An Early History of Compassion
Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism

In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures.

Introduction; 1. Between power and vulnerability; 2. Found in translation; 3. Within the fabric of society; 4. Bonds in flux; 5. In dialogue with the Empire; Conclusion. A discourse of the other.

Françoise Mirguet (Ph.D., Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, 2007) is an Associate Professor of Hebrew and Near Eastern Cultures at Arizona State University, where she is also a member of the Center for Jewish Studies. She has been the recipient of a post-doctoral fellowship from the Belgian Research Council (2007–2010); she has also been a fellow at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies (2013), at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2015), and at the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies (2016–2017). Her first book was published in 2009; she has also published several peer-reviewed articles.