The Montefiore Lecture 2013 Event

‘On writing a history of Judaism' given by Professor Martin Goodman

Writing a history of Judaism requires difficult decisions about how to describe and explain the relations between different strands of Judaism since biblical times. The lecture will investigate the problems involved, taking examples from the history of the Jews over the past two and a half thousand years.

After studying Classics at Oxford, Martin Goodman wrote a doctoral dissertation using early rabbinic texts to reconstruct the history of Galilee in the second century CE. He spent nine years as Lecturer in Ancient History in the University of Birmingham before returning to Oxford. He has written extensively on both Roman and Jewish history, including his book Rome and Jerusalem, published by Penguin in 2007. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy.