The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora: Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period


Book Description

In The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora, Jonathan Trotter shows how different diaspora Jews’ perspectives on the distant city of Jerusalem and the temple took shape while living in the diaspora, an experience which often is characterized by complicated senses of alienation from and belonging to an ancestral homeland and one’s current home. This book investigates not only the perspectives of the individual diaspora Jews whose writings mention the Jerusalem temple (Letter of Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria, 2 Maccabees, and 3 Maccabees) but also the customs of diaspora Jewish communities linking them to the temple, such as their financial contributions and pilgrimages there.




Judaism Before Jesus


Book Description

Highlighting the ideas, subplots and characters that shaped the world of Jesus and the first Christians, Anthony J. Tomasino skillfully retells the story of Judaism before Jesus, from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to the Herods, and even up to Masada.




The Studia Philonica Annual XXXIII, 2021


Book Description

Studies on Philo and Hellenistic Judaism from experts in the field The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (circa 15 BCE to circa 50 CE). Volume 33 includes a special section on the history of editions of Philo, five general articles on Philo’s work, an annotated bibliography, and thirteen book reviews.




Oxford Bibliographies


Book Description

"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.




Reading the Way, Paul, and “The Jews” in Acts within Judaism


Book Description

Jason F. Moraff challenges the contention that Acts' sharp rhetoric and portrayal of “the Jews” reflects anti-Judaism and supersessionism. He argues that, rather than constructing Christian identity in contrast to Judaism, Acts binds the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” together into a shared identity as Israel, and that together they embark on a journey of repentance with common Jewishness providing the foundation. Acts leverages Jewish kinship, language, cult, and custom to portray the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” as one family debating the direction of their ancestral tradition. Using a historically situated narrative approach, Moraff frames Acts' portrayal of the Way and Paul in relation to the Jewish people as participating in internecine conflict regarding the Jewish tradition-in-crisis, after the destruction of the temple. By exploring ancient ethnicity, Jewish identity and Lukan characterization, images of the Jews, the Way, and Paul, violence in Acts and the theme of blindness in Luke's gospel, the Pauline writings and Acts, Moraff stresses that Acts speaks from “among my own nation,” meaning “the Jews”, and makes it possible to understand Acts' critical characterization of “the Jews” within Second Temple Judaism.




What Ifs of Jewish History


Book Description

Counterfactual history of the Jewish past inviting readers to explore how the course of Jewish history might have been different.




Religious Networks in the Roman Empire


Book Description

Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.




Ancient Jewish Diaspora


Book Description

The fifteen papers collected in this volume all tackle the complex cultures of Jewish Hellenism. The book covers a wide range of topics, divided into four clusters: Moses and Exodus, Places and Ruins, Theatre and Myth, Antisemitism and Reception.




Review of Biblical Literature, 2021


Book Description

The annual Review of Biblical Literature presents a selection of reviews of the most recent books in biblical studies and related fields, including topical monographs, multi-author volumes, reference works, commentaries, and dictionaries. RBL reviews German, French, Italian, and English books and offers reviews in those languages.




Letters from Home


Book Description

The announcement by the Persian king Cyrus following his conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE that exiled Judahites could return to their homeland should have been cause for celebration. Instead, it plunged them into animated debate. Only a small community returned and participated in the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. By the end of the sixth century BCE, they faced a theological conundrum: Had the catastrophic punishment of exile, understood as marking God’s retribution for the people’s sins, come to an end? By the Hellenistic era, most Jews living in their homeland believed that life abroad signified God’s wrath and rejection. Jews living outside of their homeland, however, rejected this notion. From both sides of the diasporic line, Jews wrote letters and speeches that conveyed the sense that their positions had ancient roots in Torah traditions. In this book, Malka Z. Simkovich investigates the rhetorical strategies—such as pseudepigraphy, ventriloquy, and mirroring—that Egyptian and Judean Jews incorporated into their writings about life outside the land of Israel, charting the boundary-marking push and pull that took place within Jewish letters in the Hellenistic era. Drawing on this correspondence and other contemporaneous writings, Simkovich argues that the construction of diaspora during this period—reinforced by some and negated by others—produced a tension that lay at the core of Jewish identity in the ancient world. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of ancient Judaism and to laypersons interested in the questions of a Jewish homeland and Jewish diaspora.