Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context

"The contributions to this volume examine the emergence of ancient Jewish art from the interdisciplinary perspective of scholars in Art and Archaeology, Ancient Judaism and Rabbinics, Patristics and Church History. They evaluate the manifold ways in which late antique and early Byzantine Jewish art was embedded in its Hellenistic and Roman cultural context by, at the same time, evincing specifically Jewish and local Near Eastern idiosyncrasies. Since the Graeco-Roman context was shared with early Christian art, some formal similarities are recognizable, whereas the meanings associated with the images would have differed. A study of the relationship between the literary sources (the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic literature) and the artistic depictions is crucial for a proper understanding of ancient Jewish art. Similarly important are the artistic analogies appearing in Graeco-Roman and early Christian contexts. Of particular interest is the question why Jewish figurative art developed in the Land of Israel in late antiquity only: which political, social, economic, religious and cultural constellations may have led to the emergence of figurative art? How do these ima