A discussion of two books dating from the third or second centuries, BCE, Jubilees and 1 Enoch. Both books, part of a collection traditionally known as "the Pseudepigrapha," testify to a Jewish understanding of continuing direct divine revelation in the Hellenistic period.

A discussion of Alexander's conquest of west Asia and its aftermath (323 - 200 BCE). What is "Hellenism," and how did the Jews react to it?

A discussion of the historical formation of the Torah, or Pentateuch, and an introduction to the documentary hypothesis.

This episode discusses two Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem, that represented by the biblical book of Esther, and that of Elephantine, Egypt.

Nehemiah's reforms, from 445 BCE to ca. 432 BCE.

This episode deals primarily with the career of Ezra, in 458 BCE. I discuss intermarriage in the Bible and the emergence of the Torah as a source of authority in Israel.

My new book, An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity, will be published by Princeton University Press (see here) in February 2026, and around the same time in Italian by Bollati Boringhieri.

This episode traces the first two returns from Babylonia to Jerusalem, first under Sheshbazzar and then under the dual leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua, and the building of the Second Temple (539 BCE - 516).

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