THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE: THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Tuesday 11th December 7.30
Martin Goodman • Professor • Oxford University
In 70 CE, after a war which had flared sporadically for four years, three Roman legions, under the command of the newly self-appointed emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, surrounded, laid siege to, and eventually devastated the city of Jerusalem, destroying completely the magnificent Temple which had been rebuilt by Herod less than a century before. The lecture will investigate what brought about this conflict and why, contrary to normal practice and against the reasonable expectations of the Jews, the Roman state would not allow the Jerusalem Temple to be rebuilt, with momentous consequences for the future of the Jews and Judaism.
Martin Goodman has divided his intellectual life between the Roman and Jewish worlds. He has edited both the Journal of Roman Studies and the Journal of Jewish Studies. He is currently Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In 1996 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2002 he edited the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, which was awarded a National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. His most recent book, Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilizations was published in the United States by Knopf in October 2007.
Tickets £3 DAVAR members and concessions • £5 non-members
Horfield Meeting House • 300 Gloucester Road • Horfield Bristol BS7 8PD.