Violence, Scripture, and Textual Practice in Early Judaism and Christianity

This volume analyzes the various and overlapping discourses of religious violence that emerged within Jewish and Christian culture in the Roman world. Toward this end, the nine papers collected here address both the presence of violence within the authoritative scriptural traditions of early Judaism and Christianity and the redeployment of these older traditions to represent, legitimate, and indeed sacralize violence. Individual papers focus on the specific social and historical contexts from which these texts emerged, while the volume as a whole highlights the patterns of textual practice shared across social and religious boundaries. Throughout, the dynamic interplay between text, tradition, and violence in early Jewish and Christian culture is located within the broad landscape of Roman imperial society.