Further Reading
The classic survey by S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd
edn (New York, 1952–) is hugely informative and remains very readable, but it
was left incomplete (at 18 volumes, with two separate index volumes) on the
author’s death in 1989. W. D. Davies et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Juda‑
ism (Cambridge, 1984–), which currently stands at 4 volumes, covers the
millennium from the Persian period to the late Roman- rabbinic period.
Of general histories of the Jews, the most accessible brief accounts can be found in
N. de Lange, Atlas of the Jewish World (Oxford and New York, 1984) and M. Gil-
bert, The Routledge Atlas of Jewish History, 6th edn (London, 2003). S. Grayzel, A
History of the Jews: From the Babylonian Exile to the Present, 2nd edn (New York,
1968) is now very out of date, but many of the contributions in H. H. Ben-Sasson,
ed., A History of the Jewish People (London, 1976) continue to be valuable. P. John-
son, History of the Jews (London, 1987) is enthusiastic and engaging. S. Schama, The
Story of the Jews (London, 2013–) is being published in three volumes and provides
a more substantial narrative, but it still will not displace the superb multi- authored
narrative in D. Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York, 2002),
which emphasizes the variety of Jewish experiences in different places and periods.
For the history of the development of Judaism in the biblical period, see
A. Rainer, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, 2 vols.
(Louisville, Ky, 1994). On the late Second Temple period and its aftermath,
S. J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 3rd edn (Louisville, Ky, 2014)
provides a clear guide. S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 b.c.e. to
640 c.e. (Princeton, 2001) is primarily concerned to promote a distinctive and
stimulating (if controversial) thesis about the impact of Christianity in the Roman
world on the development of Judaism, but in the process gives readers an excellent
account of the variety of Jewish religious life in the Roman world before Islam.
For the thought world of the rabbinic sages in the talmudic period, E. E. Urbach,
The Sages, their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1975) remains valuable
despite its outdated methodology in describing the development of these concepts
and beliefs from tannaitic to amoraic times. For the rabbinic society in Babylonia
in which these ideas took shape, the most accessible recent accounts in English are
the relevant chapters in S. T. Katz, ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4:
The Late Roman‑ Rabbinic Period (Cambridge, 2006).