Jewish Studies

Hagith Sivan offers an unconventional study of one corner of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, weaving around the theme of conflict strands of distinct histories, and of peoples and places, highlighting Palestine's ethnic, cultural, topographical, architectural, and religious diversity.

This is an accessible and up-to-date account of the Jews during the millennium following Alexander the Great's conquest of the East. Unusually, it acknowledges the problems involved in constructing a narrative from fragmentary yet complex evidence and is, implicitly, an exploration of how this might be accomplished. It concentrates primarily on the people rather than issues of theology and adopts a resolutely unsentimental approach to the subject.

The sections of this bibliography have been arranged so as to contain sources that examine the Second Temple period both chronologically and thematically. The chronological sections are valuable for research into what conditions were like for Jews living under the different empires, while the thematic sections contain works that trace their topics throughout the Second Temple period.

This first volume opens with three introductory chapters to the work as a whole dealing with the geographical background, the chronology and the numismatic history of Judaism. The remainder of this volume concentrates on the Persian period, the two and a half centuries following the Babylonian Exile.

This volume addresses the encounter of Judaism with the Hellenistic culture spread throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond by Alexander the Great and his successors.

This volume covers the history of Judaism in the Roman period. Political history is treated from Pompey to Vespasian, but many chapters on Jewish life and thought go beyond the period of the Flavian emperors to present themes and evidence of importance for Judaism up to the 3rd century CE.

This volume covers the Talmudic period from 70 CE to 640 CE (the rise of Islam). It deals with the major historical, political and cultural developments in Jewish history and the history of Judaism in this crucial era during which Judaism took on its classical shape.

This volume explores the history of Judaism during the Second Temple period (516 BCE-70 CE), describing the body of Jewish literature written during these centuries and the most important groups, institutions, and practices of the time.