This ground-breaking volume examines the presentation and role of children in the ancient world, and specifically in ancient Jewish and Christian texts. With carefully commissioned chapters that follow chronological and canonical progression, a sequential reading of this book enables deeper appreciation of how understandings of children change over time.
Divided into four sections, this handbook first offers an overview of key methodological approaches employed in the study of children in the biblical world, and the texts at hand. Three further sections examine crucial texts in which children or discussions of childhood are featured; presented along chronological lines, with sections on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Intertestamental Literature, and the New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha. Relevant not only to biblical studies but also cross-disciplinary scholars interested in children in antiquity.

Sharon Betsworth is Professor of Religion at Oklahoma City University, USA. She is the author of Children in Early Christian Narratives (T&T Clark 2015) and The Reign of God is Such as These: A Socio-literary Analysis of Daughters in the Gospel of Mark (T&T Clark 2010).

Julie Faith Parker is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at The General Theological Seminary in New York City, USA. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Valuable and Vulnerable: Children in the Hebrew Bible, Especially the Elisha Cycle (Brown University, 2013).