- Course Description and Past Exam Papers
- General Bibliography. A good starting point for most essays.
- Some suggested readings to assist with the paper’s Set Texts.
Essay Topics
Click on the titles for additional reading lists.
- Was there a ‘common Judaism’ that the priests and people held in common?
- Why was the Temple destroyed in 70 CE, rather than in 63 BCE or 165 BCE?
- How important were the Pharisees, and what did they believe?
- What are the Dead Sea Scrolls, who wrote them, and why?
- Who believed what about the Messiah in the Second Temple Period?
- What would fellow Jews have thought of Philo’s Judaism?
- How did Jews cope with the end of sacrifice?
- Explain the rise of Rabbinic Judaism in the first century.
- What characterized Jewish biblical interpretation in the period you have studied?
- What were synagogues?
rev. 02/2012
NT @ Oxford 