"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.
For those unfamiliar with the many divisions within Judaism at that time or with Jewish life in other parts of the Roman Empire, this book offers an excellent introduction to a little-studied time period. Readers of Jewish history will definitely want to add this work to their shelves.—Rabbi Rachel Esserman, Reporter Exploring the world of the Second Temple period (539 BCE–70 CE), in particular the vastly diverse stories, commentaries, and other documents written by Jews during the last three centuries of this period, Malka Z. Simkovich takes us to Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, to the Jewish sectarians and the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, to the Cairo genizah, and to the ancient caves that kept the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As she recounts Jewish history during this vibrant, formative era, Simkovich analyzes some of the period’s most important works for both familiar and possible meanings. This volume interweaves past and present in four parts. Part 1 tells modern stories of discovery of Second Temple literature. Part 2 describes the Jewish communities that flourished both in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora. Part 3 explores the lives, worldviews, and significant writings of Second Temple authors. Part 4 examines how authors of the time introduced novel, rewritten, and expanded versions of Bible stories in hopes of imparting messages to the people. Simkovich’s popular style will engage readers in understanding the sometimes surprisingly creative ways Jews at this time chose to practice their religion and interpret its scriptures in light of a cultural setting so unlike that of their Israelite forefathers. Like many modern Jews today, they made an ancient religion meaningful in an ever-changing world.
"The Late Second Temple Period (c. 200 BC to 70 AD) was a period of intense social changes for the Jewish people. During this period, the Jewish people experienced a Syrian king defiling the Jerusalem Temple, the Maccabean Revolt, the celebration of Hanukkah, the establishment of a competing Jewish temple in Egypt, and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. During this time, Jews spread out all over the Diaspora. The turmoil and the lack of visible cohesion have led many scholars to argue that there was no Jewish unity and no distinguishable Jewish identity in this time period. This book argues against this trend in academia, and posits that a strong Jerusalem tradition unified the Jewish people."--BOOK JACKET.
A comprehensive treatment of the early Christian approaches to the Temple and its role in shaping Jewish and Christian identity The first scholarly work to trace the Temple throughout the entire New Testament, this study examines Jewish and Christian attitudes toward the Temple in the first century and provides both Jews and Christians with a better understanding of their respective faiths and how they grow out of this ancient institution. The centrality of the Temple in New Testament writing reveals the authors’ negotiations with the institutional and symbolic center of Judaism as they worked to form their own religion.
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.
This book examines the complete history of ancient Israel--from Abraham to the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Provides numerous color and black-and-white photos, maps, charts, and timelines. Adds and updates evidence, analysis, and insights of events, based on developments since the book's first edition. --From publisher's description.
A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.
Margaret Barker believes that Christianity developed so quickly because it was a return to far older faith—far older than the Greek culture that is long-held to have influenced Christianity. Temple Theology explains that the preaching of the gospel and the early Christian faith grew out of the centuries' old Hebrew longing for God's original Temple.
The Late Second Temple Period (c. 200 BC to 70 AD) was a period of intense social changes for the Jewish people. During this period, the Jewish people experienced a Syrian king defiling the Jerusalem Temple, the Maccabean Revolt, the celebration of Hanukkah, the establishment of a competing Jewish temple in Egypt, and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. During this time, Jews spread out all over the Diaspora. The turmoil and the lack of visible cohesion have led many scholars to argue that there was no Jewish unity and no distinguishable Jewish identity in this time period. This book argues against this trend in academia, and posits that a strong Jerusalem tradition unified the Jewish people. Book jacket.
