In Paul and The Restoration of Humanity in Light of Ancient Jewish Traditions, Aaron Sherwood questions the assumption of universalism in Pauline thought, and finds instead that relevant Pauline traditions depict a partly restricted and particularly Israelite restoration of humanity. This important Jewish component of Paul's thought remains largely unrecognized, but Pauline and other ancient Jewish traditions consistently present Israel and non-Israelites' uniting in their worship of Yhwh as the restoration of both Israel and humanity. Aaron Sherwood demonstrates in Pauline traditions...

Reconstructing Jewish socio-political leadership of the late Second Temple and Talmudic periods, this book suggests that the period between two great revolts is the best period to study leadership dynamics. Prior to the emergence of the rabbinic leadership, biblically modelled leadership was still a realistic option, often co-existing with non-biblical polity. It also attempts to reconstruct the Jewish socio-political leadership of this period by examining how consistently the ideas of leadership that were available before 70 C.E. were followed after 70 C.E.

In Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, Ulrich Huttner explores the way Christians established communities and defined their position within their surroundings from the first to the fifth centuries. He shows that since the time of Paul the apostle, the cities Colossae, Hierapolis and Laodicea allowed Christians to expand and develop in their own way. Huttner uses a wide variety of sources, not only Christian texts - from Pauline letters to Byzantine hagiographies - but also inscriptions and archeological remains, to reconstruct the religious conflicts as well as cooperation between...

Over the past 45 years Professor Pieter W. van der Horst contributed extensively to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The 24 papers in this volume, written since his early retirement in 2006, cover a wide range of topics, all of them concerning the religious world of Judaism and Christianity in the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine era. They reflect his research interests in Jewish epigraphy, Jewish interpretation of the Bible, Jewish prayer culture, the diaspora in Asia Minor, exegetical problems in the writings of Philo and Josephus, Samaritan history, texts from...

A collection of twenty-one essays clustered around the theme of apocalyptic--revelations of hitherto undisclosed divine mysteries to human seers, either directly or through the mediation of an interpreting angel. Preliminary essays on the Book of Job, Messianism, and apocalyptic ethics are followed by five studies centred upon Jewish apocalypses composed around the turn of the era, two anonymous, three pseudonymous, and four essays on New Testament writers, two on Paul, one on Mark, and one on John. A reflection upon an early Islamic convert from Judaism, emphasizing the 'Abrahamic-lexicon'...

In Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome William den Hollander places under the microscope the Judaean historian's own account of the latter part of his life, following his first encounters with the Romans. Episodes of Josephus' life, such as his embassy to Rome prior to the outbreak of the 1st Judaean Revolt, his prophetic pronouncement of Vespasian's imminent rise to the imperial throne, and his time in the Roman prisoner-of-war camp, are subjected to rigorous analysis and evaluated against the broader ancient evidence by the application of a vivid historical imagination. Den...

In this book various authors explore how rabbinic traditions that were formulated in the Land of Israel migrated to Jewish study houses in Babylonia. The authors demonstrate how the new location and the unique literary character of the Babylonian Talmud combine to create new and surprising texts out of the old ones. Some authors concentrate on inner rabbinic social structures that influence the changes the traditions underwent. Others show the influence of the host culture on the metamorphosis of the traditions. The result is a complex study of cultural processes, as shaped by a unique...

J. Cornelis de Vos examines the impact and reception of the Decalogue up to 200 CE, scrutinizing the versions of the Decalogue, and the history of the Decalogue in ancient Jewish writings, the New Testament, and early Christian writings. Almost all texts show an interconnection of identity and normativity: the Decalogue functions as an expression of fundamental moral concepts of socio-religious groups. At the same time, these groups enhance the Decalogue with normativity--sometimes even expanding on it--to make it a text that generates their own identity. This is the first study that presents...