This synthetic treatment of Josephus and his times has two aims. The first is to establish Josephus' attitudes to the various Judaean aristocratic groups of the first century - priests, descendants of Herod, certain sectarians - and how these attitudes changed. The second aim is more speculative: to connect these changes with actual changes in Judaean politics and society in the c. 30 years of Josephus' literary activity, a critical period of transformation following the destruction of Jerusalem. The first chapter examines Josephus' life from his detection to Vespasian, and suggests that Josephus always retained an interest in current public affairs, particularly those of Judaea. Chapters 2-4 discuss the changes of attitude within the Josephan corpus and place them in the context of the evidence of the coins, inscriptions, Rabbinic literature and pagan historians. It is argued that these changes allow us to trace the decline of the pre-66 aristocracy groups after 70. Chapter 5 argues that there arose a new aristocracy in the 80s and 90s, a rise which left its mark in Josephus' later work.

Israel Knohl offers a new perspective on the history and theology of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. By means of an analysis of specific texts--for example, those that deal with the Sabbath and the Festivals--Knohl demonstrates the existence of two separate Priestly sources, loosely speaking, the two sources that we have referred to as P and the Holiness Code. The "Holiness School" is shown to have been active subsequent to the school that produced the Priestly Torah and, in fact, to have been responsible for the great enterprise of editing the Torah. Knohl examines the conceptions of divinity and ritual reflected in Priestly thought and legislation in ancient Israel and the changes revealed in these conceptions over time. The priesthood appears as an elite group that was closeted within the walls of the "Sanctuary of Silence," drawn toward the hidden, noble divinity ensconced within its shrine. The later stratum of Priestly writings expresses a desire to transcend the limits of the temple and go out into the broad avenues of the nation, even at the price of surrendering the loftiness of earlier faith and practice. The conclusion describes the changes that occurred in the priests' world view as an attempt to come to terms with the socioreligious crisis that had brought about a disjunction between ritual and ethics. In response to this crisis, the priests developed a wider conception of holiness, one that integrates ethics and ritual in one sphere. This is a reprint of the 1995 Fortress Press edition.

According to the account in the Book of Exodus, God addresses the children of Israel as they stand before Mt. Sinai with the words, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (19:6). The sentence, Martha Himmelfarb observes, is paradoxical, for priests are by definition a minority, yet the meaning in context is clear: the entire people is holy. The words also point to some significant tensions in the biblical understanding of the people of Israel. If the entire people is holy, why does it need priests? If membership in both people and priesthood is a matter not of merit but of birth, how can either the people or its priests hope to be holy? How can one reconcile the distance between the honor due the priest and the actual behavior of some who filled the role? What can the people do to make itself truly a kingdom of priests? Himmelfarb argues that these questions become central in Second Temple Judaism. She considers a range of texts from this period, including the Book of Watchers , the Book of Jubilees , legal documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, and goes on to explore rabbinic Judaism's emphasis on descent as the primary criterion for inclusion among the chosen people of Israel—a position, she contends, that took on new force in reaction to early Christian disparagement of the idea that mere descent from Abraham was sufficient for salvation.