The second Jewish Revolt against the Roman dominion (132-135 CE) considerably changed the political and cultural landscape of Jewish Palestine. Judaea was almost completely devastated, and Jewish life shifted from Judaea to the Galilee. The Roman victory, however, was won at great cost. The last decade has seen some stunning developments in research on the Bar Kokhba War. In particular, recent archaeological findings provide new material for evaluation. This volume is based on a conference which took place in November 2001 at Princeton University and gathers a distinguished array of scholars working at the forefront of research on the Bar Kokhba period. It appraises the state of the subject in light of the present scholarly discussion and evaluates the historical importance of this major event and its repercussions for the subsequent history of the Jews in Roman Palestine. A concluding essay investigates the use of Bar Kokhba's image in modern Israeli culture.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for Students. Learn more |
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
teaches us what we don't know,
By
This review is from: Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, 100) (Hardcover)
The first few essays in this book are the most interesting to nonspecialists, because they get across what we don't know: why the Bar Kochba revolt started. I had always thought that it arose from a ban on circumcision- but in fact, modern scholars disagree about whether the ban even existed, let alone whether it preceded the revolt. Another possible cause is the construction of a pagan city (Aelia Capitolina) on the site of Jerusalem- but again, scholars disagree about whether the construction of that city was a cause of the revolt or a punishment for the revolt. (And one of the essays suggests that, contrary to what one ancient commentator writes, the city was not built near the Temple Mount, probably because there was too much rubble lying around from war).
Most of the essays in the second half of the book are less easy to read than the first few but even those were somewhat informative, teaching that scholars also disagree about the geographic scope of the revolt (whether it was limited to the core of Judea, or spread into the north of Israel) and about whether non-Jews joined Jews in the rebellion. The last essay discusses the evolution of Bar Kochba in Israeli culture; in the early days of the Israeli republic, he was a common subject of children's books and usually treated as a military hero, with little attention given to the failure of his revolt. More recently, bar Kochba has been deemphasized and treated more critically in Israeli culture.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
