Loren R. Spielman. Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World

Abstract

Is it true that most Jews of the Second Temple period either avoided or were critical of Roman entertainment, including games, theater, and circuses? Answering this question can enable one to understand better how Jews navigated their relationship to Roman civic and political life in an urban context. Spielman’s study aims at examining the “variety of Jewish attitudes towards Roman spectacle and understanding the different strategies for accommodation and resistance to this culture that emerged during the period of Roman domination of Palestine” (p. 10).The first section (“The Herodian Period”) contests the dominant scholarly assumption that most Jews avoided and rejected Roman entertainment out of their allegiance to the torah. In chapter one (“Departing from Native Custsoms: Josephan Rhetoric on Herodian Games”), Spielman examines Josephus’s claim that Herod’s games (in the early 20s BC) in honor of Augustus failed because most Jews considered them an inappropriate departure from their ancestral customs. But this is better explained as the type of exaggerated rhetoric stemming from an elite Jerusalem priest. In chapter two (“The Background of the Jerusalem Games: Were Greek and Roman Spectacles Really Foreign to Jewish Custom?”), Spielman asks whether most Jews would have agreed with Josephus that Roman entertainment represented an impious innovation. Spielman notes that the Letter of Aristeas, Ezekiel’s Exagoge, and evidence from within 1 and 2 Maccabees indicate many Jews would not have agreed with Josephus’s strong resistance to theater and games. In chapter three (“Playing Roman in Jerusalem: Symbols of Power and the Past”), Spielman notes that while a group of Jews tried to assassinate Herod in the theater due to their rejection of his games, it is likely that they only represented a small minority and that many Jews supported Herod’s attempt, through the Roman entertainment in honor of Augustus, to obtain goodwill with the imperial court in Rome.The second section (“Theaters, Amphitheaters and Stadia in Roman Palestine”) examines the three centuries of Roman rule after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. The main thesis in these chapters is to “dispel any doubts that the Jews were predisposed to reject Roman theatrical culture” (p. 69). Chapter four (“In the Wake of the Wars: Becoming Spectators in Roman Palestine”) represents some of the ambiguity that pervades the Jewish response to Roman entertainment. On the one hand, there is some rabbinic evidence that is critical of Roman games and theater due to “cultural memory of Jewish suffering in the arena” (p. 86). But, on the other hand, the archaeological record from both Roman Palestine and the Jewish Diaspora demonstrates that many Jews consumed and contributed to the Roman spectacles. It should not be too surprising, then, that, as Spielman argues in chapter five (“Spectacle and Identity in Roman Palestine and the Jewish Diaspora”), cities in Roman Palestine soon become marked by a vast array of theaters, amphitheaters, and stadia even in urban centers for Jewish education.In the third section (“Rabbis and Roman Spectacle”), Spielman argues that “rabbinic opposition to the theater is best understood as an expression of specifically rabbinic values and does not necessarily represent the views of the Palestinian Jewish population as a whole” (p. 125). Spielman argues that the rabbis adopt two primary strategies to discourse Jewish participation in or consumption of Roman entertainment. The first strategy is one that comes from the Ps 1:1, which discourages “sitting with the scorners” (see chapter six—“Sitting with Scorners: Early Rabbinic Attitudes to Roman Spectacle”). In other words, Jews should avoid the Roman games primarily because it takes them away from the appropriate way of using one’s leisure, namely, studying the Torah. A second exegetical strategy draws on Lev 18:3 (“You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or the land of Canaan to which I am taking you, nor shall you follow their laws”) to classify Roman entertainment as a foreign and pagan practice to be avoided by Jews. Spielman shows how both Jews and Christians deployed exegetical creativity in their response to Roman spectacles. Chapter seven (“Still Sitting with Scorners: Later Rabbinic Attitudes towards Roman Spectacle”) shows how the same strategy for avoidance is continued by later rabbis now with respect to the mime and pantomime. Nevertheless, both the rabbis and early Christians demonstrate deep familiarity with the precise language, terminology, and imagery of Roman entertainment as they deploy it for their own ends. In chapter eight (“Performance and Piety: Theaters and Synagogues in Later Rabbinic Culture”), Spielman shows how later rabbis continued the same exegetical strategies for anti-Roman entertainment, even as they presume that many urban Romanized Jews are consumers of the games.Spielman’s Jews and Entertainment in the Ancient World helps to situate the relationship between ancient Jews with respect to their Roman identity and complicate a picture of withdrawal and rejection from Roman culture. Students of early Christianity will benefit from learning about the exegetical and rhetorical strategies employed by the rabbis and their similarities and differences from how the earliest Christians navigated Roman entertainment.