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.

节日的适当遵守是早期犹太文学中的一个主要问题，但在此期间，外邦人的节日也很重要。两个这样的节日是第二马卡比斯描述的希腊狄俄尼索斯节和巴勒斯坦塔木德描述的罗马土星节。我展示了这些文本的作者所采用的各种方式，不同群体的成员，有着不同的文本习惯，并且生活了几个世纪，使外国假期对帝国统治的回应成为问题。尽管在这两个文本中都对反对外邦人的争论加剧了，但这个缩影者主要是对狄俄尼索斯节提出了质疑，因为它的遵守是对祖先法的违反，而巴勒斯坦人阿莫赖姆则强调了萨图罗尼亚为罗马假日的地位。这些关于外邦节日的讨论的不同重点区分了这两个犹太社区的特权，他们对外邦节日的理解以及对希腊和罗马霸权的各自反应。