Rewriting Ancient Jewish History

Amram Tropper, Ph.D. (2002) Oxford University, is Senior Lecturer in Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University. His previous publications include Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography (Oxford, 2004), Like Clay in the Hands of the Potter (Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2011) and Simeon the Righteous in Rabbinic Literature (Brill, 2013).

• Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I: AuthenticityChapter 1: Can Multiple Versions of a Text be Equally Authentic?Part II: HermeneuticsChapter 2: The Rabbis as Unusual RomansPart III: CredibilityChapter 3: An Introduction to Credibility: On Sources, Credibility and CorroborationChapter 4: Recovering Josephus’s SourcesChapter 5: Josephus and HistoryChapter 6: The Traditional Historical Method on the Credibility of Rabbinic LiteratureChapter 7: The Collapse of the Traditional Presumptions about Rabbinic LiteratureChapter 8: The New Historical Method on the Credibility of Rabbinic Literature: Three Case StudiesPart IV: ConclusionChapter 9: On Hillel the Elder’s Rise to GreatnessEpilogueBibliography

Amram Tropper provides his readers with an exceptionally thoughtful guide to the methods required for valid use of the primary literary evidence for the history of the Jews in Roman times, with a series of pertinent case studies discussed in full and with admirable clarity.- Martin Goodman, Oxford University, UKA study of this type has been long overdue. Amram Tropper skillfully explains the advances in Josephean historiography and Talmudic methodology of the last half century and makes the first systematic and thoroughly compelling case for moving beyond the "traditional historical method." Tropper’s straightforward, polemic-free, and lucid presentation of the "New Historical Method" for the study of the Jews in the Roman Period will be welcomed by Judaic Studies scholars and by ancient historians, many of whom will be convinced that a consensus is finally emerging among specialists in this era. - Stuart S. Miller, University of Connecticut at Storrs, USA