JS 100g

Fall 2015

University of Southern California JS 100g: Jewish History

Professor Joshua Garroway

QUIZ REVIEW SHEET

Overview: In section during the week of September 29, 2015, you will complete a quiz aimed at assessing your familiarity with the key terms, names, dates, places, ideas, events, and trends in Jewish history from roughly 1200 BCE to roughly 63 BCE—to wit, the content covered in the first seven lectures. While this may seem a bit daunting, your anxiety should be minimized if you keep the following two things in mind: first, there will be no effort to trick or stump you. The quiz will touch on the main points from the lectures and readings, so if you have reviewed those sufficiently you should find yourself prepared. Second, there will be elements of choice on the quiz, so you should not feel as though you need to know “everything.” So long as you have digested most of what we have learned, you’ll be ready. You do not need a blue book for the quiz The Quiz: You will have twenty-five minutes to complete the quiz. It will consist of fifty total points and will feature two parts: Chronologigrams (12 pts.) and Identifications (38 pts.). The following explanations of the sections will help you to prepare:

Chronologigrams (a term I believe I invented): In this part of the quiz, you will be presented with discrete collections of three important events in Jewish history. Your task will be to place them in correct chronological order. For example, you might see something like the following:

___ The conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar ___ The mission(s) of Ezra and/or Nehemiah ___ The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great You would respond by placing a 1 next to the event that occurred the earliest, a 2 next to the subsequent event, and a 3 next to the last event to have occurred. As the example suggests, the chronologigrams will usually consist of events that are in some way historically related (e.g., the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar initiated the Babylonian exile, which came to an end when the Babylonians were conquered by Cyrus the Great, which initiated the Persian period in which the mission(s) of Ezra and/or Nehemiah took place). Thus, there is no need for you to have any dates memorized. You simply need to know when important historical events occurred in relation to one another. This section of the quiz assesses your mastery of the “story” of ancient Jewish history—which is to say, the sequence of important events. Of seven chronologigrams, you will complete six. Each is worth two points. If you complete all seven, I will mark the first six only. Identifications: In this part of the quiz, you will be asked to identify some of the most important people, places, and ideas in ancient Jewish history. You will encounter short responses, (e.g., “this man was the king of Judah at the time of the Assyrian invasion, whose preparations and fortification of Jerusalem enabled the city to outlast the Assyrian siege.”), to which you will provide the best name, place, or idea. The best way to prepare for this section is to make a list of the people, places, and ideas that appear prominently or frequently in the readings and/or lectures. I did this recently and came up with about 40 terms. If you do the same thing, I imagine your list will look a lot like mine. Of twenty identifications, you will complete nineteen. Each is worth 2 points. NB: there will not be a “word bank” from which to choose the correct terms. The word bank should be in your head!

** Please contact Sarah, Dusty, Daniel, or me if you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns. Enjoy

your preparation!