Endnote 45 – Babatha’s Story

Gary Porton, Goyim: Gentiles and Israelites in Mishnah-Tosefta, Brown Judaic Studies 155 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). Gary Porton, The Stranger Within Your Gates: Converts and Conversion in Rabbinic Literature, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1994), traces the tensions and paradoxes that the Mishnaic system caused in interactions with gentiles. The rabbis used a variety of strategies for marginalizing all outsiders in favor of an integral, divinely mandated, well-structured Israel. The rabbis’ view of Israel in relation to non-Jews was an ideal seldom experienced. It certainly does not describe, but may have been a response to, the kind of web of relationships mirrored in the Dead Sea documents.