Picked this up in a bookstore recently, and was compelled. I've enjoyed Boyarin's work around early Judaism, but had way little context to really make sense of it. This book rapidly moves through early Judaism, doing a good job of straightforwardly showing what we historically CAN know, what the texts tell us, and what the texts about and from that era seem to suggest about the people who wrote them. This is a breath of fresh air to those of us for whom that history has been a closed book, or taught literally.



This is a great overview, although--just going by page count--it is really a lead-up to trying to introduce the Rabbinic period, which gets two chapters, a couple of appendices, and a lot of footnotes.



Here, in fact, are my major concerns, and the things that keep it from getting all five stars:



1) The sidebars and auxillary text really break up the reading pattern. Perhaps tucking them at the end of chapters might have made it easier? As it is, I'm used to checking hyperlinks in blogs, but not in books.



2) The book is borderline unreadable without actively checking the endnotes. In several places--most clearly Appendix 1, but in many others--the endnotes are in conversation with the main text, and the main text responds: you can't understand the second paragraph without having read the first paragraph, and it's endnote. (Of course, half the endnotes are merely "ibid, p. 73", which is always a disappointing experience.)



3) Perhaps of necessity, the book is choppy: in telling so much so fast, it jumps around, going back to fill in missing bits and then jumping forward. The Second Exile is mentioned mainly in retrospect, and the book has the inevitable sense of trying to build up to the Rabbinical period. As such, some truly fascinating moments are, I think, brushed past more quickly than they might be.



Worth reading, and a useful book.