History of the Jews


Book Description

With our American Philosophy and Religion series, Applewood reissues many primary sources published throughout American history. Through these books, scholars, interpreters, students, and non-academics alike can see the thoughts and beliefs of Americans who came before us.




Cry for Jerusalem - Book 1 63-66 CE


Book Description

This is the first in a series of four historical fiction novels based on the writings of the eyewitness Josephus. In Act I of the book one begins to wonder if it was fate, destiny, or some divine plan that brought four very different travelers together in a struggle to survive what should have been a routine trip to Rome. These new friends and their families somehow found themselves playing critical roles at a focal point in the history of western civilization. For as winds helped to spread the great fire in Rome, they also carried embers east toward Judea, where they threatened to ignite a conflict that would forever change the world for Jews and Christians. In between the historical events of that time, there's the story of the people involved. You get to meet them in Cry for Jerusalem.




The Fall of Jerusalem


Book Description

It is fatal to show pity in a time of war. Led by the mighty Titus, the Roman army besieges Jerusalem. Arrows rain over the city day and night, and battering rams assault its defensive walls. Inside, the people curse their fate, resistant to the last but maddened by hunger. After days of rebellion, al last their city falls. The citizens plead for mercy - but as the Romans march on the Temple of Masada, the most sacred sanctuary of the Jewish people, flaming torches blaze above their heads . . .




The Siege of Jerusalem


Book Description

The Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370-90 CE) is a difficult text. By twenty-first-century standards, it is gruesomely violent and offensive. It tells the story of the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, an event viewed by its author (as by many in the Middle Ages) as divine retribution against Jews for the killing of Christ. It anachronistically turns first-century Roman emperors Titus and Vespasian into Christian converts who battle like medieval crusaders to avenge their savior and cleanse the Holy Land of enemies of the faith. It makes little sense without frank understanding of medieval Christian anti-Semitism. There is, nevertheless, some consensus that Siege is a finely crafted piece of poetry, and that its combination of horror, beauty, and learnedness makes it an effective work of art. As literary scholar A.C. Spearing has put it, “We may not like what the poet does, but it is done with skillful craftsmanship and sometimes with brilliant virtuosity.” The tale that the anonymous Siege poet tells, moreover, is an important and still reverberating part of the history of Western thinking about the East. It is, in Yehuda Amichai’s phrase, a “currency of the past” that continues to be negotiated. The first-century destruction of Jerusalem has been understood in both Christian and Jewish traditions as the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora; for medieval Christians it was also a model of successful Christian leadership and justified warfare, an allegory of political and personal spiritual battle. As part of the story of the historical rift between Christianity and Judaism—and of the inevitable victory of Christianity—the destroyed Second Temple was taken as symbolic of the fall of Judaism and the rise of the new Christian era in which anyone who rejected Christ would suffer. Written in alliterative verse in the late fourteenth century, The Siege of Jerusalem seems to have been popular in its day; at least nine fourteenth- and fifteen-century manuscripts containing the poem have come down to us. Yet this is the first volume to offer a full Modern English translation. In addition, appendices provide extensive samples of the alliterative original, a wide-ranging compendium of materials documenting anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages, comparative biblical passages, and much else.




The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age


Book Description

Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.




The Destruction of Jerusalem in Early Modern English Literature


Book Description

This book argues that the destruction of Jerusalem is a key explanatory trope for early modern texts.







The Last Days According to Jesus


Book Description

Analyzes what Jesus said about when he would return and the last days would arrive (as in Matthew 24:34). Defends the trustworthiness of Jesus' teachings.




The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem


Book Description

The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles--all have been subjects of intense scrutiny during the last decade. Lipschits takes into account the biblical textual evidence, the results of archaeological research, and the reports of Babylonian and Egyptian sources and provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the evidence for the history of this 100-year-long era. He provides a lucid historical survey that will, no doubt, become the baseline for all future studies of this era.