Lester L. Grabbe

Grabbe is a retired American scholar and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, England. As an historian of ancient Judaism, he has authored several standard treatments. He founded and convenes the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History, and publishes the proceedings in the sub-series European Seminar in Historical Methodology. Before retirement, he established and taught for several years a module, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and another module, Religious Sectarianism in History and the Modern World.

An alumnus of Claremont Graduate University, he was a student of William H. Brownlee and frequent guest on both Viking Radio and Radio Humberside to discuss such topics as: the Ten Commandments, the Jewish festivals, the 4th of July, and Nostradamus and the millennium. Grabbe delivered the 2008 Brownlee Memorial Lecture on the topic: Exit David and Solomon? The Current Debate on the History of Ancient Israel.

At age sixty-five, Grabbe was presented with a Festschrift, a memorial book, by editors Philip Davies and Diana Edelman, containing a collection of thirty essays by his colleagues and friends, offering "reflections on the practice and theory of history writing, on the current controversies and topics of major interest". The essays show Grabbe's influence on the field of biblical studies and history.

As of October 2013, Grabbe had: 95 works in 234 publications in 3 languages and 7,650 library holdings listed in WorldCat.

Selected Titles

• Israel in transition : from late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250-850 B.C.E.) (2008) ISBN 978-0567027269 (Review)
• Can a 'history of Israel' be written? ISBN 978-0567043207
• A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period 1: Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah (London/New York: T & T Clark International, 2004) xxi + 471 pp. ISBN 0-567-08998-3.
• Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian: Vol. I: Persian and Greek Periods; Vol. II: Roman Period (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) lx + 722 pp. British edition in one-volume paperback (London: SCM, 1994) xxxv + 722 pp. (Fortress) ISBN 0-8006-2620-6 (v. 1); ISBN 0-8006-2621-4 (v. 2).
• Exile and restoration revisited essays on the Babylonian and Persian periods in memory of Peter R. Ackroyd
• Leading captivity captive : "the Exile" as history and ideology ISBN 9781850759072
• Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh (London/New York: Routledge, 2000) xix + 424 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-21250-2
• Etymology in Early Jewish Interpretation: The Hebrew Names in Philo (Brown Judaic Studies 115; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) xvi + 268 pp. ISBN 9781555400804
• Ancient Israel : what do we know and how do we know it? (2007, rev. ed 2017) ISBN 9780567032546

Works on Second Temple Judaism

• Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995) xviii + 261 pp. ISBN 9781563381324
• An Introduction to First Century Judaism (1996 Grabbe), ISBN 9780567085061
• Wisdom of Solomon (1997 Grabbe), ISBN 9781850757627
• Ezra and Nehemiah (Readings; London: Routledge, 1998) x + 209 pp. ISBN 0-415-14153-2, ISBN 9780415141543 (paper)
• Lester L. Grabbe (July 27, 2006). A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period (vol. 1): The Persian Period (539-331BCE). Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-567-21617-5.
• Lester L. Grabbe (September 25, 2008). A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 2: The Coming of the Greeks: The Early Hellenistic Period (335-175 BCE). A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-567-38988-6.
• Lester L. Grabbe (February 20, 2020). A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 3: The Maccabaean Revolt, Hasmonaean Rule, and Herod the Great (175-4 BCE). Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-567-69295-5.
• An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism : history and religion of the Jews in the time of Nehemiah, the Maccabees, Hillel and Jesus (2010 Grabbe), ISBN 9780567552488