1 Enoch was an important and popular text in ancient Judaism, well attested among the manuscripts at Qumran, and a key piece of the puzzle of the development of early Judaism and Christian origins. George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam have now revised their translation in conjunction with their publication of the complete two volumes on 1 Enoch in the Hermeneia commentary series. This is the only English translation of 1 Enoch that takes into consideration all of the textual data now available in the Ethiopic version and the Greek texts, in addition to the Dead Sea Aramaic fragments.

In this fully revised and expanded edition, Nickelsburg introduces the reader to the broad range of Jewish literature that is not part of either the Bible or the standard rabbinic works. This includes especially the Apocrypha (such as 1 Maccabees), the Pseudepigrapha (such as 1 Enoch), the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of Josephus, and the works of Philo.

Jewish writings from the period of Second Temple present a rich and potentially overwhelming variety of first-hand materials. George W. E. Nickelsburg and Michael E. Stone, experts on this formative period, have updated their classic sourcebook on Jewish beliefs and practices to take into account current thinking about the sources and to include new documents, including texts from Qumran not available in the first edition, in a brilliantly organized synthesis. Included are chapters on Jewish sects and parties, the Temple and worship in it, ideals of piety and conduct, expectations concerning deliverance, judgment, and vindication, different conceptions of the agents of God's activity, and the figure of Lady Wisdom in relationship to Israel.

In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Christian scholars portrayed Judaism as the dark religious backdrop to the liberating events of Jesus' life and the rise of the early church. Since the 1950s, however, a dramatic shift has occurred in the study of Judaism, driven by new manuscript and archaeological discoveries and new methods and tools for analyzing sources. George Nickelsburg here provides a broad and synthesizing picture of the results of the past fifty years of scholarship on early Judaism and Christianity. He organizes his discussion around a number of traditional topics: scripture and tradition, Torah and the righteous life, God's activity on humanity's behalf, agents of God's activity, eschatology, historical circumstances, and social settings. Each of the chapters discusses the findings of contemporary research on early Judaism, and then sketches the implications of this research for a possible reinter-pretation of Christianity. Still, in the author's view, there remains a major Jewish-Christian agenda yet to be developed and implemented.