Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Edited by TESSA RAJAK, SARAH PEARCE, JAMES AITKEN, and JENNIFER DINES.

Abstract

This collection of papers studying the images of Hellenistic monarchies as reflected in the Greek translation of the Old Testament and related Jewish writings is a first probe in a larger project by the editors (‘The Greek Bible in the Graeco-Roman World’) supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. As individual papers belonging to a colloquium organized in 2003, they do not all focus with the same sharpness on the title of the volume, nor do they all express the same opinion. It is also mostly the Ptolemies that are meant here, hardly followed by the Seleucids, and not at all by the Antigonids or the Attalids. The introduction by T. Rajak is a brave synthesis of what seems an uneven and inconclusive treatment, raising more questions than providing answers. But at the outset of a major investigation of an important and so far neglected subject, this is understandable.