Innkeeping in Jewish Society in Roman Palestine
By Ben-Zion Rosenfeld
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 41, No. 2. (1998)
Abstract: This study discusses the historical evolution of inns and innkeeping in Jewish society in Roman Palestine and examines their social implications, and in particular, the relationship between opposite ends of the social ladder, and what this meant for the status of women. After a sketch of innkeeping in the Ancient Near East from the third millennium B.C.E., the focus is on the Roman period. During that period, it is argued, innkeeping, originally associated with sexual promiscuity and the lowest strata of society, gained acceptance only with difficulty in the religiously conservative Jewish society of the time. Nevertheless, in time it became quite common and rabbinic sources of the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. take it for granted.
Introduction: This study is concerned with the historical and philological evolution of inns and innkeeping in Jewish society in Roman Palestine, with a view to improving our understanding of certain social phenomena in the Roman world. These phenomena will be discussed both from the Roman perspective and from the inner viewpoint of a subject people-in this case, mainly the Jews-toward the Roman occupying power and the ethos that power brought to the East. The Jewish aspect, in particular, will demonstrate how a closed, conservative society slowly and reluctantly assimilated a social institution of foreign origin, that had initially been seen as conflicting with some of its most basic principles.
In addition, our findings will also have a bearing on social research in general, since, first, some light will be thrown upon the relationship between opposite ends of the social ladder, in a context of which we know very little; and, second, since innkeeping was a trade in which women played a significant role, the study also has certain implications concerning the status of women in the lower classes of Jewish society in Roman Palestine.
Before we can consider innkeeping as a profession in Jewish Palestine and the factors that promoted it, we must examine the development, nature and social significance of inns in the Ancient Near East and in the Greco-Roman world.
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