For a historian who approaches the social, cultural, and religious history of the Near Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in the period between Constantine and Mahomet, it does not take long to become painfully aware of having had few predecessors, or of the reasons why this might be so. This chapter confines itself, as being a preliminary exploration of some aspects of ethnicity and communal identity in this area, to the period from Constantine's acquisition of the eastern provinces to the Council of Chalcedon of a.d. 451. The relevance of Latin is, of course, the simple fact that the areas concerned are taken as being defined by their having been provinces of the Roman Empire. It was thus perhaps most clearly at the (literal) borders of Jewish or Samaritan territory that there might arise sharp contrast, and conflicts between groups which might be (more or less) clearly differentiated, by ethnic identity, religion, and language.

This book brings together thirty separate studies of the complex religious, communal and linguistic history of the Roman Near East in the period from the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in CE 312 to the first Islamic invasion in CE 632. A newly-written Epilogue, 'Open Questions', reviews the different fields of study involved, and asks how far what we find helps to understand the origins of Islam. Pagan Greeks and Greek-speaking Christians, as well as Jews and Samaritans using Hebrew and Aramaic, co-existed, as did a new Christian community using Syriac, a branch of Aramaic. The complex and extensive evidence for this multicultural world has had to be approached in separate studies, while retaining a sense of communal co-existence and mutual relationships. The papers have been edited so as to appear in a consistent form, and are arranged in groups intended to offer a coherent overall structure. It is hoped that they will stimulate further work on this important phase in cultural and religious history.

This paper concerns a Syriac codex copied near Palmyra in the midsixth century, whose colophon, printed and translated, refers to the ‘monophysite’ bishops, Jacob and Theodore, and to ‘King’ Abokarib. It explores the evidence for the spread of the use of Syriac in the provinces of Phoenicia Libanensis and Arabia, and the implications of the reference to Abokarib, questioning whether ‘Ghassanid’ is an appropriate term for the family to which he belonged.

Theodosius II. Rethinking the Roman Empire in late antiquity. Edited by Christopher Kelly. (Cambridge Classical Studies.) Pp. xv+324 incl. 1 map. New York–Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. £65. 978 1 107 03858 5 - Volume 65 Issue 4

Reviewed by: The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam by G.W. Bowersock Fergus Millar The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam G.W. Bowersock Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, Pp. xix + 181. ISBN 978–0-19–973932–5 Glen Bowersock’s study, deliberately designed as a “short book centred on the inscribed throne at Adulis,” is intended to open up for students of the Roman Imperial period the remarkably vivid evidence for the political, military and religious relations between Axum (Ethiopia) and Himyar (Yemen), and the significance of these for conflicts between Byzantium and Sasanid Persia, for the history of Judaism and Christianity—and, hypothetically, for the origins of Islam. I say hypothetically, because there is abundant evidence from within the Byzantine empire; very significant evidence in Syriac from within the Sasanid area; extraordinarily vivid and explicit evidence from Axum, including Bower-sock’s starting-point, the Greek inscriptions from Adulis reported in the sixth century by Cosmas Indicopleustes—and an enormous, and ever-growing, mass of documentation in Sabaean from the kingdom of Himyar. But we have no contemporary evidence whatsoever from Mecca or Medina, and the story of the origins of Islam there depends either on brief Christian reports of the seventh and early eighth centuries, or on immensely long, and disturbingly detailed, Arabic narratives from the ninth century and after. However, if the precise relevance to early Islam of the dramatic stories which Bowersock unfolds is a matter of debate, the evidence which he presents is indeed of great significance, and serves to open up a “new frontier” for Late Antiquity. In outline, the story is that of Christian Axum, and of Judaised and then Christian Himyar, which centres on a violent episode of the persecution of Christians by a Jewish Himyarite king in the 520s, followed by an Axumite invasion and the restoration of a Christian regime. The events are retailed in much more detail in sixth-century narratives: briefly by Procopius (Bell. 1.19–20); by the Greek Martyrdom of Arethas (ed. M. Detoraki); and by the Syriac Letter of Simeon of Beth Arsham incorporated in the Chronicle or Ecclesiastical History of Pseudo-Zachariah (8.3, see below). But the material available now goes far beyond these narratives, to include very substantial royal documents from Axum—and above all, as mentioned, a major accretion of new inscriptions, [End Page 192] and other documents, from Himyar. As Bowersock of course acknowledges, the pioneering work in this field has been carried out by Chr. J. Robin and his team in Paris. Note the massive survey and analysis of the Himyarite material by Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Himyar à l’époque monothéiste (2009), and now Chr. Robin’s remarkable, and formidably detailed, contribution on ‘Arabia and Ethiopia’ in the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, edited by Scott Johnson (2012). All this more than deserved analysing in an intelligible and well-informed narrative which does not shrink from some bold interpretations, and from seeing events in a longer perspective. If the reviewer has any hesitations about the project, they are primarily that the objective of producing a “short” representation of this fascinating material could still have allowed 20–30 more pages for selective quotation of some more of the major documents. The two Greek inscriptions which Cosmas recorded, one Ptolemaic and the other retailing the victories of an Axumite king in the Imperial period, are indeed translated. But it would have been invaluable not just to discuss, but to present, at least in part, the Greek inscriptions of the Axumite king Aezanas of about ce 340, which specifically reflect his conversion from the cult of a god whom he calls “Ares” to belief in Christianity. They are carefully discussed, but not translated, in E. Bernard, A.J. Drewes, and R. Schneider, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Ethiopie des périodes pré-Axoumite et Axoumite (1991), nos. 270, 270bis and 271 (text and English translation in Fontes Historiae Nubiorum III, nos. 298–9)—but this material deserves to be before the eyes of a wider public. The same applies to a whole series of...

This book explores the way in which different ethnic, religious and linguistic communities co-existed and conflicted in the Roman Near East in the three centuries between the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 and the beginning of Muhammad's preaching in about 610. In the fourth century, a major role was played by Greek-speaking pagans, most notably the great orator, Libanius, from Antioch in Syria. After about 400, however, the public observance of pagan rituals died away under the pressure of Christianity. But the Greek language, as used in the Church, remained dominant. Pagan Aramaic is curiously invisible in this period, but the dialect of Aramaic used by Jews in Palestine is found in very extensive use, along with Hebrew, in a mass of religious literature. Outside Palestine, the most notable development in the culture of the region was the emergence of Syriac (a particular dialect and script of Aramaic) as a language of Christian culture and belief. ‘Syrians’ however were not a distinct ethnic group. The group which was most distinct from the others was made up of the unsettled and warlike peoples on the fringes of the Empire whom almost invariably, call ‘Arabs’, but who in Late Antiquity were far more often referred to as ‘Saracens’. By the end of the period, many of them had converted to Christianity. The major puzzle which the book poses is what is the relation between this process of conversion and the rise of Islam.

This chapter examines the pronounced variations in the expression of biblical monotheism found in commentaries written in the Roman Near East during the fourth and fifth centuries. In particular, it looks at a number of biblical commentaries composed in four different languages and four different scripts; all offer interpretations of the account of the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, accompanied by a remarkably free Jewish translation (Targum) into Aramaic of part of the same chapter. Five texts are analysed: the Jewish commentary, Midrash; its translation into Jewish Aramaic, Targum Neofiti; Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis; and the commentaries by Eusebius of Emesa and Jerome. These examples show the overwhelming importance of the Bible as a source of meaning, its currency in several different languages within the Near East, and the different traditions and methods of interpretation applied to it.

This chapter examines some of the evidence on the preaching of Christianity, as well as Judaism, to the ‘Arabs’ — also labelled ‘Saracens’ — and its relevance to the rise of Islam as a religion expressed in Arabic. It begins by considering two biographies written by John of Ephesus, one devoted to Zooras and the other to Simeon, ‘the Persian Debater’ who engaged in numerous confrontations with Christians called ‘Nestorians’ because of their belief in a ‘two-nature’ conception of Christ. Simeon also went to the camp of the Tayyoye of the house of Numan, where he made many converts, and persuaded their leaders to build a Christian church. After discussing the conversion of Tayyoye (‘Arabs’), this chapter explores how knowledge of the Bible was transmitted to the Saracens or Tayyoye. Finally, it describes the nature of Syriac identity, culture, and history as well as the flowering of Syriac from 485.

This essay first sketches some issues of ethnic or religious identity and their possible relevance to the late Roman Near East, and then surveys the various labels attached by contemporaries to those within the Church who opposed the doctrines proclaimed at the Council of Chalcedon, and proclaimed instead a one-nature Christology. Its main purpose is to examine the very extensive and detailed contemporary evidence from the pre-Islamic period for the evolving role of Syriac in what would later become the Syrian Orthodox Church.

The great temple of Artemis at Gerasa (Jerash) in Jordan is one of the finest expressions of Greco-Roman culture in the Near East. Built in the second century, it includes a church that was erected on top of another building. This chapter explores the combination of Greek and Hebrew or Aramaic that characterised the mosaic floors of synagogues of the period from Palestine, across the Jordan to the west, where the roles of the two languages tend to be reversed: Hebrew or Aramaic was used for the strictly religious components while Greek was used for the names of benefactors. More specifically, it considers the combination — or alternation — of co-existence and hostility between Christians and Jews. After providing a background on the Roman Near East, the chapter analyses the language that Jews possibly used in daily life, and whether pagans of the Roman Near East spoke Aramaic. It then examines documentary evidence that offers insights into Greek culture in the Near East in its local context before concluding with a discussion of Greek literary culture in the region.

This chapter focuses on the presence of large settled populations of Jews and Samaritans, both urban and rural, in Palestine in the first to fourth centuries, and how Jewish identity and belief was expressed in the form of major literary works, in both Hebrew and Aramaic. It first considers two studies attributed to the Talmudic scholar, Saul Lieberman: one on the Greek context of Jewish life in Judaea/Palaestina in the first to fourth centuries; and one on the extensive presence of transliterated Greek words, and of Greek concepts, in rabbinic literature. It then looks at the co-existence and conflict between religious and ethnic communities in Palestine, citing evidence provided each by Sozomenus and Epiphanius. More specifically, it discusses some reports of overt inter-communal conflicts, which often involve Samaritans rather than Jews. It also describes Samaritan religion and culture, Jews and Judaism in Palestine, and the Jewish diaspora in the Roman Near East.