Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 20 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article discusses how the study of the history, literature, and religious beliefs and practices of ancient Jews in the Land of Israel and the Diaspora provides the proper background and context for the study of the later books of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament writings. From the time of the Babylonian exile, and especially from Hellenistic times onwards, a vibrant Jewish Diaspora existed alongside the Jewish community in the Land of Israel. During the time of the Second Temple (520 BCE to 70 CE) and throughout rabbinic times, Israel remained the centre of world Jewry. The books of the Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha were written by Jews who lived in the Diaspora or the Land of Israel; the books of the New Testament were written by Jewish and Gentile Christians in various Diaspora locations that also had Jewish communities. Thus, the direct experience of Jewish life or the indirect knowledge of and interaction with Jews would have had an impact on the literature that the biblical authors created.

Keywords: Jews, Israel, Hebrew Bible, biblical scholarship, Jewish life, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha

Catherine Hezser

Catherine Hezser is Professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, University of London. From 2000-2005 she was the Al and Felice Lippert Professor of Jewish and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses on the social history and daily life of Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman period. Her book publications include: Jewish Travel in Antiquity (2011), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (2010, ed.), Jewish Slavery in Antiquity (2005), Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001), and The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (1997).

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.