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SILVERTSEV, A.M., Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014. 256p. Paperback. This fascinating book explores the influence of Roman imperial ideology on the development of messianic themes in Judaism of the fifth through the eighth centuries C.E. Chapter 1 explores conceptual affinities between Byzantine imperial eschatology and eschatological motifs in rabbinic literature. The author shows that Jews developed their own supersessionist narrative that both internalized and inverted a traditional Christian Roman supersessionism (i.e., ‘the Church has replaced Israel’). (...) In chapter 2, Sivertsev focuses on a particular eschatological scenario preserved in a seventh-century rabbinic work entitled ‘The Signs of the Messiah’ and analyzes its Byzantine ideological context. He argues that there are obvious similarities between the Christian and the Jewish legend of the last Roman emperor (...). Chapter 3 focuses on the motif of the mother of the Messiah, Hephzibah, as she is called in the seventh-century ‘Book of Zerubabel’, in comparison with the role of the virgin Mary in Byzantine imperial ideology. (...) Chapter 4 traces the applications of the renovatio imperii theme in Byzantine Jewish literature and argues, among other things, that in the story of the recovery of the Temple vessels, which envisions the messianic restoration of Jerusalem, the Messiah acts in a way that closely resembles the imperial promotion of Byzantium as the New Rome. (...) Finally, in chapter 5 Sivertsev discusses the impact of early Byzantine ‘emperor mystique’ on the representations of the Messiah in Jewish eschatological writings. (...) The author has provided us with a rich study of both early Byzantine imperial culture and early medieval Jewish messianism and eschatology. He is well at home in both fields and that combination yields fascinating cross-cultural insights. Even though some of his conclusions are bound to remain somewhat in the realm of speculation, the overall argumentative force of the book is impressive. (...) Sivertsen’s book is a very welcome addition to the slowly growing body of scholarly work on Byzantine Jewry.' (PIETER W. van der HORST on the hardcover edition in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2011.12.20). € 24.50 (New) ISBN: 9781107665231