The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ: Volume 3.ii and Index

Description

Emil Schurer's Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, originally published in German between 1874 and 1909 and in English between 1885 and 1891, is a critical presentation of Jewish history, institutions, and literature from 175 B.C. to A.D. 135. It has rendered invaluable services to scholars for nearly a century. The present work offers a fresh translation and a revision of the entire subject-matter. The bibliographies have been rejuvenated and supplemented; the sources are presented according to the latest scholarly editions; and all the new archaeological, epigraphical, numismatic and literary evidence, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bar Kokhba documents, has been introduced into the survey. Account has also been taken of the progress in historical research, both in the classical and Jewish fields. This work reminds students of the profound debt owed to nineteenth-century learning, setting it within a wider framework of contemporary knowledge, and provides a foundation on which future historians of Judaism in the age of Jesus may build.

Emil Schurer (1844 - 1910) was a German Protestant theologian. He lectured at Leipzig, Giessen, Kiel, and Goettingen and founded and edited the journal Theologische Literaturzeitung. He devoted most of his scholarly life to the creation of his magisterial work on the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Geza Vermes, F.B.A., was Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford, and Director of the Forum of Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UK. Fergus Millar, F.B.A., is Emeritus Camden Professor of Ancient History in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, UK. Martin D. Goodman is Professor of Jewish Studies and Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford, UK. Pamela Vermes was former Literary Editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies, Oxford, UK.

The Vermes-Millar version of Schurer's justly famous history of the Jewish people in the age of Jesus Christ is a truly monumental achievement in its wellnigh total recasting of the entire work. The up-to-date bibliographical coverage alone, the wide trawl of the most recondite sources in many languages, Semitic, Greek, etc., and the cautious but firm exercise of judgement will ensure its authoritative survival deep into the 21st century. The publication of the eagerly awaited indexes, which places the key to this great compendium of both reference and literature into the hands of readers from many disparate disciplines, is bound to be a literary event of profound significance. -- Professor Edward Ullendorff, F.B.A., Emeritus Professor of Semitic Languages, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London With the completion of this project, the world of scholarship will possess an indispensable tool for the study of this period, which is the heyday of Judaism. -- Magen Broshi * The Jerusalem Post * Without any doubt . . . a major work of scholarship . . . * Journal of Jewish Studies * ...a first-rate textbook on the intertestamental period. -- Menahem Stern * Journal of Jewish Studies * The obsolete has been excised fomr text, notes, and bibliographies, which have all been revised. And of course a quantity of wholly new material, unknown to Schurer, has had to be incorporated, such as archaeological finds, the Qumran and Bar Kokhba documents and the Babylonian tablets which have recently been throwing light on obscure areas of Seleucid (and Parthian) chronology...All that was best in the original has been preserved: notably its depth of learning, laudable succinctness, and remarkable clarity of organization. -- Malcolm Colledge * The Classical World * The appearance of Vol. I of the new Schurer is of such significance that it is not exceeded in importance by any recent publicati9on and approached by very few. Schurer is the handbook par excellence for scholars, who are now in greatest debt to the editors for a labor of devotion and an achievement of sheer excellence...It is impossible to overpraise this volume. -- Samuel Sandmel * The Classical World * This is one of the few indispensable books. -- D.M. Lewis * Journal of Theological Studies * ...it is the opinion of this reviewer that the new Schurer will be an indispensable resource for future historical work on this period... -- Howard Kee * Religious Studies Review *