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Rating: 
Summary: GOOD
Review: A good read, a jewish history that is not written to justify christianity, nor, zionism. A must read for those with a penchant for Jewish history....
Rating:
Summary: Wraps Around Early Christianity
Review: Early in his book, Shaye Cohen points out that Christianity is responsible for the use of the term "late Judaism." The term was disparaging and meant to suggest that 2nd Temple Judaism was in dire need of an infusion, i.e. Christianity. Moreover after Christianity came along, "late Judaism" suggested that Judaism could be altogether ignored despite the fact that Judaism has continued to flourish for the last couple of millenia. So Cohen's book wraps around early Christianity in terms of time and thought. There are no set time parameters. Second Temple Judaism was a religion "of the book." No longer did Israel have political independence. Why did God let this happen? Part of the answer may be found in Jeremiah 25; Babylon acts as God's agent. Cohen says that basically Second Temple Judaism accepted its civil rulers. Second Temple Judaism opened its understanding of who could be a Jew. Pre-exilic Judaism recognized only the immutable condition of birth. Second Temple Judaism belief and practice dealt with matters such as how to balance order in worship with spontaneity. The development of the synagogue shifted prayer and Torah away study from the sacrificial cult. The attempts to identify the core of Judaism are reminiscent to Christians to similar attempts found in the New Testament. The liturgical shema is as close to a credal statement as Judaism gets.
Cohen writes a chapter on community life in Judaism (mentioning guilds among other things) before turning to sectarianism. Various sources are considered for the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, before a few pages are written about the Samaritans, Zealots, Theraputae, and Christians as these existed within Judaism. The last two chapters are about the canonization of Scripture and the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism in the Second Temple and post-Second Temple periods. This book is written by an eminent Jewish scholar who writes in a very readable style and who uses no footnotes to distract his readers. The book is very informative yet it was not meant to be comprehensive. The reader should bear this in mind. The reader should also bear in mind that if one disagrees with, e.g. Cohen's appraisal of the law-abiding nature of Second Period Judaism, one might want to consider that sup-porting evidence is outside of the scope of this book. In fact it has been pointed out elsewhere that there is an unusual amount of records for Second temple Judaism and, by contrast, a dirth from elsewhere. The author has done an admirable job of introducing much to an audience which does not read this subject matter on a frequent basis.
Rating:
Summary: Wraps Around Early Christianity
Review: Early in his book, Shaye Cohen points out that Christianity is responsible for the use of the term "late Judaism." The term was disparaging and meant to suggest that 2nd Temple Judaism was in dire need of an infusion, i.e. Christianity. Moreover after Christianity came along, "late Judaism" suggested that Judaism could be altogether ignored despite the fact that Judaism has continued to flourish for the last couple of millenia. So Cohen's book wraps around early Christianity in terms of time and thought. There are no set time parameters. Second Temple Judaism was a religion "of the book." No longer did Israel have political independence. Why did God let this happen? Part of the answer may be found in Jeremiah 25; Babylon acts as God's agent. Cohen says that basically Second Temple Judaism accepted its civil rulers. Second Temple Judaism opened its understanding of who could be a Jew. Pre-exilic Judaism recognized only the immutable condition of birth. Second Temple Judaism belief and practice dealt with matters such as how to balance order in worship with spontaneity. The development of the synagogue shifted prayer and Torah away study from the sacrificial cult. The attempts to identify the core of Judaism are reminiscent to Christians to similar attempts found in the New Testament. The liturgical shema is as close to a credal statement as Judaism gets.
Cohen writes a chapter on community life in Judaism (mentioning guilds among other things) before turning to sectarianism. Various sources are considered for the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, before a few pages are written about the Samaritans, Zealots, Theraputae, and Christians as these existed within Judaism. The last two chapters are about the canonization of Scripture and the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism in the Second Temple and post-Second Temple periods. This book is written by an eminent Jewish scholar who writes in a very readable style and who uses no footnotes to distract his readers. The book is very informative yet it was not meant to be comprehensive. The reader should bear this in mind. The reader should also bear in mind that if one disagrees with, e.g. Cohen's appraisal of the law-abiding nature of Second Period Judaism, one might want to consider that sup-porting evidence is outside of the scope of this book. In fact it has been pointed out elsewhere that there is an unusual amount of records for Second temple Judaism and, by contrast, a dirth from elsewhere. The author has done an admirable job of introducing much to an audience which does not read this subject matter on a frequent basis.
Rating: 
Summary: A good overview of Jewish history from 170 BC-200AD
Review: Shaye Cohen has written an interesting book covering a turbulent period of Jewish history. He discusses the sects of Judaism that existed during this time, beginning with the Maccabean revolt, and working through the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Christian movement, and Jewish people scattered throughout the Mediterranean world. He shows how Judaism was always a religion that emphasized practice and tradition over doctrine, while not denying that Judaism had a theology. Sometimes, the reader will want to argue strenuously with Cohen's conclusions, such as his contention that circumcision did not play an important role in the Torah, or that Job, Daniel, Esther, and many of the Psalms were written just a couple of hundred years before the common era. One may also question his conclusion that the dialogues betwen Jesus and the Pharisees reflected more of a post 70AD situation than something that really happened in the life of Jesus. Despite these and other contentious points, the book is well written, engaging, and refreshing in the sense that you get to look at these years of Jewish history from a Jewish perspective.
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