Bezalel Bar-Kochva

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Bezalel Bar-Kochva (born January 1, 1941) is a professor emeritus in the Department of Jewish History at

diaspora Jews, and the Seleucid Empire in that era. Notably, he has written extensively on the military history of the Maccabean Revolt
as well as Greek views on Judaism and Jewish adaptation to Greek culture during the Hellenistic era.

Biography

Bezalel Bar-Kochva was born in

Jewish History and the Bible. He studied for a master's degree, first in the Classics department at Hebrew University and then in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, and graduated with honors. He received a doctorate in classics at the University of Cambridge in England, where he studied from 1969–1972. His doctoral dissertation was "The Organization and Social Structure of the Seleucid Army". His advisor was Guy Thompson Griffith.[1]

In 1973, Bar-Kochva was appointed a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.[2] In 1980 he was appointed a full professor. Bar-Kochva retired from teaching in 2011.

Bar-Kochva is married and has two daughters.

Works

Bar-Kochva has written five books and about eighty academic journal articles, generally focusing on Second Temple period Judaism, the Hellenistic World, and how they intersected.[3]

  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel (1976). The Seleucid Army. Cambridge University Press. .
  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel (1979). התקופה הסלווקית בארץ־ישראל : מחקרים ועיונים בגזירות הדת ומרד החשמונאים [The Seleucid period in Eretz Israel]. הקיבוץ המאוחד והמדור לידיעת הארץ בתנועה הקיבוצית.
  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel (1989). Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish Struggle Against the Seleucids. Cambridge University Press. .
    • Originally published in Hebrew in 1980 as מלחמות החשמונאים ("The Battles of the Hasmoneans, the Era of Judah Maccabee") before the 1989 revision and official translation.
  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel (1996). Pseudo Hecataeus, "On the Jews": Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora. University of California Press. .
  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel (2010). The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature: The Hellenistic Period. University of California Press. .

The book The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature was cited in several lists of the best academic books of 2010.[3]

Bar-Kochva was a winner of the

Humboldt Prize in 2013/2014 in recognition of his scholarship, after previously receiving a Humboldt Fellowship from 1980–1983.[3][4]

References