The Torah of the Jews of Ancient Rome

Abstract

Latin, comparable with the Septuagint in Greek or the Targum tradition in Aramaic. There is no RomanJewish philosopher comparable to Philo of Alexandria. There is no RomanJewish legal canon comparable to the Babylonian Talmud. Thus, what we know about the Jews of Rome is meager, and usually comes from external sources, or is derived from archaeology. In the following pages, I will try to outline what we know about the Jewish Roman community in antiquity, how we know it, and how reliable our sources of knowledge are. Throughout, an attempt will be made to understand what sort of relationship the Jewish community in Rome might have had with rabbinic Judaism, and what sort of literary legacy it might have left us.