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Catherine Hezser examines the significance of mobility in Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism within the wider context of travel in the Roman Empire and the Middle East. She analyzes Jewish narrative and legal traditions referring to travel in the context of ancient travel literature and on the basis of the material reality of travel in the Land of Israel. The author argues that mobility became especially important after 70 C.E., when rabbinic networks emerged in Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia. The decentralized nature of these networks made mobility the basis of contacts, communication, and the transmission of legal and exegetical knowledge amongst rabbis. Mobility determined rabbis scope of influence and power amongst their coreligionists. Jewish travel between Palestine and Babylonia is examined within the framework of economic and cultural exchange between Rome and Persia in late antique and early Byzantine times.

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