To be clear I am not interested in learning about the modern-day Jews yet, I'm interested in learning about the Jews that are mentioned in the Bible during the times that God was dealing with them as a nation, and also during the time Jesus was physically walking on the earth in Israel.
I am wanting to learn more about the culture back then, the society, and economics.
Do you know any good sources that have videos/documentary on the topic?
Thanks.
Prior to the Second Temple Period it's a bit hard to find much outside of the Bible itself, just some archeological findings mostly.
There's more out there when we talk about the Second Temple Period, which is when we see a lot of the ideas and practices arise that are common in the time of the New Testament, for example the Hellenization that happened after Alexander conquered Persia, the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids which was the archetype which the Zealots of the first century followed in their desire to liberate themselves from Roman occupation, and which ultimately led to the Jewish revolt and Jewish-Roman war that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. It was that event, the destruction of the Temple that paved the way for Pharisaism to become the dominant form of Judaism, as the destruction of the Temple meant the extinction of the Saducees, and it appears the end of the Essenes, Zealots, and other Jewish groups. That led to the consolidation of Judaism by rabbinical authorities in Yavneh, though in time as Rome became increasingly less hospitable for Jews, the center of Jewish learning largely went eastward into Persia. This led to the writing down of the Mishnah (aka "Oral Torah", the teachings believed to have been delivered orally since the time of Moses through Joshua and so on) and the Gemarah (the rabbinical commentaries on the Mishna), in other words the Talmud. Two Talmuds existed for a time, the Jerusalem Talmud (written in Palestine) and the Babylonian Talmud (written in Persia), with the Babylonian Talmud ultimately "winning". Which is the form of the Talmud still used today.
Modern Jews exist as different cultural-liturgical groups depending on where Jews settled during the Diaspora. Most westerners when they think of modern Jews think of Ashkenazi Jews, the Jewish populations that settled in Central and Eastern Europe, such as the use of Yiddish, classically "Jewish" foods like matzo ball soup, things of that nature. But there are also the Sephardim, the Jewish populations from the Iberian peninsula and North Africa, the Mizrahim who are the Jewish populations that remained in the Middle East. There are Yemenite Jews from Yemen, the Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jews, and some Jewish communities from the Indian subcontinent. All of these cultural-liturgical groups follow Rabbinical Judaism, I'm using the term "cultural-liturgical" because the distinctiveness of these groups comes down to cultural distinctiveness (for example, some of the kinds of foods eaten at the Passover Seder), and liturgical distinctiveness, the forms of the prayers and certain religious texts like the Haggadah, the "procedure" one might say for observing Passover. All modern Jews trace their religious practices back all the way to the Torah itself obviously, but also through the various rabbinical authorities both from the Talmudic period after the destruction of the Temple, and the Second Temple period itself.
I realize you weren't interested in modern Judaism, but it's hard to make a hard distinction between ancient Judaism and modern, as the historical forces at work are interconnected. I don't have any specific historical works to recommend, but if you are looking, specifically, to understand Judaism and Jewish history from the Second Temple Period (about 500 BC to 70 AD), then that's the direction you should probably be searching. I would recommend finding good academically sound historical scholarship on that period. Because, again, before the Second Temple Period the historical material is more scarce (outside of what's written in the Bible itself), but you can probably find some decent work done on the Ancient Near East more broadly that will help provide cultural and historical context for what you read in the Old Testament.
I wish I could be more helpful, but most of the ways I've learned the little bit I know has largely been piece-meal, from various articles and historical documentaries over the years that I no longer remember.
One thing I can say, however, is to be careful about your sources. Which is why I recommend trying to find trustworthy sources rooted in good academia and scholarship; and there are a lot of weird stuff on the internet, especially by antisemitic conspiracy theorists and the like. Avoid anything that talks about "the ten lost tribes", as an example.
-CryptoLutheran
