This volume asks why Jewish groups - Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and the Dead Sea Scroll sect - flourished during the Maccabean era. It argues that such a result is uncommon, requiring special explanation.
In the introduction, sectarianism is defined and its varieties in Second Temple Judaism assessed. Among the causes of the known results suggested are the encounter with an outside culture that seemed to be weakening the external national perimeter, the impact of expanded literacy, the move to the city from the farm, as well as eschatological hope aroused by Maccabean victory. In...

In Jewish hekhalot mysticism, one who ascends to the heavenly temple may see something which looks like - but is not - water. Should he be deceived by this illusion, he betrays his unworthiness and exposes himself to retribution. Detailed examination of the water vision discovers that its real object is the celestial pavement, separating the fiery divine realm from the "watery" world of impure organic matter. This pavement is Ezekiel's firmament of hashmal - a luminous crystalline substance - seen by the visionary from above. Further investigation finds that the water vision continues...

This volume examines the unusual interest in women characters displayed in the Book of Jubilees, an interpretive reworking of the biblical narratives of Genesis through Exodus 12, written in the second century BCE. Demonstrating a pattern in the characterizations, the study shows how a matrilineal standard of ethnic purity and elevation of the biblical matriarchs function as key aspects in a polemic against the acceptance of foreigners into the community. The latter part of the book explores the exegetical techniques used to develop the portraits and places the polemic in the...

The development of the concept of the covenant during the Second Temple period is traced, by discussing relevant texts among the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha - especially the Dead Sea Scrolls - and the New Testament.

The book contains a collection of 15 articles on Jewish literature and cultural history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages which are mainly focused on different aspects of Jewish hermeneutics. Without doubt, the "art of interpretation" is the most characteristic feature of Jewish intellectual activity from Antiquity to the Haskalah period, when the Torah was gradually losing its central position and hermeneutics therefore its attraction. Not only the old translations of the Bible, but also the Jewish approach to philosophy or magic reveal the endeavour to conciliate the requirements of the...

The aim of the present work is to study the esoteric characterization of King Solomon that became popular in certain currents of Judaism and Christianity of Late Antiquity and to establish a typology of it.
Representative texts are analyzed, first to establish precisely the development of the different esoteric traditions linked to King Solomon, and then to show how these texts and traditions are placed in relation within the broad context of Magic and Religion in Late Antiquity.
The book provides data for a better understanding of magic and its role in the Mediterranean Oikumene,...

This book is about Flavius Josephus' presentation of the Feast of Passover in his works.
The first part is an analysis of the texts in which Flavius Josephus mentions this Feast in his paraphrase of the Bible. In the second part, the references to Passover in the rest of his works are considered. The third part is an attempt to contextualize the results of the first two parts in his contemporaneus literature and historical events.
Flavius Josephus is normally referred to in a fragmentary way. In this study it is possible to find a more complete idea of his presentation of such an...

Research of burials constitutes one of the main reliable sources of information related to various aspects of funerary practices and rituals, and offers a perception of ancient social life and community organization. The material remains of mortuary rituals is effective in reconstructing the history of a society, its religious beliefs and its social outlook. Tombs offer ample data on the artistic taste evinced by funerary architecture and the ornamentation of receptacles and objects. Changes in Jewish funerary practices did not alter the plan and architecture of the tombs. Though the funerary...

These essays, by some of today's greatest scholars of Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity, explore a variety of ways in which these two great civilizations interacted. The common focus of these studies is the transition from one culture to the next - how words or concepts or conventions from the one came to be transplanted, and often modified in the process, in the other. Taken together, however, they provide something broader: a large, variegated picture of the cultural interaction that was to prove so crucial for the later history of Judaism and Christianity.

Here we reread George W.E. Nickelsburg's more important articles and encounter afresh some of his books, to criticize them and to attend to his response to the criticism. This set of Auseinandersetzungen thus carries forward the life of learning and debate that yields a rich harvest of scholarship. It pays tribute to a scholar through acts of engaged, critical scholarship, in which specialists reread articles reproduced in these pages and respond to them, with Nickelsburg then joining issue--a protracted engagement, spanning an entire intellectual career and many of its more important...