ABSTRACT
The chapter takes a critical look at how late antique Jews regulated their boundaries by stigmatizing “heretics” without developing an “orthodoxy”. It also examines the development of distinctive institutions developed at that time – the synagogues, the patriarchate and exilarchate, and rabbinic academies – and the strategies that were available for the authorization of these institutions. Although rabbinic literature dominates the evidence, the essay attempts to locate rabbinic culture within broader cultural developments and pays attention to epigraphic and other evidence that does not derive from rabbinic circles.
