| This is an analysis of comparisons the Rabbis made with kings, limited to Roman Palestine and to the ninety-year period beginning with the accession of the Emperor Septimius Severus in 193 C.E. and ending with the accession of Diocletian. Based primarily on the original rabbinic texts, it also draws on traditional Greek and Latin sources of imperial history and brings contemporary theory to bear.; A major part of the study re-examines current scholarly views about king-parables and finds them wanting---including the still prevalent presupposition that "the king" is usually modeled on the emperor; the idea, recently renewed by Daniel Boyarin, that the Rabbis told the parables to make Torah accessible to non-Rabbis; and, most important, the idea, championed by David Stern, that "the king," no matter what earthly ruler he is modeled on, is a stand-in for God. The study also supplements the ongoing work on king-parables being done by Clemens Thoma and his colleagues in Switzerland.; As the study attends to the king-parables' form, structure, functions, settings and characters, it emphasizes the Rabbis' distinctive ideas about the relationship of humanity to God.; Since the parables were produced by an intellectual elite in a country occupied by a world-empire, the study considers them as resistance literature and explores what contemporary post-colonial theory and James C. Scott's work concerning "hidden transcripts" may have to say about them.; And since scholars of Roman history traditionally bemoan the paucity of sources for the period, it poses the hypothesis that making comparisons to "kings" modeled on emperors or their representatives involves at least thinking one knows something about them. The Rabbis' accounts of such "kings" not only shed light on the attitudes of a group of literate citizens in a particular eastern province toward living, breathing emperors but also provide information about third-century imperial history, sometimes confirming generally accepted readings of traditional sources, sometimes supporting sources that have been regarded as questionable, and sometimes helping to resolve open issues. |
