The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies has launched a new web exhibit: "Jewish & Other Imperial Cultures in Late Antiquity." The exhibit continues an annual partnership, begun in 2000, between the CAJS Fellows and the Penn Libraries. These exhibits are meant to highlight important, rarely seen primary sources held at the CAJS Library and elsewhere, document their use in the context of the CAJS research theme, and share the fruits of this scholarly partnership via the web.

In this exhibit, scholars of the classical world grapple with the complex and multifarious material sources and received texts upon which our understanding of the Roman empire and its minorities is built. This past year's CAJS Fellows focused on the imperial context of which Judaism was but one small piece. This approach produced vigorous, new challenges to the kinds of evidence and questions traditionally applied to the study of Judaism in Late Antiquity. This period, a time during which the Roman empire underwent Christianization, witnessed profound changes in the character of Jewish-Christian relations, religious and political identities, as well as social and communal boundaries.