Seminar, three hours. Designed for students who have basic language skills and capacities necessary for reading Biblical Hebrew or Rabbinic Hebrew. Reading, analysis, and interpretation of Hebrew literature composed during Second Temple period. Relevant sources include Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira, Daniel, Dead Sea Scrolls, and other documents from Judean desert, and various aprocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Special attention to historical development of Hebrew language and literature in relation to both earlier biblical sources, styles, grammar, and syntax and to subsequent Rabbinic writings. Course builds following skills: reading unpointed texts, mastering distinctive elements of vocabulary, idiom, and syntax of Second Temple Hebrew, and analyzing relationships between biblical and postbiblical sources. May be repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.