Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a new Jewish Archaeology.

• Author: Friedland, Elise A.

Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology. By STEVEN FINE. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005. Pp. xvii + 267, illus. $75.

Steven Fine's Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World is an impressive, interdisciplinary study that, from the perspective of a classical art historian and archaeologist, fills a major gap. While catalogues of "ancient Jewish art" have been written, no historiographic and theoretical discussion of Jewish art in the classical world exists. The introduction makes clear the author's goals: "to lay to rest the last vestiges of the insidious (and often anti-Semitic or anti-Rabbinic) trope of Jewish 'aniconism' in antiquity by exposing its roots as it pertains to the Greco-Roman period" (p. 2), to "discuss the relationship between 'art' and 'Judaism'" from the Second Temple period through the rise of Islam (p. 3), and to "focus on the flesh-and-blood Jews who made, used, and sometimes avoided and destroyed 'art' in the Greco-Roman world" (p. 4). Throughout the book's four main sections, Fine interprets texts and material culture in tandem and uses a case-study approach.

In the first section, "The 'Most Unmonumental People' of the World: Modern Constructions of Ancient Jewish Art," Fine presents a history of the study of ancient Jewish art. After sketching a brief historical background of the Jewish experience in nineteenth -and twentieth-century Europe and America, Fine traces a "paradigm shift" from an apologetic scholarship, which he dubs "Jews Do Art Too! literature" (p. 8), to a body of literature that critically examines Western constructions of Jewish art. In chapter one, Fine documents several trends in scholarship on Jewish art and architecture prevalent during the early twentieth century (pp. 17-21): studies of rabbinic literature that incorporate archaeological remains; a German Protestant model of Jewish artlessness; and a French Catholic positive attitude toward Jewish art. Then Fine discusses the Frank Memorial Synagogue constructed in Philadelphia in 1901, since it represents a physical manifestation of an important aesthetic and intellectual trend in this era: the beginning of a recognition of Jewish art.

In chapter two, Fine traces the founding of "Jewish archaeology" through the work of Nahum Slouschz and his 1920/1921 excavations at Hammat Tiberias; the life's work of E. L. Sukenik, father of the archaeology of ancient synagogues; and the role of Hebrew University...