Second Temple Studies III Studies in Politics, Class and Material Culture

This volume offers a systematic approach to the Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Hasmonean period, correlating social contexts with the biblical and post-biblical literature that each period generated. The list of contributors includes many of the pioneers of the field of Second Temple sociology, including Kenneth Hoglund, John Wright, Lester Grabbe, Richard Horsley, James Pasto, Robert Doran and the editors. The volume, which also includes an introductory essay on the methods and outcomes of this kind of exercise, furnishes an excellent introduction to the agenda of interpreting biblical texts as social products.

Part One: the Achaemenid Period 1. Kenneth Hoglund: The Material Culture of the Persian Period and the Sociology of the Second Temple Period 2. John W. Wright: A Tale of Three Cities: Urban Gates, Squares, and Power in Iron Age II, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Judah Part Two: The 'Hellenistic' Period(s) 3. Lester L. Grabbe: The Jews and Hellenization: Hengel and his Critics 4. Kenneth Hoglund: The Material Culture of the Seleucid Period in Palestine: Social and Economic Observations 5. Richard M. Horsley: and Ben Sira and the Sociology of Patrick Tiller the Second Temple 6. John M. Halligan: Conflicting Ideologies Concerning the Second Temple 7. Robert Doran Jewish Education in the Seleucid Period Part Three: The Hasmonaeans 8. Richard A. Horsley: The Expansion of Hasmonaean Rule in Idumaea and Galilee: Toward an Historical Sociology 9. James Pasto: Exclusion or Inclusion? The Origin and Expansion of the Hasmonaeans in Light of Comparative Ethnographic Studies 10. Lester L. Grabbe: Betwixt and Between: The Samaritans in the Hasmonaean Period Bibliography