Between Cooperation and Hostility

The question of why the cooperation of Jews with the Persian and Ptolemaic empires was largely successful but failed with regard to the Seleucids and the Romans – and even turned into military hostility against those regimes – has never been adequately answered. It seems that these contrasting kinds of interaction with foreign powers stemmed not only from the different political strategies of those empires towards the province or state of Jehud/Judah but also from the varying concepts of Jewish identity that were developed by separate Jewish groups. From the different viewpoints of Judaic Studies, Classical History and Biblical Studies, this conference will investigate, on the one hand, how the formation of multiple Jewish identities influenced the interaction of Jewish groups with the foreign powers of the late Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, and, on the other hand, how the encounter with these foreign powers in turn influenced the formation of Jewish identities.

 

Programme

Wednesday, 1. Juni
18:15–19:45	Öffentlicher Abendvortrag: Judaeans, Jews, and their Neighbors: Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period (Fürstenberghaus, Domplatz 20-22, Raum F5)	Daniel R. Schwartz, Jerusalem
Thursday, 2. Juni
9:00–09:15	Welcome Address, Introduction
9:15–10:00	Conflicting Models of Identity and the Publication of the Torah in the Persian Period	Thomas Römer, Lausanne/Paris
10:00–10:45	Joseph in Egyptian Diaspora: Living under Foreign Rule According to the Joseph Narrative and Its Early Intra- and Extra-Biblical Reception	Jakob Wöhrle, Münster
11:15–12:00	The Adversaries in Ezra/Nehemiah – Fictitious or Real? A Case Study on Creating Identity in Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Times	Sebastian Grätz, Mainz
12:00–12:45	Genocide in the Book of Esther: Cultural Integration and the Right of Resistance against Pogroms	Reinhard Achenbach, Münster
14:30–15:15	Are Foreign Rulers Allowed to Enter and Sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple?	Rainer Albertz, Münster
15:15–16:00	The Construction of Samari(t)an Identity from the Inside and the Outside	Stefan Schorch, Halle
16:00–16:45	Seduced by the Enemy or Wise Strategy? The Presentation of Non-Violence and Accommodation with Foreign Powers in Ancient Jewish Literary Sources	Catherine Hezser, London
17:15–18:00	The Early Hasmoneans – from Rebels to High Priests	Johannes Bernhardt, Freiburg
18:00–18:45	Manifest Identity: From Ioudaiois to Jew. Household Judaism as anti-Hellenization in the late Hasmonean Era	Andrea Berlin, Boston
Friday, 3. Juni
9:00–09:45	The Narrator of 1 Maccabees and the Etiquette of the Hellenistic Near East	Doron Mendels, Jerusalem
9:45–10:30	From the “Master of the Elephants” to the “Most Ungracious Wretch”: The Image of the Foreign Ruler in the Books of Maccabees	Johannes Schnocks, Münster
11:00–11:45	The High Priests and Rome: Why Cooperation Failed	Kai Trampedach, Heidelberg
11:45–12:30	Preserving Identity in an Empire under Christian Sway: The Separation and Marginalization of Judaism in Late Antiquity	Johannes Hahn, Münster