A 1,360-page book covering more than 900 years of Jewish history? It’s no wonder Carol Bakhos, UCLA’s Robert E. Archer Professor of the Study of Religion, compares the completion of her latest project to finishing an endurance race.
“I do run marathons and I had to sometimes remind myself that this wasn’t a sprint,” said Bakhos, professor of Jewish studies and director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion. “But all of that long-distance training definitely helped.”
Bakhos is the editor of “The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 2: Emerging Judaism, 332 BCE–600 CE,” just published by Yale University Press. The book is part of a 10-volume series covering Jewish history from the birth of ancient Israel through the early 21st century.
The installment that Bakhos oversaw covers the years from Alexander the Great to the era just before the emergence of Islam. That transformative timespan saw the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire, in 70 CE, as well as Judaism responding to the Greek, Sasanian and Parthian empires; the emergence of rabbis; and a transition from temple-based belief to Torah-based practice.
