Writing on the Wall : : Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity / / Karen B. Stern.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2018 English
• VerfasserIn: Stern, Karen B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.) :; 55 b/w illus., 4 maps

Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings of Philo and Josephus and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and Talmud. Commissioned art, architecture, and formal inscriptions displayed on tombs and synagogues equally reflect the sensibilities of their influential patrons. The perspectives and sentiments of nonelite Jews, by contrast, have mostly disappeared from the historical record. Focusing on these forgotten Jews of antiquity, Writing on the Wall takes an unprecedented look at the vernacular inscriptions and drawings they left behind and sheds new light on the richness of their "idian lives.Just like their neighbors throughout the eastern and southern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt, ancient Jews scribbled and drew graffiti everyplace--in and around markets, hippodromes, theaters, pagan temples, open cliffs, sanctuaries, and even inside burial caves and synagogues. Karen Stern reveals what these markings tell us about the men and women who made them, people whose lives, beliefs, and behaviors eluded commemoration in grand literary and architectural works. Making compelling analogies with modern graffiti practices, she documents the overlooked connections between Jews and their neighbors, showing how popular Jewish practices of prayer, mortuary commemoration, commerce, and civic engagement regularly crossed ethnic and religious boundaries.Illustrated throughout with examples of ancient graffiti, Writing on the Wall provides a tantalizingly intimate glimpse into the cultural worlds of forgotten populations living at the crossroads of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, and earliest Islam.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction. Graffiti, Ancient and Modern -- Chapter 1. Carving Graffiti as Devotion -- Chapter 2. Mortuary Graffiti in the Roman East -- Chapter 3. Making One's Mark in a Pagan and Christian World -- Rethinking Modern Graffiti through Ancient -- Notes -- References -- Index