The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity - (Library of Early Christology) 2nd Edition by Alan F Segal (Paperback)

About the Book

In doing so, Segal masterfully validates the importance of inductive historical reconstruction and analytical comparative study for illuminating the complex religious world of the first three centuries.

Book Synopsis

In The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity the late Alan F. Segal is at his very best. This reissued and expanded edition--now containing his celebrated "Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity, and Their Environment"--delineates the variegated nature of both Judaism and Christianity in their formative periods. As Segal demonstrates, it is more accurate to speak of Judaisms and Christianities. Through his deft deployment of social-scientific methods and due attention to Jewish primary sources from the Second Temple period, Segal is able to trace the intricate, internecine struggles among Jewish, Christian, and gnostic communities in the earliest days of the Common Era. In doing so, Segal masterfully validates the importance of inductive historical reconstruction and analytical comparative study for illuminating the complex religious world of the first three centuries.

Review Quotes

The republication of these works will make Segal's contributions more readily available for scholars and succeeding generations of students.

--Larry Hurtado "Larry Hurtado Blog"

In many ways this second edition of The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity is a welcome reintroduction of Segal's work to the scholarly conversation. The particular intersection between Hellenistic Jewish, early Christian, and gnostic sources is an important and often overlooked component of undergraduate courses on ancient Judaism.

--Matthew Goldstone "Reading Religion"

Religious ideas cannot be understood outside of the social context in which they were developed. Social psychology, sociology, structural study of myths, have all offered some crucial insights which have changed much in our understanding of religious history in antiquity. While students of Judaism have often been less than enthusiastic in taking such an approach to the texts, Segal's audaciousness is to his credit.

--Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa "The Jewish Quarterly Review"

Some of the essays in Th e Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity are to be credited with helping establish the claim - which was radical when Segal made it but has since become an axiom for many in the field - that earliest Christianity was not a religion other than Judaism, but a Jewish heterodoxy made good. This is a book that deserves to be republished and widely read by this and subsequent generations.

--Matthew V. Novenson "Journal for the Study of the New Testament"

This book consistently illuminates Jewish-Christian relations in the early period. Christian scholars have long studied early Judaism as a means to understanding the New Testament and early Christianity. Segal is well versed in both areas. Segal shows that the texts he examines did not come into being in a vacuum but represent the convictions, struggles, and conflicts of flesh-and-blood people. Segal's application of social-scientific methodology shows how just fruitful it can be in interpreting them. Under one cover, the chapters in this book illuminate one another both in content and method.

--Harold Remus "Consensus"

About the Author

Alan F. Segal (1945-2011) was Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, Barnard College.