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.

As the Roman-appointed high priest who had a hand in orchestrating Jesus's Crucifixion, Caiaphas secured his place in infamy alongside Pontius Pilate. Viewing Caiaphas as more than just a one-dimensional villain, Adele Reinhartz offers a thorough reconsideration of representations of Caiaphas in the Gospels and other ancient texts as well as in subsequent visual arts, literature, film, and drama. The portrait that emerges challenges long-held beliefs about this New Testament figure by examining the background of the high priesthood and exploring the relationships among the high priest, the Roman leadership, and the Jewish population. Reinhartz does not seek to exonerate Caiaphas from culpability in the Crucifixion, but she does expand our understanding of Caiaphas's complex religious and political roles in biblical literature and his culturally loaded depictions in ongoing Jewish-Christian dialogue.

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.

The year 167 B.C.E. marked the beginning of a period of intense persecution for the people of Judea, as Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted -- forcibly and brutally -- to eradicate traditional Jewish religious practices. In Apocalypse against Empire Anathea Portier-Young reconstructs the historical events and key players in this traumatic episode in Jewish history and provides a sophisticated treatment of resistance in early Judaism. Building on a solid contextual foundation, Portier-Young argues that the first Jewish apocalypses emerged as a literature of resistance to Hellenistic imperial rule. In particular, Portier-Young contends, the book of Daniel, the Apocalypse of Weeks, and the Book of Dreams were written to supply an oppressed people with a potent antidote to the destructive propaganda of the empire -- renewing their faith in the God of the covenant and answering state terror with radical visions of hope.

In The Final Days of Jesus, Mark Smith brings his experience as a classical historian to bear on the life of the historical Jesus, piecing together the volatile political context of first-century Judaea, as well as the lives of Pontius Pilate, Annas, and Joseph Caiaphas. The claim that 'the Jews crucified Jesus' has spawned a long and tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism. Smith challenges this claim through detailed exploration of Roman, Jewish, and Christian written sources and a broad range of archaeological evidence, such as the ossuary of Caiaphas, the 'Hidden Gate', and the rich vein of research devoted to the archaeology of ritual purity. The result is an earthy and nuanced portrait of Jewish life under Roman rule. From his discussion of the multiplicity and brutality of Roman executions to the intricate personal relationships among elites that provided the means of collaboration and redress, Smith details the complex push-pull of forces between Rome and the Temple as they collided in one history-changing week.