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"Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit": Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine

This essay explores a single dimension of what we might call "common" or "popular" Jewish piety in late antique Palestine and its relationship to that of the rabbis. In short, I will argue that at least some Palestinian Jews in late antiquity (defined here as ca.250-600 CE) believed that God directly and materially rewarded those who gave to or acted charitably toward poor individuals (e.g., almsgiving). While elements of this understanding can be found in earlier Jewish literature, including the Hebrew Bible, the form that it took among Palestinian Jews was both new and distinctively late antique. Like the Christian bishops of late antiquity, though, rabbis sought to appropriate and domesticate this popular understanding. They thus presented charitable activities directed at their own institutions as more worthy, and positioned themselves as the intercessors whose activities caused the divine reward. This argument raises the more general theoretical problem of "popular" and "official" religion, which I discuss in the conclusion.