Raʿanan S Boustan
Biographic Data
| ID | 6488259 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Raʿanan S Boustan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Raʿanan S |
| FAMILY NAME | Boustan |
| SIGNATURE | BOUSTAN R S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Jewish Martyrdom in Antiquity: From the Books of Maccabees to the Babylonian Talmud, by Friedrich Avemarie, Jan Willem van Henten, and Yair Furstenberg
Samson in the Galilee—and Beyond
The authors of the present essay have been working together since 2014 to publish the mosaics from the late Roman synagogue in the village of Huqoq in eastern Lower Galilee. The final season of active excavation in summer 2023 has prompted us to reflect on how the task of interpreting the Huqoq mosaics has been informed by and has responded to ongoing excavation at the site. We focus here on the mosaic that depicts the exploits of the biblical fi…
Above, Below, Before, and After: Studies in Judaism and Christianity in Conversation with Martha Himmelfarb
The research of Martha Himmelfarb has pushed scholars to re-examine what we thought we knew about the formative histories of Judaism and Christianity. In studies on such topics as apocalypses, pseudepigrapha, and messianism, Himmelfarb opened up new perspectives on Second Temple Judaism and its legacy within its late antique and medieval successor communities. Inspired by the sweeping breadth of her learning and scholarship, this volume explores …
National Borders and the Contours of Historical Knowledge
Travel—across political or cultural borders and into fresh social settings—is so often transformative because it brings us into direct contact with unfamiliar ways of thinking and doing and, through those confrontations, we find ourselves prompted to reflect anew on our own peculiarities, limitations, and even failures. I recently had just such an experience when attending the semi-annual meeting of the Association Internationale pour l’Étude de …
War and Peace in the Elephant Mosaic from Huqoq: Synagogue Art, Classical Historiography, and Roman Imperial Monuments
Excavations in the late fourth-century synagogue at Huqoq in lower eastern Galilee have revealed a mosaic depicting a subject that is unparalleled in ancient synagogue art. In the view of the authors of this article, this panel (known as the Elephant Mosaic) portrays an episode of military conflict and diplomatic encounter between Jews and Greeks in the Hellenistic period. The memorialization of a non-biblical event in a late ancient synagogue in…
On Shaky Ground
If nothing else, the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how difficult it is for most modern states to regulate—let alone compel—the behavior of populations under their purview. For good or ill, technological opacity, social complexity, cultural heterogeneity, and the tenacity of local allegiances attenuate the otherwise extraordinary reach and efficiency of governmental power, even in the age of the surveillance state.Impediments to the cont…
Everyday Life in extremis
On the morning following the murderous shooting spree at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas—and ten days after the white-supremacist homicides at Tops Friendly Market in a largely Black neighborhood in east Buffalo—I was talking with a parent of a child in my first-grader’s class about whether they had discussed these recent events with their children. I myself had not found what I felt was the right time or the right words to tell my own ch…
Centers and Peripheries
I have an admission: when I first started attending the monthly seminar organized by Peter Brown through the Group for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton in the 1990s, I did not know who Ambrose of Milan was.1 That confession is perhaps particularly embarrassing for someone who has just assumed the editorship of a journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity. Although it is not a terribly good excuse, I was at the time a first-year grad…
Scenes in Stone
This article is the first publication, description, and identification of the floor mosaics in the north aisle of the early fifth-century synagogue in the village of Huqoq in Lower Eastern Galilee. The north aisle is arranged in individually framed panels organized in two superposed rows of nine panels each for a total of eighteen. While many are only fragmentarily preserved, each panel seems to have depicted a figure or episode from the Hebrew B…
The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report
Excavations at Huqoq in Israel's eastern Lower Galilee are bringing to light a Late Roman synagogue, a medieval public building, and the remains of ancient and modern (pre-1948) villages. In this interim report, we describe the major discoveries of the 2014–2017 seasons, including the extraordinary figural mosaics decorating the synagogue floor. Our discoveries provide evidence of a Galilean Jewish community that flourished through the 5th and 6t…
Christian Magicians, Jewish Magical Idioms, and the Shared Magical Culture of Late Antiquity
Some time in the late-fifth or early-sixth century CE, a ritual practitioner-operating in the environs of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt-created a protective amulet that reads, "Hôr, Hôr, Phôr, Elôei, Adônai, Iaô, Sabaôth, Michaêl, Jesus Christ. Help us and this house. Amen" (Ὡρ, Ὡρ, Φωρ, Ἐλωεί, Ἀδωναί, Ἰάω, Σαβαώθ, Μιχαήλ, Ἰεσοῦ Χριστέ· Βοήθι ἡμῖν καὶ τούτῳ οἴκῳ. ἀμήν). Each of the names used in the first part of this amulet, known as P.Oxy. VIII 1152 (=PGM…
Secrets without Mystery: Esotericism in Early Jewish Mysticism
This paper explores the rhetoric of secrecy in Hekhalot literature, a corpus of Jewish mystical and magical writings from late antiquity. I argue that the essential relationship between secrecy and mystery that characterizes the tradition of "western esotericism" does not obtain for Hekhalot literature. Instead, the discourse of esotericism in Hekhalot literature relates to restricted knowledge of proper ritual speech and action ("secrets"), rath…
Sealing the Demons, Once and For All: The Ring of Solomon, the Cross of Christ, and the Power of Biblical Kingship
This paper traces the historical development of the tradition that King Solomon made use of a signet-ring to marshal the demons as a labor-force for the construction of the Jerusalem Temple and analyzes the shifting ritual uses to which this tradition was put.We argue that this tradition, which is most fully articulated in the Testament of Solomon, is a Christian innovation of the third and fourth centuries rather than a venerable Jewish traditio…
Introduction: Authoritative Traditions and Ritual Power in the Ancient World
Hekhalot/Merkabah literature
Hekhalot literature represents the earliest extensive collection of Jewish mystical writings from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Hekhalot compositions are characterized by a unique, if eclectic, literary style.
Shi‘ur Qomah (Jewish mystical texts)
Shi‘ur Qomah (“The Measure of the [Divine] Body”) refers to a class of Jewish “mystical” texts in Hebrew that catalogue the precise size and secret name of the limbs of God's body.
Introduction: Anthropology, History, and the Remaking of Jewish Studies
Walking in the Shadows of the Past: The Jewish Experience of Rome in the Twelfth Century
The Jewish and Christian inhabitants of twelfth-century Rome viewed the urban landscape of their city through the lens of its ancient past. Their perception of Rome was shaped by a highly localized topography of cultural memory that was both shared and contested by Jews and Christians. Our reconstruction of this distinctively Roman perspective emerges from a careful juxtaposition of the report of Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Rome preserved in hi…
Rabbinization and the Making of Early Jewish Mysticism
Hekhalot literature testifies to the heterogeneous nature of Jewish religious practice and authority at and across the boundaries of rabbinic Judaism. Yet, Hekhalot and rabbinic literatures do not reflect clear-cut social, cultural, and institutional divisions within Jewish society, nor are they complementary facets of a single, coherent religious system. Both of these options oversimplify the complex relationship between these rapidly evolving s…
Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions
Augustine as Revolutionary: Reflections on Continuity and Rupture in Jewish-Christian Relations in Paula Fredriksen's Augustine and the Jews
Augustine as Revolutionary? Reflections on Continuity and Rupture in Jewish-Christian Relations in Paula Fredriksen's Augustine and the Jews PAULA FREDRIKSEN. Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defence of Jem and Judabm. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Pp. 488.THIRTY OR FORTY YEARS AGO, the most divisive issue in the study of ancient society and culture was the degree to which in the Second Temple and talmudic periods (circa 450 B.C.E. to 650 CE.) op…
The Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribution in Heikhalot Literature: Empirical Evidence from the Jewish »Magical« Corpora
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes (review)
Reviewed by: Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes Ra‘anan S. Boustan Andreas Lehnardt. Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 87. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Pp. xiv + 386. The ubiquity and elasticity of the Kaddish (alt. Qaddish) within Jewish liturgical practice has made this brief, but enigmatic prayer a perennial object …
Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (review)
Daniel Boyarin. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. xv + 374
From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism
Ra'anan S. Boustan traces the historical emergence of the specific form of 'mystical' discourse found in Heikhalot Rabbati . He argues that the creators of Heikhalot Rabbati sought to fashion a myth of origins for their distinctive brand of heavenly ascent practice by radically reworking the narrative framework of the widely disseminated post-talmudic martyrology The Story of the Ten Martyrs . Heikhalot Rabbati not only renders redundant the noti…
Christian Magicians, Jewish Magical Idioms, and the Shared Magical Culture of Late Antiquity
Some time in the late-fifth or early-sixth century CE, a ritual practitioner-operating in the environs of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt-created a protective amulet that reads, "Hôr, Hôr, Phôr, Elôei, Adônai, Iaô, Sabaôth, Michaêl, Jesus Christ. Help us and this house. Amen" (Ὡρ, Ὡρ, Φωρ, Ἐλωεί, Ἀδωναί, Ἰάω, Σαβαώθ, Μιχαήλ, Ἰεσοῦ Χριστέ· Βοήθι ἡμῖν καὶ τούτῳ οἴκῳ. ἀμήν). Each of the names used in the first part of this amulet, known as P.Oxy. VIII 1152 (=PGM…
Walking in the Shadows of the Past: The Jewish Experience of Rome in the Twelfth Century
The Jewish and Christian inhabitants of twelfth-century Rome viewed the urban landscape of their city through the lens of its ancient past. Their perception of Rome was shaped by a highly localized topography of cultural memory that was both shared and contested by Jews and Christians. Our reconstruction of this distinctively Roman perspective emerges from a careful juxtaposition of the report of Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Rome preserved in hi…
Select Bibliography
A Hebrew Hymn of Praise for a High-priestly Rabbinic Martyr: A Note on the Relationship between the Synagogue Liturgy and Rabbinic Literary Culture
From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism
Ra'anan S. Boustan traces the historical emergence of the specific form of 'mystical' discourse found in Heikhalot Rabbati . He argues that the creators of Heikhalot Rabbati sought to fashion a myth of origins for their distinctive brand of heavenly ascent practice by radically reworking the narrative framework of the widely disseminated post-talmudic martyrology The Story of the Ten Martyrs . Heikhalot Rabbati not only renders redundant the noti…
Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (review)
Daniel Boyarin. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Divinations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. xv + 374
The Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribution in Heikhalot Literature: Empirical Evidence from the Jewish »Magical« Corpora
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes (review)
Reviewed by: Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes Ra‘anan S. Boustan Andreas Lehnardt. Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 87. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Pp. xiv + 386. The ubiquity and elasticity of the Kaddish (alt. Qaddish) within Jewish liturgical practice has made this brief, but enigmatic prayer a perennial object …
Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions
Augustine as Revolutionary: Reflections on Continuity and Rupture in Jewish-Christian Relations in Paula Fredriksen's Augustine and the Jews
Augustine as Revolutionary? Reflections on Continuity and Rupture in Jewish-Christian Relations in Paula Fredriksen's Augustine and the Jews PAULA FREDRIKSEN. Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defence of Jem and Judabm. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Pp. 488.THIRTY OR FORTY YEARS AGO, the most divisive issue in the study of ancient society and culture was the degree to which in the Second Temple and talmudic periods (circa 450 B.C.E. to 650 CE.) op…
Introduction: Anthropology, History, and the Remaking of Jewish Studies
Walking in the Shadows of the Past: The Jewish Experience of Rome in the Twelfth Century
The Jewish and Christian inhabitants of twelfth-century Rome viewed the urban landscape of their city through the lens of its ancient past. Their perception of Rome was shaped by a highly localized topography of cultural memory that was both shared and contested by Jews and Christians. Our reconstruction of this distinctively Roman perspective emerges from a careful juxtaposition of the report of Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Rome preserved in hi…
Rabbinization and the Making of Early Jewish Mysticism
Hekhalot literature testifies to the heterogeneous nature of Jewish religious practice and authority at and across the boundaries of rabbinic Judaism. Yet, Hekhalot and rabbinic literatures do not reflect clear-cut social, cultural, and institutional divisions within Jewish society, nor are they complementary facets of a single, coherent religious system. Both of these options oversimplify the complex relationship between these rapidly evolving s…
Hekhalot/Merkabah literature
Hekhalot literature represents the earliest extensive collection of Jewish mystical writings from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Hekhalot compositions are characterized by a unique, if eclectic, literary style.
Shi‘ur Qomah (Jewish mystical texts)
Shi‘ur Qomah (“The Measure of the [Divine] Body”) refers to a class of Jewish “mystical” texts in Hebrew that catalogue the precise size and secret name of the limbs of God's body.
Secrets without Mystery: Esotericism in Early Jewish Mysticism
This paper explores the rhetoric of secrecy in Hekhalot literature, a corpus of Jewish mystical and magical writings from late antiquity. I argue that the essential relationship between secrecy and mystery that characterizes the tradition of "western esotericism" does not obtain for Hekhalot literature. Instead, the discourse of esotericism in Hekhalot literature relates to restricted knowledge of proper ritual speech and action ("secrets"), rath…
Sealing the Demons, Once and For All: The Ring of Solomon, the Cross of Christ, and the Power of Biblical Kingship
This paper traces the historical development of the tradition that King Solomon made use of a signet-ring to marshal the demons as a labor-force for the construction of the Jerusalem Temple and analyzes the shifting ritual uses to which this tradition was put.We argue that this tradition, which is most fully articulated in the Testament of Solomon, is a Christian innovation of the third and fourth centuries rather than a venerable Jewish traditio…
Introduction: Authoritative Traditions and Ritual Power in the Ancient World
Christian Magicians, Jewish Magical Idioms, and the Shared Magical Culture of Late Antiquity
Some time in the late-fifth or early-sixth century CE, a ritual practitioner-operating in the environs of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt-created a protective amulet that reads, "Hôr, Hôr, Phôr, Elôei, Adônai, Iaô, Sabaôth, Michaêl, Jesus Christ. Help us and this house. Amen" (Ὡρ, Ὡρ, Φωρ, Ἐλωεί, Ἀδωναί, Ἰάω, Σαβαώθ, Μιχαήλ, Ἰεσοῦ Χριστέ· Βοήθι ἡμῖν καὶ τούτῳ οἴκῳ. ἀμήν). Each of the names used in the first part of this amulet, known as P.Oxy. VIII 1152 (=PGM…
The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report
Excavations at Huqoq in Israel's eastern Lower Galilee are bringing to light a Late Roman synagogue, a medieval public building, and the remains of ancient and modern (pre-1948) villages. In this interim report, we describe the major discoveries of the 2014–2017 seasons, including the extraordinary figural mosaics decorating the synagogue floor. Our discoveries provide evidence of a Galilean Jewish community that flourished through the 5th and 6t…
Centers and Peripheries
I have an admission: when I first started attending the monthly seminar organized by Peter Brown through the Group for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton in the 1990s, I did not know who Ambrose of Milan was.1 That confession is perhaps particularly embarrassing for someone who has just assumed the editorship of a journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity. Although it is not a terribly good excuse, I was at the time a first-year grad…
Scenes in Stone
This article is the first publication, description, and identification of the floor mosaics in the north aisle of the early fifth-century synagogue in the village of Huqoq in Lower Eastern Galilee. The north aisle is arranged in individually framed panels organized in two superposed rows of nine panels each for a total of eighteen. While many are only fragmentarily preserved, each panel seems to have depicted a figure or episode from the Hebrew B…
On Shaky Ground
If nothing else, the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how difficult it is for most modern states to regulate—let alone compel—the behavior of populations under their purview. For good or ill, technological opacity, social complexity, cultural heterogeneity, and the tenacity of local allegiances attenuate the otherwise extraordinary reach and efficiency of governmental power, even in the age of the surveillance state.Impediments to the cont…
Everyday Life in extremis
On the morning following the murderous shooting spree at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas—and ten days after the white-supremacist homicides at Tops Friendly Market in a largely Black neighborhood in east Buffalo—I was talking with a parent of a child in my first-grader’s class about whether they had discussed these recent events with their children. I myself had not found what I felt was the right time or the right words to tell my own ch…
Above, Below, Before, and After: Studies in Judaism and Christianity in Conversation with Martha Himmelfarb
The research of Martha Himmelfarb has pushed scholars to re-examine what we thought we knew about the formative histories of Judaism and Christianity. In studies on such topics as apocalypses, pseudepigrapha, and messianism, Himmelfarb opened up new perspectives on Second Temple Judaism and its legacy within its late antique and medieval successor communities. Inspired by the sweeping breadth of her learning and scholarship, this volume explores …
National Borders and the Contours of Historical Knowledge
Travel—across political or cultural borders and into fresh social settings—is so often transformative because it brings us into direct contact with unfamiliar ways of thinking and doing and, through those confrontations, we find ourselves prompted to reflect anew on our own peculiarities, limitations, and even failures. I recently had just such an experience when attending the semi-annual meeting of the Association Internationale pour l’Étude de …
War and Peace in the Elephant Mosaic from Huqoq: Synagogue Art, Classical Historiography, and Roman Imperial Monuments
Excavations in the late fourth-century synagogue at Huqoq in lower eastern Galilee have revealed a mosaic depicting a subject that is unparalleled in ancient synagogue art. In the view of the authors of this article, this panel (known as the Elephant Mosaic) portrays an episode of military conflict and diplomatic encounter between Jews and Greeks in the Hellenistic period. The memorialization of a non-biblical event in a late ancient synagogue in…
History (18 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (16 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (15 works) · Art (13 works) · Judaism (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Theology (11 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Literature (10 works) · Ancient history (7 works)