Over the next few months I will be posting on the history and literature of the Second Temple period. I had an opportunity to teach an eight-week series in my church on the “Time between the Testaments.” This began with the Persian period and ran through the Jewish War in A.D. 70, and I included on session on Herod the Great so I could show pictures of Masada and the Western Wall from a recent trip to Israel. The series was well received and I had the chance to develop the material in more detail for a semester long undergrad class.
In teaching the class two things were clear to me. First, Most Christians have little or no knowledge of the history or literature of this period. There is some general knowledge of the Maccabean revolt and the Apocrypha as literature produced during this time, but most people attending an…
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