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Jesus and His Contemporaries 

An historical and theological study of Second Temple Judaism (520 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.), paying attention to the variety, richness, and complexity of Judaisms of this period.  Major Jewish groups are treated, including Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, priests, scribes, and Christians.  Attention is paid to the interrelatedness of belief, community structure and practice, ethics, economics, and politics.  The Dead Sea Scrolls are examined.  Focus is also on apocalypse as a literary genre and apocalypticism as a worldview and social phenomenon.  Special emphasis is placed on how Jesus and the earliest Christians fit into the Second Temple context. 

RELS 122