Torah, Temple, and Transaction

Jewish Religious Institutions and Economic Behavior in Early Roman Galilee

Alex J. Ramos

In this book, Alex J. Ramos examines production, consumption, and transaction in the regional economy of Galilee during the Early Roman period. Drawing on literary sources—including biblical texts, Josephus, and the Mishnah—and archaeological evidence, he assesses the ways that the Roman and Herodian states, settlement patterns, and Jewish religious obligations would have shaped household economic behavior. Approaching the topic through new institutional economics, Ramos considers the role of state institutions of administration and taxation and religious institutions derived from the Torah and the Temple in structuring for Galilean Jews the incentives, priorities, and costs of economic decision making. In contrast to classical economic assumptions of what is economically “rational” behavior, he considers the ways that the laws of the Torah defined the bounds of rational and socially permissible approaches to economic production, consumption, and transaction. Ultimately, Ramos argues that state institutions played a rather indirect and weak role in shaping the economy through much of the Early Roman Galilee; religious institutions, by comparison, played a more formative role in defining economic behavior.

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 290 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-9787-0450-3 • Hardback • December 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-9787-0451-0 • eBook • December 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Religion / Biblical Studies / History & Culture, History / Ancient / Rome, Religion / Judaism / Rituals & Practice

Torah, Temple, and Transaction

Jewish Religious Institutions and Economic Behavior in Early Roman Galilee

Hardback

eBook

Summary

In this book, Alex J. Ramos examines production, consumption, and transaction in the regional economy of Galilee during the Early Roman period. Drawing on literary sources—including biblical texts, Josephus, and the Mishnah—and archaeological evidence, he assesses the ways that the Roman and Herodian states, settlement patterns, and Jewish religious obligations would have shaped household economic behavior. Approaching the topic through new institutional economics, Ramos considers the role of state institutions of administration and taxation and religious institutions derived from the Torah and the Temple in structuring for Galilean Jews the incentives, priorities, and costs of economic decision making. In contrast to classical economic assumptions of what is economically “rational” behavior, he considers the ways that the laws of the Torah defined the bounds of rational and socially permissible approaches to economic production, consumption, and transaction. Ultimately, Ramos argues that state institutions played a rather indirect and weak role in shaping the economy through much of the Early Roman Galilee; religious institutions, by comparison, played a more formative role in defining economic behavior.

Details

Lexington Books / Fortress Academic

Pages: 290 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-9787-0450-3 • Hardback • December 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-9787-0451-0 • eBook • December 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Religion / Biblical Studies / History & Culture, History / Ancient / Rome, Religion / Judaism / Rituals & Practice

Author

Alex J. Ramos (PhD in Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania) is production editor at Penn State University Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Institutions of Administration and Taxation in Early Roman Palestine

2 Movement and Trade in Galilee’s Regional Economic Network

3 Mosaic Laws and Cultivating Piety in an Agrarian Economy

4 The Temple, Pilgrimage, and Household Economic Resource Management

Conclusion

Reviews

Both Judaism and Christianity have their roots in the Galilee of the Roman period, a society where religious life and economics were deeply intertwined in ways specific to that time and place. Torah, Temple and Transaction breaks new ground by probing the interconnections between piety and economics in Roman-era Galilee—how economic realities shaped religious practice, and how religion drove economic practice in turn. Recent study of the economic dimensions of Jesus' world has been shaped by economic models developed in the 1970s and 80s. Informed by a sophisticated grasp of ancient economics, Ramos' study represents a true step forward, proposing a new paradigm and mustering an impressive combination of literary and archaeological evidence in support of its approach.
— Steven Weitzman, University of Pennsylvania

Alex Ramos has done something important in Torah, Temple, and Transaction. He has evaluated models for understanding the Galilean economy of 63 BCE–70 CE, assessed what they lack, and made a fresh proposal. To wit: other than those produced by archaeologists, many discussions say little about archaeological evidence, and few consider the effect that religious practices must have had on the Galilean economic system. Whether they evaluate the relationship as parasitic or symbiotic, they also focus too tightly on the ties between city and countryside. For his part, Ramos knows relevant texts, settlement patterns, and material culture that must undergird inferences about trade. Moreover, he argues that the many village nodes of a “small-world network,” rather than a few urban hubs, account for the flow of people and goods across the Galilean landscape. His proposal that, for Jewish Galileans before 70, economic behavior was shaped by both a desire to live out Torah in their workaday lives and regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem amounts to a new way of seeing things.

I recommend Torah, Temple, and Transaction to everyone who has an interest in the economy of Early Roman Palestine. Make room for it on your shelf among volumes by Seán Freyne, Richard Horsley, Doug Oakman, Ze’ev Safrai, and Mordechai Aviam.
— James R. Strange, Samford University

This book is both timely and necessary. Theoretically sophisticated and methodologically bold, it employs the full suite of possibilities that the New Institutional Economics presents to practitioners of ancient economic history. In particular, it eschews the singular focus of much recent work upon the influence of the formal institutions of the ancient state, focusing instead upon the role of the informal institutions of religious mores, directives, and practices in determining, constraining, and shaping economic decision-making. In the process, it integrates the long-sundered fields of ancient economic history and religious studies in analytically powerful and suggestive ways.
— Cam Grey, University of Pennsylvania

Alexander Ramos's Torah, Temple, and Transaction is a thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, which deals with a time period and a place that are of crucial importance for the formation of both Judaism and Christianity. Ramos enters this complex conversation equipped with a sound understanding of models deployed for the study of the ancient economy as well as a deep familiarity with early Jewish Law in the Second Temple period. These two traits are seldom found in the profile of a single scholar. Ramos is able to leverage the two faces of his expertise in a balanced and constructive way to illuminate a rather obscure scenario and to open up intriguing venues for further debates. There is no doubt that Ramos's book will remain a reference point for the many studies that will surely come after it; everyone will need to deal with the fruitful understanding of the interaction between economy and religion that Ramos provides in Torah, Temple, and Transaction.
— Giovanni B. Bazzana, Harvard Divinity School