Second Temple Period

Written while the Second Temple was standing, and the Yom Kippur sacrificial service still performed, Ben Sira’s poem traces the history of the world through Simon son of Johanan, the High Priest in his time, thus expressing the cosmic importance of the Temple and its priesthood. The poem appears to be the antecedent or literary inspiration of the Yom Kippur Seder Avodah’s framing liturgy.

The real reason Persia’s King Darius II sent a letter to the governor of Egypt that Judean soldiers in Elephantine should keep the festival of Matzot.

Fishbone remains discovered in eight different excavations in Jerusalem, from the Iron age to the early Islamic period, give us a sense of what fish the locals ate, and from where they were imported.

A Post-Destruction model of Jewish Identity: Reading and studying Torah as if our life depended on it.

And the Re-imagining of the Harvest Festival in the Wake of the Babylonian Exile

Bringing wood for the altar was an important celebration in Second Temple times. To ground this practice in the Torah, Nehemiah (10:35) describes it as a Torah law, while the Temple Scroll (11Q19) and the Reworked Pentateuch (4Q365) include it in their biblical festival calendar.

An overview of Persian history starting from Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Media (549 B.C.E.) until Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334-329 B.C.E.), including related biblical references and Jewish texts.

One of the main themes in Megillat Esther is the death of Haman, the descendent of Agag, last king of Amalek, at the hands of Mordecai and Esther, Benjaminites from the family of King Saul. Is this just a coincidence?