The aim of this course is to provide a preliminary survey of the wide range of Jewish texts from Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and of its academic study. During the course we shall get to know the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple period, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic literature, the early halakhic literature, the early prayer and the piyyut, the Jewish astrological and magical texts of Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the early Jewish mystical literature, the Biblical and Talmudic commentators of the period up to the thirteenth century, the philosophical literature of this period, and medieval Jewish secular poetry. In each meeting we shall discuss one of these textual corpora, both by way of a general survey of the specific corpus and of its academic study and by examining one representative text. During the course the students will submit ten short writing assignments, and at its end one longer written work.