Etta and Milton Leve Scholar-in-Residence

A dominant trend in scholarship about Jews in the Roman Imperial diaspora emphasizes the Jews’ achievement of a successful balance between integration and separation, and regards this happy equilibrium as essentially stable for centuries. I will argue that this view rests on a fundamental misreading of the sources. Asia Minor (modern Turkey) provided the richest evidence for the dominant view but when disentangled tells a story of conflict, instability and, above all, poverty. This rather gloomy picture changed for the better only in the fourth century CE, before a steady decline starting in the fifth. Seth Schwartz is the Lucius...