The story of the evolution of Judaism from its origins in the remote past into the complex and various forms by which it is known in the present day does not lend itself to a straightforward historical narrative. The following study attempts to understand how the Second Hebrew Commonwealth came into being and the critical role that Mosaic religion played in the process, which resulted in what may be termed Pharisaic Judaism, which effectively came to an end with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. By the sheer willpower and intellectual ability of the sages who survived the national disaster, Pharisaic Judaism was morphed into Rabbinic Judaism, which ultimately evolved over a period of two millennia into the variety of forms that presently adorn the religious landscape of the Jewish people. Part 1 of this study is concerned with the story of Pharisaic Judaism, which emerged in a period in which the majority of the Jewish people were political factors in the history of the Jewish nation, something that would only emerge once again in the twentieth century with the creation of the modern State of Israel. Ancient Judaea existed in the midst of the region properly known as Cisjordan, the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, which constituted the land-bridge between Africa and Asia, through which the more accessible one of the two primary trade and military routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia passed. This made it a critical chunk of territory, the control of which was a constant objective of contending powers throughout the history of the Middle East, and gave Judaea a strategic importance virtually unrelated to its natural resources or wealth. Accordingly, in presenting the story of Pharisaic Judaism, considerable space will be given to the geopolitics and domestic politics in which the Jewish religious authorities necessarily were deeply involved, as is the case today in modern Israel.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are perhaps the most important archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. These lectures set before the public the real Dead Sea Scrolls, the most important collections of Jewish texts from the centuries before the rise of Christianity. Only through efforts to understand what the scrolls can teach us about the history of Judaism is it possible for us to learn what they have to teach us about the history of Christianity. Professor Schiffman leads the listener through the complex details of the Scrolls and their true meaning for the world.

Discover the real Ezra in this in-depth study of the Biblical figure that separates historical facts from cultural legends. The historical Ezra was sent to Jerusalem as an emissary of the Persian monarch. What was his task? According to the Bible, the Persian king sent Ezra to bring the Torah, the five books of the Laws of Moses, to the Jews. Modern scholars have claimed not only that Ezra brought the Torah to Jerusalem, but also that he actually wrote it, and in so doing Ezra created Judaism. Without Ezra, they say, Judaism would not exist. In Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition, Lisbeth S. Fried separates historical fact from biblical legend. Drawing on inscriptions from the Achaemenid Empire, she presents the historical Ezra in the context of authentic Persian administrative practices and concludes that Ezra, the Persian official, neither wrote nor edited the Torah, nor would he even have known it. The origin of Judaism, so often associated with Ezra by modern scholars, must be sought elsewhere. After discussing the historical Ezra, Fried examines ancient, medieval, and modern views of him, explaining how each originated, and why. She relates the stories told about Ezra by medieval Christians to explain why their Greek Old Testament differs from the Hebrew Bible, as well as the explanations offered by medieval Samaritans concerning how their Samaritan Bible varies from the one the Jews use. Church Fathers as well as medieval Samaritan writers explained the differences by claiming that Ezra falsified the Bible when he rewrote it, so that in effect, it is not the book that Moses wrote but something else. Moslem scholars also maintain that Ezra falsified the Old Testament, since Mohammed, the last judgment, and Heaven and Hell are revealed in it. In contrast Jewish Talmudic writers viewed Ezra both as a second Moses and as the prophet Malachi. In the process of describing ancient, medieval, and modern views of Ezra, Fried brings out various understandings of God, God’s law, and God’s plan for our salvation. “A responsible yet memorable journey into the life and afterlife of Ezra as a key personality in the history, literature and reflection of religious and scholarly communities over the past 2,500 years. A worthwhile and informative read!” —Mark J. Boda, professor of Old Testament, McMaster Divinity College, professor of theology, McMaster University

How did Jews perceive the first Christians? By what means did they come to appreciate Christianity as a religion distinct from their own? In The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Professor Joshua Ezra Burns addresses those questions by describing the birth of Christianity as a function of the Jewish past. Surveying a range of ancient evidences, he examines how the authors of Judaism's earliest surviving memories of Christianity speak to the perspectives of rabbinic observers who were conditioned by the unique circumstances of their encounters with Christianity to recognize its adherents as fellow Jews. Only upon the decline of the Church's Jewish demographic were their successors compelled to see Christianity as something other than a variation of Jewish cultural expression. The evolution of thought in the classical Jewish literary record thus offers a dynamic account of Christianity's separation from Judaism counterbalancing the abrupt schism attested in contemporary Christian texts.

This book presents a study of religious thought in two Jewish apocalypses, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, written as a response to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. The true nature of the crisis is the perceived loss of covenantal relationship between God and Israel, and the Jewish identity that is under threat. Discussions of various aspects of thought, including those conventionally termed theodicy, particularism and universalism, anthropology and soteriology, are subordinated under and contextualized within the larger issue of how the ancient authors propose to mend the traditional Deuteronomic covenantal theology now under crisis. Both 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch advocate a two-pronged solution of Torah and eschatology at the centre of their scheme to restore that covenant relationship in the absence of the Temple. Both maintain the Mosaic tradition as the bulwark for Israel's future survival and revival. Whereas 4 Ezra aims to implant its eschatology into the Sinaitic tradition and make it part of the Mosaic Law, 2 Baruch extends the Deuteronomic scheme of reward and retribution into an eschatological context, making the rewards of the end-time a solution to the cycle of sins and punishments of this age. Considerable emphases are also placed on the significance of the portrayals of the pseudonymous protagonists, Ezra and Baruch, the use of symbolism in the two texts as scriptural exegesis, as well as their relationship with each other and links with the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish and Christian writings.

This book is a concise guide to and analysis of the complexities of modern Jewish politics in the interwar European and American diaspora. "Jewish politics" refers to the different and opposing visions of the Jewish future as formulated by various Jewish political parties and organizations and their efforts to implement their programs and thereby solve the "Jewish question." Mendelsohn begins by attempting a typology of these Jewish political parties and organizations, dividing them into a number of schools or "camps." He then suggests a "geography" of Jewish politics by locating the core areas of the various camps. There follows an analysis of the competition among the various Jewish political camps for hegemony in the Jewish world--an analysis that pays particular attention to the situation in the United States and Poland, the two largest diasporas, in the 1920s and 1930s. The final chapters ask the following questions: what were the sources of appeal of the various Jewish political camps (such as the Jewish left and Jewish nationalism), to what extent did the various factions succeed in their efforts to implement their plans for the Jewish future, and how were Jewish politics similar to, or different from, the politics of other minority groups in Europe and America? Mendelsohn concludes with a discussion of the great changes that have occurred in the world of Jewish politics since World War II.

Pharisaic Judaism, discussed in part 1 of this study, was an inseparable element in the political history of the Second Hebrew Commonwealth. With the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, along with the skeleton of what was once a Jewish state, Judaism entered a period of crisis far more severe than experienced with the destruction of the First Temple, along with the First Hebrew Commonwealth. Pharisaic Judaism, integral to the now nonexistent Jewish state, of necessity gave way to Rabbinic Judaism, which, as a minority religious culture, took root primarily in the enclaves of Jews strewn throughout the diaspora with little or mostly no control over their very existence. And in the absence of a centralized religious authority such as the Sanhedrin in the Temple complex, Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora developed different religious customs, traditions, and in some instances, belief systems, all nominally based on the core teachings of Scripture. Part 2 of this study of the evolution of Judaism from Ezra to the present day will attempt to trace significant developments along that evolutionary path from the transition from Pharisaic to Rabbinic Judaism, that is, Judaism as understood by the different schools of rabbis, as decisors, scholars, and teachers over the past two millennia.