The module examines the key ideas and principles in the development and structure of Judaism during the past 2,000 plus years. As the history of the Jewish religion is hardly separable from the history of the Jewish people, it also provides an overview of Jewish history generally, and a more detailed insight into the history of those periods which are considered of special significance for the development of religious ideas. The emphasis, however, is on the intellectual and religious history of Judaism, the structure of Jewish religious thought, the ideas and events which have moulded and influenced it, and the challenges it has faced in ancient, medieval and modern times.

 1.     Provide an understanding of the history of Judaism and the Jewish people, especially in the area of religious and intellectual history, and an understanding of the basic elements and structures of the ‘world-views’ of the most influential movements within Judaism

2.     Nurture the critical methodologies and skills necessary to analyse and evaluate the importance of various ideas and strands of thought within Judaism both to the cultural and religious history of the Jewish people themselves and to the wider world

3.     Provide a foundation for intelligent reflection on the key questions facing the Jewish people in the present and on the relation between Judaism and other religions and cultures.

The teaching methods involve lectures and seminars.  Since the course is a ‘survey’ course rather than one focused on a particular period or text, students are not required in general to have a text with them during the lectures, but from time to time the lecturer may concentrate on a particular text and distribute it during the lecture. 

Around twenty lectures and ten seminars are provisionally scheduled for the module.  The exact balance will be determined shortly after enrolment when the student number on the module is established.  Students will be divided into seminar groups and each student should have an opportunity to attend at least two seminars, and to give one seminar presentation.  Detailed arrangements will be established during the first few weeks teaching.

 1.     Knowledge and Understanding: Describe and critically expound the key ideas of a range of ‘Judaistic world-views’, with due consideration of their historical context and their continuity and development

2.     Intellectual Skills: Critically compare rival views of Judaism and ‘Judaistic world-views’ and evaluate them

3.     Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills: Present findings and arguments in a clear and logical manner appropriate to the academic standards prevailing in the scholarly study of the subject.

4.     Transferable Skills:

·         Listening to the voice of another from a different culture and/or time

·         Interpreting and appreciating the messages of its representatives and their significance

·         making them comprehensible in one’s own language and cultural context

·         evaluating their character, worth and importance in a variety of ways and against a variety of criteria

·         communicating the processes and results of one’s enquiries

·         understanding the limitations of knowledge by the nature of the available evidence

 Summative Assessment (evaluating student performance) consists of a 2 hour examination (worth 75% of the final mark) and an essay of 2,000 words (25%).

The syllabus may be broadly described as the history of Judaism from the Hellenistic period to the present, but within this vast period the following may be mentioned as characteristic of the emphasis of the module:

• Palestinian Judaism from the Macedonian conquest to  70 C.E.
• Jewish thought  of the ‘Second Temple’ Period
• The end of “Ancient Israel/Judah” and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism
• The characteristics of rabbinic or ‘normative’ Judaism
• Jews in the Middle Ages
• Medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism
• Jews in the European Enlightenment
• Judaism in the 19th Century
• 20^th Century Judaism and Jewish thinkers

General

Two good entrées:

N. de Lange, Judaism (Oxford 1986)*

D. Cohn-Sherbok, Judaism (London, 1998)*

A ‘jumbo’, ‘American-style-cover-it-all’ textbook:

D. Cohn-Sherbok, Judaism: History, Belief and Practice (London 2003, with website www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415236614) (90 chapters(!) covers much more than we will cover in the time, chapters 16 onwards in the historical part and selected chapters from ‘Belief’ and ‘Practice’ are the most relevant for this course)*

Fine anthologies of texts from many periods:

P. S. Alexander, Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism (Manchester,1984) - unfortunately currently out of print

J. Neusner and A. J. Avery-Peck, The Blackwell Reader in Judaism (Oxford 2001)*

Other notable presentations:

J. Neusner and A. J. Avery-Peck, The Blackwell Companion to Judaism (Oxford 2000)*

J. Neusner, The Way of Torah (North Scituate, Mass., 1979)

--------------- , Torah through the Ages. A short history of Judaism (London, 1990).

L. Jacobs, Principles of the Jewish Faith (London, 1964)

-------------  , A Jewish Theology (London 1973)

I. Epstein, Judaism (Harmondsworth, 1959)

L. Roth, Judaism: A Portrait (London, 1960)

P. Sigal, Judaism: The Evolution of a Faith (Grand Rapids,1989).

Multi-volume Reference Works

Encyclopaedia Judaica (16 vols., Jerusalem, 1972) - also updated version on CD Rom

The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, edd. J. Neusner, A. J. Avery-Peck, and W. S. Green (Leiden, 1998)

S. W. Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews (18 vols., New York, 1982)

Hellenistic-Roman Period to 2^nd Century C.E.

Those who have taken ‘Old Testament’ courses may find books familiar to them from these courses which extend their coverage into this period.  Most books dedicated to this period cover it in greater detail than we can enter into in ‘a quarter of a double module’, but the following may be mentioned:

L. L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (London, 1992), esp. chapter 8

R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, (London 1994), esp  chap. 6

Jagersma, A History of Israel from Alexander the Great to Bar Kochba (London, 1985).

J. Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (London, 1984)

E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. G. Verme and F. Millar (Edinburgh, 1973-1979) [detailed!]

The Cambridge History of Judaism, vols. 2-3, edd. W.D.Davies, L. Finkelstein, W. Horbury, and J. Sturdy (Cambridge, 1989-99)

Historically based Presentations of later (or longer) Periods

S. Grayzel, A History of the Contemporary Jews (Philadelphia, 1960)

C. Roth, A Short History of the Jewish People (London, 1936)

J. Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford,1961)

S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts through the Ages (New York, 1964)

J. L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (New York, 1966)

M.A.Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York/Oxford, 1988)

J. Neusner, Judaism in Modern Times (Oxford, 1995)