Despite the impressive strides made in the past century in the understanding of Second Temple Jewish history and the strong scholarly interest in paideia within ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique Christian cultures, the nature of Jewish paideia during the period has, until recently, received surprisingly little attention. The essays collected here were first offered for discussion at the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting, held in Naples, Italy, from June 30 – July 4, 2015, the purpose of which was to gain greater insight into the diversity of views of Jewish education during the period, both in Judea and Diaspora communities, by viewing them in light of their contemporary Greco-Roman backgrounds and Ancient Near Eastern influences. Together, they represent the broad array of approaches and specialties required to comprehend this complex and multi-faceted subject, and they demonstrate the fundamental importance of the topic for a fuller understanding of the period. The volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and culture of the Jewish people during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, ancient education, and Greek and Roman history.

Despite the impressive strides made in the past century in the understanding of Second Temple Jewish history and the strong scholarly interest in paideia within ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique Christian cultures, the nature of Jewish paideia during the period has, until recently, received surprisingly little attention. The essays collected here were first offered for discussion at the Fifth Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting, held in Naples, Italy, from June 30 – July 4, 2015, the purpose of which was to gain greater insight into the diversity of views of Jewish education during the period, both in Judea and Diaspora communities, by viewing them in light of their contemporary Greco-Roman backgrounds and Ancient Near Eastern influences. Together, they represent the broad array of approaches and specialties required to comprehend this complex and multi-faceted subject, and they demonstrate the fundamental importance of the topic for a fuller understanding of the period. The volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and culture of the Jewish people during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, ancient education, and Greek and Roman history.

Jewish Paideia investigates diverse self-reflections on what it meant to be Jewish in Hellenistic and early Roman Diaspora communities by examining depictions of ideal Jewish education, or paideia, in the literature of the period. Education offers a unique and unexplored vantage point for understanding the internal constructing of Jewish identity in progress, as it provides key insight into the most determinative constituents of Jewish ethics and culture and into how questions of "Jewishness" were reimagined under dynamic and varied cultural and political circumstances. Within the elite intellectual circles of the ancient Mediterranean world, individual and communal identity, not unlike today, was inextricably bound to education. Depictions of ideal Jewish education become for us windows into a discourse of identity as it happened. By exploring how Jewish writers utilized paideia as a means of forming, reshaping, and deploying unique portraits of Jewish identity, this volume fills a significant lacuna in the study of ancient Judaism and the Jewish people. It also provides meaningful comparanda for Classicists and necessary background for later developments of Late Antique Jewish and Christian pedagogy. The diverse ways in which education was construed directly reflect how authors sought to internally understand and externally portray the Jewish community. Education offers keen insight into how the ancestral past became a contested site, how "the other" was utilized as a foil for reinforcing the image of the in-group, how empire and colonization impacted understandings of the Jewish people within broader society, and how Jewish law functioned to connect community members across space and time. Paideia, therefore, provides the researcher unparalleled access to Jewish self-reflections during this important period of history and to questions that have been central to developing a greater understanding of the Jewish people within the ancient Mediterranean world.

The developments in Judaism which occurred during the Second Temple period (c. 550 BC to 100 AD) were of great importance for the nature of Jewish religion in later centuries, yet few studies have examined the era in full. Now Lester L. Grabbe's lucid and accessible volume provides a much-needed encyclopedic study and holistic interpretation of the period. Topics examined include: * views about God and the spirit world * the temple and priesthood * scripture and synagogue * the main religious sects and revolutionary movements * eschatology and messianism * magic and predicting the future * religion in the Jewish diaspora * converts and 'Godfearers'. With an extensive, up-to-date bibliography, plus numerous helpful cross-references, summaries and syntheses, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of the history of Jewish religion. It will also be of great value as a reference tool.

Jewish Paideia examines the diverse and complex views on education in the Hellenistic and early Roman Diaspora and how these understandings of education were inextricably bound to continually evolving constructions and reshapings of self- and communal identity.

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 Pharisees. It examines topics such as liturgy, law, theology and ideology; issues that established Jewish religious forms for normative, Rabbinic Judaism. It also sets these debates in the broader context of texts and ideas from the Bible and ancient Near East texts on one hand and the New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism on the other. The book comprises four sections. The first, 'Prayer and Worship' analyzes constitutive ideas reflected in the definitive prayers of Qumran and Pharisaic liturgy. The second, 'The Qumran Scrolls' engages various legal and hermeneutic issues in the literature of the Qumran sect. Section three, 'Theology and Ideology' treats a group of foundational Jewish concepts from the historical point of view. The final section 'The New Testament' brings several basic concepts and conceptions of Judaism into New Testament context. This is volume 54 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).

The Apocrypha : an introduction / Gerbern S. Oegema -- The Apocrypha in the context of early Judaism / Gerbern S. Oegema -- The Apocrypha, the Septuagint, and other Greek witnesses / Kristin de Troyer -- A canonical history of the Old Testament apocryphay / Lee Martin MacDonald -- The Apocrypha in the history of Christianity / Tobias Nicklas -- The Protestant reception of the Apocrypha / Matthew Korpman -- Apocrypha, genre, and historicity / Gerbern S. Oegema -- 1 Esdras/Greek Ezra / Lester L. Grabbe -- Baruch/Karina Martin Hogan -- Book of Judith / Deborah Levine Gera -- 1 Maccabees' ethics, etiquette, political theology, and structure / Doron Mendels -- 2 Maccabees / Michael Duggan -- 3 Maccabees / Brian R. Dyer -- 4 Maccabees / Jan Willem van Henten -- The Apocrypha and apocalypticism / Lorenzo DiTommaso -- 2 Esdras / Shayna Sheinfeld -- Wisdom literature of the Apocrypha and related compositions of the Second Temple era / John Kampen -- Sirach / Jeremy Corley -- Tobit / Beate Ego -- The Wisdom of Solomon / Jason M. Zurawski -- The Additions to Daniel / Lorenzo DiTommaso -- The Additions of the Greek book(s) of Esther / Tyler Smith, Kristin de Troyer -- Epistle of Jeremiah / Susan Docherty -- Prayer of Manasseh / Ariel Gutman -- Psalm 151-155 / Mika S. Pajunen -- Jewish religion in the Apocrypha : between biblical precepts and early rabbinic thought / Carla Sulzbach -- Women and gender in the Apocrypha / Sara Parks -- Theology and ethics in the Apocrypha / Gerbern S. Oegema -- Sexuality in the Apocrypha / William Loader -- Biblical theology and the Apocrypha / David A. deSilva.