From the crisis of the Babylonian exile to the rise of rabbinic Judaism--a span of over six hundred years--the Jewish people produced a wealth of literature that lies outside the Hebrew Bible. Today it goes under names such as apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, Josephus and Philo, apocalyptic literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah and targums. But line by line, scroll by scroll, it represents the history and theology, the hopes and prayers of...