Jewish History and Literature in the Second Commonwealth and Early Rabbinic Periods

Overview
This course covers Judaism from the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE to the time of Judah the Prince, editor of the Mishnah, in the early 3rd century CE. This period will be divided into four sub-periods:
from the return from exile to the death of Darius III and the end of the Persian empire in 330 BCE
from Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persians to the beginning of the Maccabean revolution in 167 BCE
from the Maccabees to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE
from the destruction of the Temple to the publication of the Mishnah (c.210).
Each sub-period will be examined in turn from three angles – its political, its institutional, and its literary history (including in each session the study of appropriate texts), with particular emphasis on those elements which became a permanent part of Judaism as we know it today.
This course can be studied as part of the PGCert in Jewish Studies.