This book collects twenty two previously published essays and one new one by Erich S. Gruen who
has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of
the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His many articles on this subject have however appeared
mostly in conference volumes and Festschriften and have therefore not had wide circulation. By
putting them together in a single work this will bring the essays to the attention of a much
broader scholarly readership and make them more readily available to students in the fields of
ancient history and early Judaism. The pieces are quite varied but develop a number of
connected and related themes: Jewish identity in the pagan world the literary representations
by Jews and pagans of one another the interconnections of Hellenism and Judaism and the
Jewish experience under Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman empire.
