Endnote 17 – Did Ancient Jews Missionize

The argument of this article is spelled out in greater detail in Shaye Cohen, “Was Judaism in Antiquity a Missionary Religion?” in Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation, and Accommodation, ed. Menahem Mor (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), pp. 14–23. Readers interested in this question may wish to read Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994) and Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993). Readers will see that in the debate between Goodman and Feldman, I believe that Goodman is the winner.