Never Before Available in Paperback, Louis Ginzberg's landmark seven-volume The Legends of the Jews assembles the many elaborations and embellishments of Biblical stories that flourished in the centuries following the Bible's own creation. Ginzberg devoted most of his life to gathering these legends from their original sources - written in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syrian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, and Old Slavic - and reproducing them completely, accurately, and vividly. He presents them in their traditional Biblical sequence and reconciles the sometimes contradictory versions of the same stories found in different sources. In addition to four volumes of the legends themselves, The Legends of the Jews includes two indispensable volumes of notes, which provide the sources for every legend, as well as a comprehensive index to the people, places, and motifs found in the legends and their sources.

This is a lexicon of Yiddish given names, preceded by four chapters of material that explains the lexical conventions, the historical environment, and the research applicable to this subject.

In The Cave 3 Copper Scroll: A Symbolic Journey, Jesper Høgenhavn presents a reading of the Copper Scroll as a literary text. For more than 60 years, scholars have debated whether or not the treasures recorded here reflect historical realities. This study argues that the dichotomy between “facts” and “fiction” is inadequate for a proper understanding of the Copper Scroll. The document was designed to convey specific images to its readers, thus staying true to the format of an instruction for retrieving hidden treasures. Yet, the evoked landscape is dense with symbolical associations, and the journey through it reflects deliberate narrative patterns. The scroll was written against the background of the social and political turmoil of Jewish Palestine in the 1st century CE, and reflects contemporary concerns and interests.