The Terror of Time: The Festival of Dionysus and Saturnalia in Jewish Responses to Foreign Rule

Proper observance of festivals is a major concern in early Jewish literature, but the festivals of the gentiles also figure prominently in this period. Two such festivals are the Greek Festival of Dionysus, described in Second Maccabees, and the Roman festival of Saturnalia, described in the Palestinian Talmud. I show the varied ways in which the authors of these texts, members of different groups, with different textual practices, and living centuries apart, problematize foreign holidays in their responses to imperial rule. Though the polemic against gentiles is heightened in both texts, the epitomator primarily problematizes the Festival of Dionysus because its observance is a violation of ancestral law, while the Palestinian Amoraim stress Saturnalia’s status as a Roman holiday. The different emphases in these discussions of gentile festivals distinguish the prerogatives of these two Jewish communities, their understandings of gentile festivals, and their respective responses to Greek and Roman hegemony.