ABSTRACT
The period covered in this chapter, from the death of Herod the Great, King of the Jews, in 4 Bce to the end of the second Jewish war with Rome in 135 Ce, is a period of lingering and terminal crisis in the history of Israel. Within it and from it arose two of the world’s religions, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Both had, in a sense, foreseen what was to come; and both responded in different ways to the same basic problem, of how a people who believed themselves to be specially chosen by God could live with a past but with no earthly future.
