Historical Sources for Early Judaism

The Posen Library endeavors to give users a sense of Jewish life in the ancient world as it emerged out of the biblical period. The task is at once daunting and exhilarating. It is daunting given the nature of our ancient sources, which are often fragmentary and difficult to date or to contextualize. They are also relatively meager; we will never be able to present thoroughly and evenly all aspects of ancient Jewish culture and civilization. Nevertheless, the material we do have is rich, diverse, and evocative. 

Recent scholarly developments—new theoretical paradigms, increased interest in interdisciplinary studies, advancements in cognate fields—as well as new archaeological finds have thrown renewed light on Jewish antiquity. Digitization has made our sources more readily accessible than ever before. This is not to say that we can now resolve perennial problems in the field or paint a detailed portrait, but we are in a position to look afresh at Jewish life in the ancient world. 

As we have conceived it, the Posen Library affords an unmatched opportunity to discover the forms and varieties of ancient Judaism and the institutions around which Jews centered their lives. Historical events shape all aspects of culture and society. To provide a framework for understanding the factors that shaped Jewish culture and civilization, we offer an overview of Jewish history in this period and endeavor to see the impact of that history on Jewish identity and institutions, with the rise of sectarianism, the expansion of the concept of Torah, the shift from Temple to synagogue, the disappearance of the priesthood and the emergence of the rabbis, and the development of new forms of liturgy. We focus on various aspects of Jewish life and society—education, labor, rituals and festivals, and personal and religious beliefs—and their literary output. We also offer an overview of the varieties of rabbinic tradition. 

We have also been able to highlight how later generations of Jews understood historical events. There are fascinating parallels, for example, between the accounts of the Roman-period Jewish historian Josephus and those in later rabbinic literature. Were the rabbis familiar with the writings of Josephus? Did they draw on a later work that was based on his? Or did they both tap into a common reserve of traditions? Users interested in how the rabbis saw the Hasmonean and Bar Kokhba revolts or the destruction of the Second Temple should read rabbinic constructions of the past. By placing rabbinic sources about historical personages and events within the category of History and Memory, we present users with an opportunity to make comparisons between the writings of ancient historians (Jewish and non-Jewish) and the reception of that history, without conflating the two. 

The rich textual sources of this period reflect the range of Jewish identities, as Judaism developed multiple strands of tradition, one of which, Christianity, split off to become an entirely new religion, with massive historical impact. These changes also manifest in changing institutions, as the social and religious landscapes of Judaism respond to historical events, in particular the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jewish people around the Mediterranean and across the Near East. 

The distribution of the archaeological, epigraphic, and literary sources assembled in the Posen Library reflects our interdisciplinary approach to the study of ancient Jewish culture and civilization. For example, recent archaeological excavations around the Mediterranean, especially in Israel, have contributed much to our understanding of ancient Jewish daily life. To aid in contextualization—and to illustrate some of the variety of the sources at our disposal—we have endeavored to include images of material remains. Our visual and material content in the library is devoted to capturing the history and culture of ancient Jews through color images of artifacts. And again, selections from Jewish (and some non-Jewish) writings illuminate aspects of daily life, rituals, and practices, but the literarary sources include apocalypses , biblical interpretation, and parabiblical literature. Similarly, the Posen Library is teeming with texts from rabbinic literature, which includes writing that is theological, philosophical, sociological, and anthropological, but the texts identified as part of the rabbinic legacy serve in particular to introduce readers to the various corpora of rabbinic texts. Premodern literature may be an elite and/or clerical product to some extent, but Jewish literature of the Second Temple period is so varied in language, genre, and subject matter that it is highly informative, even if it does not tell us absolutely everything we want to know. 

The sources collected in the Posen Library offer a glimpse into many aspects of Jewish culture and civilization; they span centuries and traverse lands from North Africa to Babylonia. They are rich and variegated and do not merely reflect Jewish culture and civilization but rather attest to it. We have assembled these texts with care and attention, provided context where we could, and highlighted the complexities of interpretation. We hope that our interdisciplinary approach will give users an increased appreciation of the important role many of these texts have played in shaping our understanding of Jewish history and traditions. The stories, beliefs, and practices presented narrate a much grander story, that of the emergence of Judaism.