Eretz-Israel and Diaspora:Variations on the Category Blues

One direction in my research that overlaps with Professor Troiani's distinguished studies on Jewish identity has involved unpacking the suitcases we use to classify groups in the Roman eastern Mediterranean. Some of the most familiar suitcases-religion, -isms, systems of belief-were manufactured from the Christian lexicon that emerged only in the third to fifth centuries. They distract us from thinking about how the residents of the earlier Empire constructed their world in pre-Christian times. When we pack everything into them, they lead us into discussions of how many kinds of Judaism" there were, or to compare Judaism and Christianity as religions," whether or not anyone then living could have understood such talk.Imposing a Land of Israel / Diaspora dichotomy on the eastern Mediterranean seems to me a problem because it obscures the radical diversity of the ancient, polis-centred landscape. The traditional division simplifies our outlook at the cost of ahistorical reckoning, and prevents us from even exploring the ways in which Judaeans living in Caesarea, Scythopolis, or Sepphoris, let alone Idumaeans and Samarians, understood their situation. Judaeans facing mortal peril in Caesarea or Scythopolis did not know they were living in their own homeland. Jonathan Price's 1994 call for a moratorium on Diaspora language has a point still. I have argued that the conception is not merely unhelpful; it positively distracts us from exploring the conditions of life in and around Roman Judaea