From Israelite to Jew

The Judaeans, joined by the Galileans and others, revolted from Roman rule in 66 CE.  Four years later the Second Temple was razed, and shortly thereafter the last renegades were cleared from Masada.  What happened?

A discussion of the general tenor of Judaea on the eve of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans.

This podcast would be impossible without the survival of the historical work of Josephus, an eyewitness (so he says) of the destruction of the Second Temple.  Who is he and what did he write, and why?

Judaea and Galilee were awash in messianic figures.  What do we know about them, and how does Jesus fit?

What are really in these famous ancient scrolls?

The greatest Jewish philosopher of antiquity (we know of only two or three), Philo lived in Alexandria and left a voluminous and intriguing set of writings.

Much maligned, perhaps King Herod the Great wasn’t as terrible as is sometimes thought.

Many Jewish around the turn of the millennium lived outside of Judaea.  Where were these Greek-speaking Jews and what do we know about them?

Several Jewish sects, especially Pharisees and Sadducees, emerge into the historical record at this time.  Who are they?

The Maccabees were successful.  The dynasty they began, perhaps not so much.

Why did the Maccabees revolt around 165 BCE? This episode explores both the revolt of the Maccabees and the origins of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

A discussion of two books dating from the third or second centuries, BCE, Jubilees and 1 Enoch. Both books, part of a collection traditionally known as "the Pseudepigrapha," testify to a Jewish understanding of continuing direct divine revelation in the Hellenistic period.

A discussion of Alexander's conquest of west Asia and its aftermath (323 - 200 BCE). What is "Hellenism," and how did the Jews react to it?

A discussion of the historical formation of the Torah, or Pentateuch, and an introduction to the documentary hypothesis.

This episode discusses two Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem, that represented by the biblical book of Esther, and that of Elephantine, Egypt.

Nehemiah's reforms, from 445 BCE to ca. 432 BCE.

My new book, An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity, will be published by Princeton University Press (see here) in February 2026, and around the same time in Italian by Bollati Boringhieri.  

This episode deals primarily with the career of Ezra, in 458 BCE. I discuss intermarriage in the Bible and the emergence of the Torah as a source of authority in Israel.

An introduction to the podcast.  How can we reconcile the academic study of religion with its lived experience?

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