Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE to 66 CE

E. P. Sanders is a scholar of Second Temple Judaism, and this SCM Press book is his standard academic account of Jewish religious practice and belief in the late Second Temple period, 63 BCE to 66 CE, covering Temple worship, purity practice and the range of Jewish religious groups active in this era. Its strength is comprehensive, source grounded treatment of a historically crucial and heavily studied period, drawing on the full range of available Jewish and Greco Roman sources for the era rather than relying on any one narrow textual tradition. Its limit is chronological, it is bounded specifically to this pre 70 CE period ending with the outbreak of the Jewish revolt, so a claim about how Jewish practice changed after the Temple's destruction in 70 CE, in the following rabbinic period, needs a separate source addressing that later transformation.