Recovering Jewish History

Publisher’s Weekly has written about the forthcoming Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. Here’s an excerpt:

Now his decades of knowledge–combined with those of his co-editors Louis H. Feldman and James L. Kugel—are on display in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (Jewish Publication Society/Univ. of Nebraska Press, Dec.), an imposing three-volume set coming in at more than 3,300 pages (see “The Quest for Paul,” PW, Oct. 7, 2013). The volume, supported by two research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, includes Schiffman’s own new translation of the Temple Scroll, “which presents a plan for a new Temple and its sacrifices,” Schiffman says.

Choosing the more than 70 contributors ended up being less difficult than anticipated, says Schiffman: “Amazingly, we were always able to find good scholars in whom we had confidence.” The editors divided texts according to their major interests, with a few exceptions where particular texts required the attention of “one or a number of us because of our relationships to individual authors.”

Read the full article – Recovering Jewish History: Lawrence H. Schiffman

See also: The Significance of Outside the Bible