Philip R. Davies is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. John Halligan was co-chair of the SBL Sociological of the Second Temple Period Consultation and the Sociology of the Literature of the Second Temple Group. Until his retirement he was Professor of Biblical Studies at St John Fisher College, Rochester, New York.

• Part One: the Achaemenid Period 1. Kenneth Hoglund: The Material Culture of the Persian Period and the Sociology of the Second Temple Period 2. John W. Wright: A Tale of Three Cities: Urban Gates, Squares, and Power in Iron Age II, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Judah Part Two: The 'Hellenistic' Period(s) 3. Lester L. Grabbe: The Jews and Hellenization: Hengel and his Critics 4. Kenneth Hoglund: The Material Culture of the Seleucid Period in Palestine: Social and Economic Observations 5. Richard M. Horsley: and Ben Sira and the Sociology of Patrick Tiller the Second Temple 6. John M. Halligan: Conflicting Ideologies Concerning the Second Temple 7. Robert Doran Jewish Education in the Seleucid Period Part Three: The Hasmonaeans 8. Richard A. Horsley: The Expansion of Hasmonaean Rule in Idumaea and Galilee: Toward an Historical Sociology 9. James Pasto: Exclusion or Inclusion? The Origin and Expansion of the Hasmonaeans in Light of Comparative Ethnographic Studies 10. Lester L. Grabbe: Betwixt and Between: The Samaritans in the Hasmonaean Period Bibliography

"Overall, it is a very useful collection and we can look forward to the publication of Second Temple Studies IV, which editor Davies Promises."" -Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, December 2003"