Description

First published in 2007. This study, the companion to Volume I, continues the history of the Jewish people to the time when Christianity became independent of Judaism. The historical study of the life and times of Jesus has brought a clearer realisation of the importance of understanding postexilic Judaism. This volume is both a history of the Jewish people for two hundred and forty years of its existence, and a contribution toward the interpretation of the gospels in so far as a knowledge of the faiths, conditions and aims of Judaism can be interpretive of the form and method of the activity of Jesus. Contents include the historical sources and literature of the period; the causes and occasion of the Maccabean uprising; the struggle for religious and political freedom; the attainment of independence; Judaism in Syria and Egypt; internal divisions and the growth of parties; the revival of Hellenism; the Roman period of Jewish history; the last of the Hasmoneans; Herod the King of the Jews; the inner life of the nation; the final catastrophe at Masada and glimpses of Judaism in Palestine after the war and of Judaism in the Dispersion. This comprehensive study clearly shows the complex background to the present, where both faiths - Judaism and Christianity - continue to work out their destinies.