Review of A Jew in the Roman bathhouse : cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean, by Yaron Z. Eliav

Abstract

Yaron Eliav’s A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse is an immensely rich and multilayered book that explores the nuances of cultural interaction in the Graeco-Roman world through the lens of the Roman bathhouse—specifically, by examining the attitudes of Jews living in ancient Palestine towards this quintessential Roman cultural institution, which in time came to embody the very notion of romanitas. Thanks to the availability of a large body of rabbinic material (third century CE onwards), which represents the most comprehensive literary corpus emanating from a Roman province and includes no less than five hundred references to the Roman bathhouse, Eliav is able to tap into the mindsets and perceptions of his ancient subjects and thus bring to life a unique provincial perspective on the topic. At his disposal, Eliav has “thousands of pages written by local provincial residents of the Roman world in their own language and in their own words” (5), a stark contrast to the rest of the empire’s periphery, whose subjects remain largely voiceless, their experiences gleaned through archaeology, chance inscriptions or papyri, and visual art.