When Israel Was Young: A History of the Jewish People from the Beginnings to the Roman Conquest of Jerusalem

The traumatic history of Israel in the past 2000 years is widely known, but the Jews of ancient Israel and the Mediterranean world also have an exciting history that is less well known. It includes the first references to Israelites in an early Egyptian inscription, the kings of Israel, the Persian province of Yehud, the Greek and Roman rule of Judah, the kingdom of the Maccabees, and the Jewish diaspora in Babylonia and the Greco-Roman world.

Lester Grabbe brings together all the historical...