Customers in North America who wish to purchase this publication, please contact Augsburg Fortress Press. From Joshua To Caiaphas: High Priests After The Exile by James C. VanderKam (John A. O'Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, University of Notre Dame) is a comprehensive, 548-page history of the high priests who served in the Second Temple period of Israel and their influence and importance in understanding early Judaism. A masterpiece of scholarship and research, Professor VanderKam writes with a distinctive clarity that allows even the non-specialist general reader to come away with a comprehensive and coherent understanding of Temple Judaism as represented by the fifty-one men who served as high priest from about 515 BCE down to 70CE when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed by the Romans. No Old Testament Studies, Israelite History, or Judaic Studies collection can be considered either comprehensive or complete without the inclusion of this impressive and seminal work. Also very highly recommended are Professor VanderKam's previous contributions: The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (1994); An Introduction To Early Judaism (2001); The Book Of Jubilees (2001); and The Meaning Of The Dead Sea Scrolls (which was co-authored with Peter Flint, 2002).

Beginning late in the Old Testament period and continuing for the next six hundred years, the Jewish high priests were often the most important members of Jewish society. They not only possessed religious authority but also exercised political control. This book gathers and assesses the surviving evidence about each of the fifty-one men who served as high priest from about 515 BCE until approximately 70 CE when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

This highly engaging and readable book is a study of Joseph Caiaphas, a Jewish high priest of the first century and one of the men who sent Jesus to his death.Caiaphasis a valuable resource for scholars of ancient history and students of the Gospel of Acts.

With a rigorous use of the sources, the book throws new light on the High Priesthood (301-152 BCE). Setting this institution in the widest contest of the interaction between the Judaic and Hellenistic world, it gives a valid contribution to the international research in this field.

The concept and institution of priesthood in the Catholic Church has been the subject of serious challenge not only since the time of the Protestant Reformation but also, more recently, from within the Catholic Church, as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and theologians afterward have reconsidered the place and function of priests in relation to both bishops and laity. In dialogue with those challenges, and by means of research into Scripture and the theological tradition--patristic, medieval, and modern--the author of this book considers classic images of priests and priestly ministry as a way of recovering an understanding of the priesthood that is at once both biblically and theological sound.

Essential reading...enlightening and informative...you will be sure to learn something new. - Church of England Newspaper In this illuminating read, Nick Page strips away centuries of misrepresentation and myth to reveal the real personality portrayed in the gospels. Drawing on a wealth of historical and archaeological research, the result is a startling and vivid new portrait of Yeshua ben Yosef - Jesus of Nazareth.

What really happened during Jesus' final days? It was, historically speaking, nothing much; a death in Jerusalem, a routine execution at the edge of an empire. Yet that execution - and the events surrounding it - were to have a profound effect on the history of the world. The last week of Jesus' life on earth was probably the most important week in history. This book aims to reconstruct the events of those days. From Jesus' entry to Jerusalem on the Sunday, to his resurrection a week later; this book explores the claims and explode the myths. It looks seriously at the evidence of the gospel accounts, without ducking the controversies and contradictions. It focuses on the history rather than the spiritual and theological significance of events and uses archaeological research and detailed Biblical analysis to take the reader through THE LONGEST WEEK.