The book brings together the essays on Second Temple Judaism by Moshe Weinfeld, one of the leading figures in comparative literature and the history of religion in ancient Near Eastern studies. This integrated collection centers on the religious debates within Second Temple Judaism between the sectarian Qumran community and the

In Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism Jeremy Penner provides an account of how daily prayer became entrenched within early Jewish religious traditions.

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

This study traces the emergence of the concept of the body as a sanctuary from its biblical roots to its expressions in late Second Temple Judaism. Harrington‘s hypothesis is that the destruction of the first Jerusalem temple was a catalyst for a new reality vis-à-vis the temple and the emergence

The essays deal with developments during the period from the liquidation of the Judean state to the conquests of Alexander the Great. This was a critical time in the Near East and the Mediterranean world in general. It marked the end of the great Semitic empires until the rise of