Like Philo and Josephus as well as those who earlier produced the Septuagint and the
Hellenistic Jewish fragmentary texts the writers of the New Testament were Jews writing in
Greek. They may have been articulating and promoting a particular form of Jewish messianism
that eventually became a distinctive form of religious belief but in the first and early
second centuries those Christ-followers who were writing in various genres operated with many
of the same assumptions as their Jewish counterparts in the land of Israel and in other places
such as Alexandria and Rome. This collection of essays spanning the scholarly career of Carl
R. Holladay investigates the Hellenistic Jewish writings in their own contexts and explores
how they illuminate the writings of the New Testament. Included are six new essays on such
topics as Hellenistic Judaism the Beatitudes and Luke-Acts.
