State and Society in Roman Galilee

Drawing on the large corpus of extant rabbinic writings, Goodman (Jewish studies, Oxford U.) describes the formation of rabbinic Judaism in the second century that has shaped Judaism ever since. He argues that the development of the independent and unique Jewish culture of Late Roman Palestine was encouraged by the Roman methods of administration. Only a few copies of the 1983 first edition, developed from his dissertation, were printed; in a new preface, he summarizes developments in the scholarship since then. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR