A long-awaited and much-needed comprehensive analysis of the material evidence concerning Persian-period Judah. Carter analyses the settlement pattern and population distribution of the province, using both excavations and archaeological surveys. His meticulous examination arrives at a rather low estimate of the population during this period, on the basis of which he examines Yehud's socio-economic setting and considers the implications of a small Yehud for some of the prominent theories concerning the province in the Persian-period.

Carol Meyers is renowned for her expertise in many fields: the use of social-science methodologies to understand the Bible and the world of Iron Age Israel; the archaeology of ancient Israel, especially important sites of the Second Temple period; and the study of women in the Bible and in ancient Israel. In this volume, some of Meyers’s foremost scholarly peers honor her by offering essays that build on her work and depend on her expertise. For example, Norman K. Gottwald uses a social-scientific analysis to continue his groundbreaking work on the structure of the early Israelite confederacy; Eric Meyers discusses how certain Second Temple artifacts, such as ossuaries and bathing installations, might be used as markers of Jewish ethnicity; and Ross S. Kraemer, in conjunction with Jennifer Eyl, takes on the issue of how women are represented (or not) in Bible translators’ renderings of certain ambiguously gendered terms. Joining this community of Carol Meyers’s peers are some of her most noted students, who also have contributed essays that speak to Meyers’s many areas of interest and expertise and reflect what they have learned from her about, especially, the study of women in the Bible and in ancient Israel, and the application of social-scientific approaches to biblical studies. Moreover, as Meyers’s work spans the millennium-long history of the Iron Age and the Second Temple period, so do the essays of Meyers’s students, with offerings that consider some of the earliest texts in the Bible (Judges 5), as well as texts that come from the Second Temple archive of scrolls discovered at Qumran. The result is a collection of essays that are as richly multifaceted as is the work of the extraordinary scholar whose career they honor.