The Wild West of Jewish Literature: Second Temple Religious Imagination
Wednesdays, 7-8:30pm: Jan 29, Feb 12, Feb 26, Mar 12 | Or Shalom
With Yehuda Mansell
Members: $72 | Regular: $144 | Register here

The period of the 2nd Jewish Temple (516 BCE – 70 CE) is a veritable wild west of the Jewish religious imagination and practice, revealed by the prolific creation of texts and competing canons, much of which did not make the final edit that is the present-day TaNaKh. This includes Qumran materials, pseudepigrapha, rewritten Bible, and apocryphal texts. Our study will introduce these texts and what is known about their context. It will also help us answer the following questions: What are the flavors of ancient Judaisms? What is canon – what does canon do? How do we understand our own contemporary flavor of Judaism in the grand arc of history?