The conversion of the Roman Empire

Prof. Paula Fredriksen

In the year 380CE, Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire by emperor Theodosius.

How were Jews treated and perceived under this newly Christian regime and how did the conversion of the Roman empire affect the historical development of antisemitism?

References

• Dohrmann, Natalie B. and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2013).

• Fredriksen, Paula and Oded Irshai, “Christian anti-Judaism: Polemics and policies,” in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 977 – 1034.

• Irshai, Oded, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Life and Culture in the World of Early Byzantium,” in Robert Bonfil, Oded Irshai, Guy G. Stroumsa, Rina Talgam, eds., Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 15 – 64.