Class 3: Roman Law and the Creation of the Rabbinic Corpus Following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, there was good reason to believe that Judaism as a religion would not long survive. However, Judaism did survive and evolve, mainly through the efforts of the rabbis. But the rabbis did not exist in a vacuum, and their work reflects their historical experience of living within a larger world. How did Roman conceptions of law and legal codes influence the rabbis and their work? How did they borrow from Roman legal tradition and also reject Roman law and fashion new solutions for similar problems? Instructor: Adam Marshak