Simon, the oldest of five brothers, chronicles the transformation from farmers to soldiers of the five Maccabee brothers and of their struggle for freedom against the Syrian-Greek conquerers of Judea, in a historical novel that recreates the events celebrated by Jews during the holiday of Hanukkah.

In modern times, various Jewish groups have argued whether Jewishness is a function of ethnicity (membership in a descent group, a function of birth), nationality (citizenship in a state, a function of politics), religion (membership in a group characterized by various beliefs and practices), or all three. These fundamental conceptions were already in place in antiquity; the peculiar combination of ethnicity, nationality, and religion that would characterize Jewishness through the centuries first took shape in the second century B.C.E. This book studies the ways in which these elements were understood and applied in the construction of Jewish identity - by Jews, by gentiles and by the state - in such a way that the question "Who was a Jew?" could be variously answered.

Alexandra, a young Jewish girl from Jerusalem, describes her life and the creation of Hanukkah, more than 2000 years ago.

"Sepher Yosippon was written in Hebrew by a medieval historian noted by modern scholars for its eloquent style. This is the first known chronicle of Jewish history and legend from Adam to the destruction of the Second Temple, this is the first known text since the canonical histories written by Flavius Josephus in Greek and later translated by Christian scholars into Latin. Sepher Yosippon has been cited and referred to by scholars, poets, and authors as the authentic source for ancient Israel for over a millennium, until overshadowed by the twentieth-century Hebrew translations of Josephus. It is based on Pseudo Hegesippus’s fourth-century anti-Jewish summary of Josephus’s Jewish War. However, the anonymous author [a.k.a. Joseph ben Gurion Hacohen] also consulted with the Latin versions of Josephus’s works available to him. At the same time, he included a wealth of Second Temple literature as well as Roman and Christian sources. This book contains Steven Bowman’s translation of the complete text of David Flusser’s standard Hebrew edition of Sepher Yosippon, which includes the later medieval interpolations referring to Jesus. The present English edition also contains the translator’s introduction as well as a preface by the fifteenth-century publisher of the book. The anonymous author of this text remains unique for his approach to history, his use of sources, and his almost secular attitude, which challenges the modern picture of medieval Jews living in a religious age. In his influential novel, A Guest for the Night, the Nobel Laureate author Shmuel Yosef Agnon emphasized the importance of Sepher Yosippon as a valuable reading to understand human nature. Bowman’s translation of Flusser’s notes, as well as his own scholarship, offers a well-wrought story for scholars and students interested in Jewish legend and history in the medieval period, Jewish studies, medieval literature, and folklore studies." -- From publisher's website.

Gruen (history and classics, Berkeley) explores four centuries of Jewish life within the dominant classical civilization, from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. He begins with an investigation of "the conspicuous absence of a philosophy of Diaspora" and attempts very capably to identify the traces of the concept among Jews ... More under Roman rule. He looks at the cultures of the Jews living in Rome, Asia, and Alexandria, finding very vibrant communities in all three places. In exploring Jewish views of the Diaspora, Gruen offers up two chapters on Diaspora humor, one about the way biblical tales were retold and the lessons they could convey and the other about creating fanciful yet didactic stories. Then the author looks at the evidence about the Jewish image of the Greeks and Romans, a subject usually investigated from the opposite viewpoint. This leads into his final chapter on the Jewish view of the homeland during the period, a view not much different from today's. Gruen admits that his work is far from exhaustive, but it is certainly substantial, fascinating, and scholarly

David Flusser was a very prolific scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and his contributions to Scrolls research, apocalypticism, and apocalyptic literature are inestimable. With this English translation of many of his essays, Flusser's insights are now available to a wider audience than ever before. Here Flusser examines the influence of apocalypticism on various Jewish sects. He states that the teachings of Jesus, while reflecting first and foremost the views of the sages, were also influenced by Jewish apocalypticism. Examining the Essenes, their effect on Hebrew language, the split of sects, and much more, Flusser's collected essays offer an important source of study for any Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. - Publisher.

he time between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Maccabaean wars is one of the obscurest periods of Jewish history. Yet it is vitally important for our understanding of Judaism in the period up to and including the New Testament era because it was then that the foundations of first-century Judaism were being laid.In his now classic — and encyclopaedic — study/tic/aim and Hellenism, Martin Hengel demonstrated how Greek influence on Judaism at this stage was far greater than has usually been supposed, and painted a fascinating picture of a hitherto unexplored culture. Here, in a much slimmer book, he summarizes the results of that larger volume and in some aspects takes it further. First he outlines the history of Palestine from Alexander's expedition to the death of Antiochus III in 187 BC. He then shows the political, social and cultural features of the Hellenistic world, asking in particular how it was possible for a non-Greek to become accepted in it. Finally, he explores the development of Judaism in the various countries of the Diaspora and in Palestine itself.

"This volume assembles twenty-three essays by Erich S. Gruen, who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. Twenty-two of the articles have previously been published, and one new one was composed for the volume"--Back cover.

In a world of relentless and often violent change, what does it take for a culture to survive? Steven Weitzman addresses this question by exploring the "arts of cultural persistence"--the tactics that cultures employ to sustain themselves in the face of intractable realities. Surviving Sacrilege focuses on a famously resilient culture caught between two disruptive acts of sacrilege: ancient Judaism between the destruction of the First Temple (by the Babylonians) in 586 B.C. and the destruction of the Second Temple (by the Romans) in 70 C.E. Throughout this period Jews faced the challenge of preserving their religious traditions in a world largely out of their control--a world ruled first by the Persians, then by the Hellenistic Seleucid Kingdom, and finally by the Roman Empire. Their struggle to answer this challenge yields insight into the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity of a distinctive period in Jewish history, but one with broad implications for the study of religious and cultural survival. Detecting something tenaciously self-preserving at the core of the imagination, Weitzman argues that its expression in storytelling, fantasy, imitation, metaphor, and magic allows a culture's survival instinct to maneuver within, beyond, and even against the limits of reality.

The book brings together the essays on Second Temple Judaism by Moshe Weinfeld, one of the leading figures in comparative literature and the history of religion in ancient Near Eastern studies. This integrated collection centers on the religious debates within Second Temple Judaism between the sectarian Qumran community and the Pharisees. It examines topics such as liturgy, law, theology and ideology; issues that established Jewish religious forms for normative, Rabbinic Judaism. It also sets these debates in the broader context of texts and ideas from the Bible and ancient Near East texts on one hand and the New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism on the other. The book comprises four sections. The first, 'Prayer and Worship' analyzes constitutive ideas reflected in the definitive prayers of Qumran and Pharisaic liturgy. The second, 'The Qumran Scrolls' engages various legal and hermeneutic issues in the literature of the Qumran sect. Section three, 'Theology and Ideology' treats a group of foundational Jewish concepts from the historical point of view. The final section 'The New Testament' brings several basic concepts and conceptions of Judaism into New Testament context. This is volume 54 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).

"An indispensible companion text, Texts and Traditions includes the essential documents of the various religious trends of the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods as well as Josephus, Greek and Aramaic inscriptions, classical historians and talmudic sources." --Book Jacket.