Languages, Names and Images. Community and Identity Markers in Ancient Jewish Epigraphy of Western Europe

RODRIGO LAHAM COHEN

Potency of the Common. Intercultural Perspectives about Community and Individuality

De Gruyter

Lugar: Berlín; Año: 2016; p. 269 - 280

It is not easy to understand the relationship between individual and community life during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. It is even harder to perceive the autonomy of the individual when we have scarce sources. The situation of the Jewish communities in Western Europe during those periods is a complex scenario. However, I consider necessary to tackle the issue using the limited repertoire of sources that we have. Due to the absence of literary remains written by the Jews of Western Europe during the first millennium I will analyse the epigraphical record, mainly epitaphs from the Jewish Catacombs of Rome and Venosa. I will focus on the languages chosen by the individuals in the epitaphs and on the iconography selected for the graves. I will try to highlight the main tendencies of the community and the possibilities of an individual to evade the established communal identity markers. I will present a similar analysis on the onomastic patterns. Last but not least, it is possible to consider the economic activities and the synagogue offices held by individuals to obtain more information about community impositions and individual options. The main hypothesis of this work is that the Jews of Rome and Venosa had a specific and strong repertoire of identity markers that can be seen in the epigraphical record. Nevertheless, those markers were, sometimes, overridden by individual decisions and the epitaphs can prove that. Even though it is very difficult to verify the existence of ?cultures? of individual from epigraphic material, it is viable to discern the alteration of community obligations in the record.