The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine

While rabbinic literature enables us to know more about the rabbis than any of the other members of the Jewish population of Roman Palestine, the social structure of the rabbinic movement remained largely unexplored. In the present study Catherine Hezser combines a critical analysis of the available literary, legal, and epigraphic evi-dence with a selective employment of sociological models. She examines the definition of the boundaries of the rabbinic movement, deals with the nature of the relationships amongst rabbis, and investigates the relationship between rabbis and their contemporaries, that is students, the community, and the patriarch.

Catherine Hezser, Born 1960; 1986 Dr. theol. at the University of Heidelberg; 1992 Ph.D. at the Jewish Theological Seminary New York; 1997 Habilitation at the Free University Berlin; Professor of Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.