, legal, and military aspects of the Jewish interaction with the Roman Empire prior to its Christianization, Berthelot emphasizes that there has been insufficient focus on the ideological and theological challenge posed to Jews and Judaism during that period, and that many scholars have associated Jewish ideological-theological responses primarily with Christianity and the Christian Roman Empire (8–9). Against this trend, she presents the reader with an extensive presentation of various juxtapositions between ideological dimensions promulgated by Roman cultural and political institutions and writings, on the one hand, and Jewish texts (primarily Philo, Josephus, and classical rabbinic literature), on the other hand, showing ways in which the latter can be fruitfully understood as responding to and resisting the former. Importantly, she shows the ways in which Jewish texts can be understood as resisting Roman imperial ideology while also imitating or appropriating various aspects of that ideology, as resistance can take [End Page 450] the form both of explicit rejection and of competitive imitation of that which is to be resisted. Each of Berthelot’s chapters provides the reader with an in-depth treatment of a relevant subtopic. Chapter 1 focuses on the ways in which pre-Roman Israelite/Jewish texts engaged with and responded to earlier ancient empires, setting conceptual precedents for writers in the Roman period to draw upon and modify. Chapter 2 focuses on implicitly and explicitly theological and theopolitical dimensions of Roman imperial ideology, highlighting notions such as the Roman people’s “genius”; the personification of Roma as a goddess; Rome’s claim of divine election and providence; military victory as divine blessing stemming from Roman virtue and piety; and Roman claims about its achievement of “peace.” She then shows how, particularly following the destruction of the Temple and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the apparently “defeated” status of Israel was used by the Romans to proclaim the defeat of Israel’s God and/or the divine rejection of Israel, with Rome taking the place of Israel in divine favor. Accordingly, she analyzes various texts to show that they can be understood as seeking to respond to and resist this Roman imperial assumption. Rabbinic literature’s linking of the Roman Empire to Esau/Edom (as Jacob/Israel’s twin), prior to the empire’s Christianization, underscores the competitive dynamic and the distinctive status assigned to Rome in rabbinic conceptuality. In chapters 3, 4, and 5, Berthelot focuses on the specific topics of power, law, and citizenship, drawing out striking parallels between Roman and Jewish conceptions during this period, and underscoring the importance of thinking about the Jewish texts and ideas in light of the strong cultural pressures stemming from Roman imperial dominance. Throughout the book, Berthelot draws on previous relevant studies, giving them due acknowledgment and building on them in order to present a wide-ranging synthesis and a new overall picture. The book demonstrates the value of seeking to understand dynamics of Jewish ideological-theological resistance to the Roman Empire, apart from the more typical assumptions that Christianity formed the primary foil for Jewish theological developments during this period. Without detracting from its strengths, some aspects of the book’s approach could benefit from further clarification and supplementation. For instance, in terms of the “Jewish” texts that are engaged, Berthelot designates “Philo, Josephus, and rabbinic literature” as the main foci of her analysis. However, as recent scholarship has indicated, various texts from the early Jesus movement, such as the Gospels, the Letters of Paul, or the book of Revelation, can also be fruitfully analyzed as examples of “Jewish” responses to the Roman Empire. The omission of such writings from the book’s scope of “Jewish texts” is unfortunate and can inadvertently reinforce previous scholarly classifications of such...