A Radical Revision of Knowledge About Babylonian Jewish Society

Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity is a path-breaking study, innovative in both substance and method. Simcha Gross argues that a study of Babylonian Jews and rabbis requires nothing less than a thorough revision of standard historical accounts of the Sasanian empire and its minority populations.  These accounts, which assume a static and hierarchical feudal society organized under a distant and detached imperial power, tend to be characterized by rigid binaries: minority communities were either isolated or acculturated, constrained by social and political structures or able to exercise agency; state and religion were either separate or conjoined; the empire was either tolerant or intolerant of its minority communities; and more. Gross demonstrates that the static feudal paradigm and the binaries it generates are not supported by a wide array of material and textual evidence (Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Sasanian). He proposes instead an immanent and dynamic model of Sasanian rule in which little was fixed and much was in play, setting the stage for the empire’s different inhabitants to constantly negotiate and renegotiate their position, status, and communal identities. The result is a radical revision of what we thought we knew about of Babylonian Jewish society, the place of the rabbis, and the nature of their textual tradition, as illuminated by comparison with other similarly-situated minority communities who were also navigating the realities of empire and being formed and transformed in the process. (I’ll return to this methodological point at the end.) But there’s more. The book also offers a radical revision of what we thought we knew about Sasanian rule. And here Simcha strikes a blow against orientalist assessments of the Sasanian empire that essentialize it as a despotic backwater lacking the political and administrative sophistication of Rome and other “western empires.”

Having provided a general overview, I would like to use my time to do three things: first, I want to detail the the radical revisionism that informs this wonderful book; second I want to show how this revisionist account is made possible by the author’s refusal of simple binaries; and third I want to show how it is made possible by the methodological innovation at the heart of the book.

So first, the book’s radical revisionism: In the Introduction Simcha lays out three scholarly assumptions – he refers to them as three theses -- that have shaped the current portrait of Babylonian Jewish society and Sasanian rule – the first is the assumption of semi-autonomy, or the idea that Sasanian rule was detached and feudalistic with minority populations organized into semi-autonomous communities. The second is the assumption that these semi-autonomous and self-governing communities enjoyed a centralized structure and a stratified internal hierarchy which in the case of the Jews meant an exilarch atop a formal judicial branch consisting of rabbis with coercive capabilities. The third assumption, which follows from the previous two, is that these semi-autonomous and self-regulating communities were insulated from both their Sasanian rulers and their non-Jewish neighbors who were also organized as semi-autonomous communities. These claims of semi-autonomy, hierarchical structure, and imperviousness to larger social, political, cultural, and intellectual forces in the surrounding environment led past scholars to a romantic view of Babylonian Jewish society as stable and uniformly rabbinized. 

Through a critical re-evaluation of the evidence and the introduction of new counter-evidence, Simcha carefully dismantles the three assumptions of semi-autonomy, centralized self-regulating hierarchy, and insularity. First, against the claim of semi-autonomous communities, Simcha shows that Sasanian legal culture provided a primary court system that integrated all of the empire’s subjects into the state, while leaving space for community-based methods of dispute resolution conducted by local experts. The availability of alternative imperial and communal means of arbitration introduced competition and forum shopping. Jews used non-Jewish courts, and rabbis and exilarchs, who found themselves competing with Sasanian courts, selectively adopted, adapted, or subverted the discourse and symbols of those courts to establish influence and build social capital.

Second, against the claim of a stratified internal hierarchy headed by the exilarch, Simcha shows that the exilarch was not the Jews’ formal royal intermediary. He enjoyed no authority over taxes, markets, or a single internal court system and sources that have been read as supporting such a portrait, show no such thing. The Exilarch enjoyed some prestige and rabbis could serve as local arbitrators but none of this requires or suggests an organized internal hierarchy empowered to regulate the community. Neither the exilarch nor the rabbis could assume their power and influence. On the contrary, they had to compete for it.

Third, against the claim of insularity, Simcha adduces extensive evidence that Babylonian Jews, including rabbis, were embedded in and conversant with a world saturated with Sasanian and Zoroastrian institutions; they were exposed, inescapably, to imperial norms, behaviors, and imagery to which they responded in a variety of ways – from imitation and acculturation to accommodation and subversion, contestation and resistance. Simcha’s readings and sometimes rereadings of talmudic stories and legal discussions offer new evidence of and insight into rabbinic responses to the Sasanian context, responses that are often more complex and variegated than previously supposed. Moreover, Jews were exposed not only to the norms and practices of the dominant culture, they were also exposed to and conversant with the norms, practices, and textual traditions of other similarly situated minority communities, as the book’s frequent comparisons with Syriac Christian, Mandaean and other sources indicates.

The book’s revisionist account of both Babylonian Jewish society and Sasanian rule, is made possible in part by a studied refusal of simple binaries. I will point to four in particular, and show how transcending them opens new pathways for understanding the sources.

The first binary that Simcha challenges is the acculturation vs resistance binary which is often thought to map neatly onto the exilarch and the rabbis respectively. The exilarch, as a presumed member of the imperial court, had to acculturate to its norms while the rabbis, as the presumed defenders of tradition, resisted the trappings of Sasanian culture – or so it is thought.  Simcha shows that such a neat division cannot be maintained. First, the rabbis were not a monolithic group and some attached themselves to the Exilarch. Second, and more important however, rabbis no less than the exilarch sought to authorize and legitimate themselves through appeals to both Jewish tradition and elite Sasanian norms from riding in golden carriages, to adopting Persian dining etiquette. And later rabbis imbued their academies, with the pomp and circumstance of the Sasanian court, including its hierarchical seating arrangements. Acculturation occurred at all levels of Babylonian Jewish society as Jews drew on a common set of legitimating discourses and symbols from the broader society, in their competition for influence and social capital in their own community.

A second binary that Simcha overcomes is the dichotomous representation of the empire as either tolerant or intolerant towards its sub-communities. Unlike the previous binary, this binary appears in the sources themselves. While the Talmud contains little evidence of imperial violence, Christian martyrological literature portrays the Sasanian regime as violent and persecutory. Some historians mistakenly imagine that only one portrait can be historically accurate, but Simcha takes a more nuanced and sophisticated position. In chapter 3, he shows that there was no single, consistent imperial policy of tolerance towards Christians and intolerance towards Jews. All of the empire’s sub-communities were subjected to the same logics of imperial violence. A community whose practices or position in the empire crossed certain red lines would experience more frequent and more intense violence. Thus, Christian proselytism which threatened the carefully guarded boundary between Iranians and non-Iranians, as well as perceived Christian disloyalty based on ties to the Christianizing Roman Empire, caused imperial anxiety and were met with violence. By contrast, Jews, who were not prone to proselytizing and were not perceived as sympathetic to Rome, were not subject to such frequent violence. However, to the extent that both Christians and Jews offended Zoroastrian sensibilities by burying corpses and handling fire in particular ways, they were both the object of scrutiny and interference by magi. Chapter 4 adds greater complexity to this picture by arguing that the dichotomous representations in the Christian and Jewish Sources owe something to the politics of memory. Rabbinic sources obscure or erase such moments of imperial violence that did occur to depict a benign empire. In stories that betray a clear knowledge of the martyrdom literature of the rabbis’ Christian neighbors, the rabbis eschew confrontation and martyrdom and promote an accommodationist, and occasionally subversive posture, towards the empire.

A third binary that Simcha takes on appears in the sources but pertains to Sasanian society. The Talmud portrays Sasanian kings as benevolent, tolerant, and respectful of Jews and their teachings while portraying the magi as zealously intolerant of the teachings and practices of the Jews. The same distinction appears in the writings of other sub-communities leading scholars to anachronistically posit a church-state division in the empire’s administration. However, some Christian sources portray the kings as fervent Zoroastrians aligned with the magi. Instead of selecting one portrait as the historical truth, Simcha assumes some measure of verisimilitude behind this dichotomy and argues that the Sasanian empire projected different images to its heterogenous communities. The kings were, in short, Janus-faced: for Zoroastrians, the king cultivated the image of loyal patron of the faith, maintaining the fire cult and cosmological beliefs; for non-Zoroastrians the king cultivated the image of a religiously and philosophically neutral benefactor. This distinction is the basis for different communities’ conflicting perceptions of the king.

A final binary overcome in the book is the binary between structure and agency. The rabbis were embedded in and shaped by their Sasanian context, constrained by imperial realities, but as Simcha demonstrates again and again, they were also agents able to shape their own experiences and attitudes. That agency becomes apparent in meticulous comparisons that show how different sub-communities working within the very same constraints and structures responded differently.  And this leads me to my third and final observation about methodology.

The revisionist account presented in this volume was made possible by the author’s brilliant methodological innovation. For more than a century, scholars wanting to understand Babylonian Jewish society in the Sasanian era, relied somewhat uncritically on post-talmudic historiographic literature: The 10th c Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon and, to a lesser extent, the 8th-9th c writings of Pirqoi ben Baboi. These works were viewed as repositories of historical data that, while not abundant, provided relatively straightforward access to Jewish life in the Sasanian period (3rd-7th century C.E.) and served as an interpretive guide to the more historically recalcitrant Talmudic text. The presentation of Babylonian Jewish society in these works promoted the three theses – the community was semi-autonomous, hierarchically organized, and insular. The three theses would prove to have remarkable staying power even as the works promoting fell from favor as historical sources.

With the recognition of the tendentious and apologetic character of the post-talmudic historiographies, historians have been thrown back on the talmudic text itself. But the Talmudic text presents the historian with its own difficulties which Simcha enumerates: difficulties arising from the composite nature of the text which includes sources from many centuries and locations, its incorporation of materials of various genres none of which can be described as historiographic, its literary qualities, and finally its formation via processes of transmission and redaction that necessitate careful analysis and even reverse engineering in order to identify shifting attitudes, discourses, perceptions, and strategies for engaging the realities of life under Sasanian rule. Simcha is a master at this and time and again he analyzes texts – some familiar and some new -- and surfaces general patterns of engagement with the broader culture, but he takes a further step. He interprets his findings through an innovative method of comparison by triangulation.

Simcha approaches the Jews as one group of imperial subjects among many; all confront the same imperial realities, institutions, imagery, constraints, and pressures. That is the basic similarity that enables comparison among the groups – their shared imperial context or situation -- but each subject community works out its particular response to that situation consistent with its own peculiar character, norms, and traditions – and these differences are mutually illuminating in often surprising ways. Simcha refers to this comparative method as triangulation, because it assumes at least three elements: a shared situation or circumstance -- in this case Sasanian rule -- and at least two groups who are both navigating that shared situation – often with an eye on each other -- and whose diverse responses to that shared situation are revelatory. This is beautifully illustrated in the contrasting Syriac Christian and Babylonian Jewish approaches to martyrdom as a response to imperial demands. The method of triangulation – comparing Jews with similarly situated minority groups from the 3rd to 7th centuries and corroborating the evidence gleaned from the talmudic textual tradition by comparison with the textual traditions of these groups – is a dramatic methodological innovation that holds terrific promise for scholars of Babylonian Jewish society.