History of the Jews in Antiquity: The Jews of Palestine from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest Review

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(More customer reviews)Peter Schafer's "History of the Jews in Antiquity" combines a succinct narrative of the period reported by Flavius Josesphus in his histories "Antiquities of the Jews" and "The Jewish War" with extra insight from wider sources. I'd been struggling with the common translation of Josephus' works, William Whiston's 18th century work, and found Schafer's modern text clearer and easier to understand. Though written in German, the English translationbears no awkwardness of the movement from the original to English.

Schafer, a German scholar now on the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary, draws on rabbinical writings and other souorces to expand and improve on the accuracy of Josephus' history. From Schafer, I have a better understanding of the differences between Saduccees and Pharisees as well as the impact of Greek culture on the people of Palestine, as he describes the region comprising Judea and the other territories of the Middle East ruled variously by Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, and Romans. Until I read his book, I'd no idea that Palestine remained in violent turmoil from the Maccabean rebellion through the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

I read this as a Christian who's been working at understanding why people listened to Jesus' message of peace and love. Schafer makes it clear that Jewish society split between those who adapted Greek ways and those who eschewed them, that the former tended to be wealthy urban dwellers and the latter, rural poor. Piety, he explains, came to be associated with poverty and wealth with decadence. Temple high priests were just as embroiled in poower politics as kings were. In this time, the Greek ideal of Achilles established the image of a powerful man, the opposite of the teachings of John and then Jesus.

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Product Description:
In the encounter with Hellenism which confronted the Jews of Palestine in the form of Greek, Roman and finally Christian supremacy, a Judaism developed which had far outgrown its biblical origins and which was to influence the history of Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day.
The History of the Jews in Antiquity examines the political history of the Jewish people in Palestine in terms of political activity and more particularly social, economics and religious circumstances. The Jews of antiquity are presented as both the subject and the object of history as they attempt to achieve their political and social goals in a variety of changing circumstances.
The period chosen for this study is that represented by the global domination of Hellenism, from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in the second half of the fourth century BCE until the seizure of the land by the Arabs in the seventh century CE.