Kalmin R. Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006 - 300 p. ISBN: 0195306198In this book Richard Kalmin offers a thorough reexamination of rabbinic culture of late antique Babylonia. He shows how this culture was shaped in part by Persia on the one hand, and by Roman Palestine on the other. The mid fourth century CE in Jewish Babylonia was a period of particularly intense Palestinianization, at the same time that the Mesopotamian and east Persian Christian communities were undergoing a period of intense Syrianization. Kalmin argues that these closely related processes were accelerated by third-century Persian conquests deep into Roman territory, which resulted in the resettlement of thousands of Christian and Jewish inhabitants of the eastern Roman provinces in Persian Mesopotamia, eastern Syria, and western Persia, profoundly altering the cultural landscape for centuries to come.