Women were present at historical events, and it is not only their presence but also their significance at these events which should be recognized. Tal Ilan seeks to discover women in the public spaces and main events of Second Temple Judaism. Ilan investigates women s association with the Pharisees and other sects. She analyzes women s roles in the writings of Josephus, Ben Sira, and other important sources. Furthermore she discusses famous women like Beruriah and Berenice. Also, the Dead Sea Scrolls play an important part in her study.

Most studies about women, Jewish and other, are usually confined to the domestic sphere: the home, the family, the bed. Yet women were present at all historical events, and it is not only their presence but also their significance for these events which should be recognized. All the sources seem to militate against an approach which assumes the presence of women at public events. When dealing with politics, war and religion they ignore women; when dealing with women, they confine themselves to their prescribed region of the home.In this book Tal Ilan seeks to discover women in public places and at the main events of Second Temple Judaism. The primary principle guiding her work is that if by chance women are mentioned in sources, they should not be treated as a means for explaining the event but rather as an end in themselves. Thus sources showing women as remote or obscure turn out to yield much relevant material.Tal Ilan investigates women's association with the Pharisees and other sects, and analyses women's role in the writings of Josephus, Ben Sira and other important sources. Furthermore she presents us with new insights into famous women: Shelamzion Alexandra, Beruriah, Berenice and others. Special space is devoted to the importance of the Judaean Desert Documents for women's history.

The book explores the matter of sexuality from the creation into the long history of Judaism and the church. In this book I highlight how many of the preconceived notions of how God perceives women and roles that He has for them are not the way most people that attend our churches perceive them. We have been dramatically effected by Greek thoughts regarding women and have also been dominated in our thinking by warfare mentality. The value of a person has been weighted by their ability to wage war. Even in this arena there are women who have proven their giftedness and their skill. I believe that if you carefully examine the matters set out in this book you will come to understand that so much of the evidence for the role of women in the church is based upon flimsy and biased evidence. If you open your heart and mind I believe this book can help you to see a new way forward in helping the church promote the spirit of unity and respect between human beings that God desires and has Himself.

This is the fourth and fi nal volume of Lester L. Grabbe's four-volume history of the Second Temple period, collecting all that is known about the Jews during the period in which they were ruled by the Roman Empire. Based directly on primary sources such as archaeology, inscriptions, Jewish literary sources and Greek, Roman and Christian sources, this study includes analysis of the Jewish diaspora, mystical and Gnosticism trends, and the developments in the Temple, the law, and contemporary attitudes towards Judaism. Spanning from the reign of Herod Archelaus to the war with Rome and Roman control up to 150 CE, this volume concludes with Grabbe's holistic perspective on the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period.

The developments in Judaism during the Second Temple period remain important to contemporary Jewish religion. This volume provides a much needed encyclopedic study of the period. Includes bibliographies, cross-references and summaries.

The Unknown History of Jewish Women—On Learning and Illiteracy: On Slavery and Liberty is a comprehensive study on the history of Jewish women, which discusses their absence from the Jewish Hebrew library of the "People of the Book" and interprets their social condition in relation to their imposed ignorance and exclusion from public literacy. The book begins with a chapter on communal education for Jewish boys, which was compulsory and free of charge for the first ten years in all traditional Jewish communities. The discussion continues with the striking absence of any communal Jewish education for girls until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the implications of this fact for twentieth-century immigration to Israel (1949-1959) The following chapters discuss the social, cultural and legal contexts of this reality of female illiteracy in the Jewish community—a community that placed a supreme value on male education. The discussion focuses on the patriarchal order and the postulations, rules, norms, sanctions and mythologies that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, laid the religious foundations of this discriminatory reality.

Those who study the Bible are becoming increasingly attentive to the significance of economics when examining ancient texts and the cultures that produced them. This book looks at the socioeconomic landscape of Second Temple Judea, from the end of the Babylonian exile to the destruction of the temple by the Romans (532 BCE to 70 CE). Adams carefully examines key themes, paying special attention to family life, the status of women, and children, while engaging relevant textual and archaeological evidence. He looks at borrowing and lending and the burdensome taxation policies under a succession of colonial powers. In this pursuit, Adams offers an innovative analysis of economic life with fresh insights from biblical texts. No other study has specifically analyzed economics for this lengthy timeframe, especially in relation to these key themes. This important book provides readers with a helpful context for understanding religious beliefs and practices in the time of early Judaism and emerging Christianity.