Roman-Period Jewish History

Roman-period Jewish history studies Jewish life, institutions and conflict under Roman rule, roughly from the first century BCE through the fourth century CE, establishing what is actually documented about a specific event, group or figure from that period. The German scholar Emil Schurer began publishing the fourth, thoroughly revised edition of his Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi in 1901, systematically collating Jewish, Roman and early Christian primary sources into one continuous, source cited chronology of the period and its institutions, a work that became the reference standard the field has been revised against ever since.

The period Schurer's history covers, Second Temple Judaism, the Roman procuratorial administration of Judea, the Jewish revolts and the rabbinic reorganization that followed, is also the immediate historical setting of both early Christianity and much of rabbinic Judaism, and a claim about either tradition's origins frequently depends on getting this period's documented political and institutional history right. The atlas relies on Roman-period Jewish history wherever a claim about first century Judea, the Second Temple, Jewish sects or the earliest Jesus movement needs to be checked against the documented Roman-period record rather than a later tradition's retrospective account.