Book Review: Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity
Alexei Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Review by Pieter W. van der Horst, Utrecht, Chapter 1 explores conceptual affinities between Byzantine imperial eschatology and eschatological motifs in rabbinic literature. The author shows that Jews developed their own supersessionist narrative that both internalized and inverted a traditional Christian Roman supersessionism (i.e., ‘the Church has replaced Israel’). “Jews were merely taking back what was originally theirs. The messianic kingdom of Israel was the restoration of the original Davidic kingdom that alone could be the true holder of sacred statehood" (13). However, the Jewish texts do not envision this messianic kingdom as a renovatio imperii Romani (as the Christians did), but rather as its replacement. Israel takes the place of Rome as the last world empire destined to rule forever. In this way, Byzantine Judaism actively engaged the supersessioni...