The Bible among Greeks and Romans

Abstract

This chapter explores evidence of pagan interest in the Greek Bible. At Alexandria, the first flush of Ptolemaic interest in the Jewish nomos died away quite quickly. It is perhaps surprising that we can detect any echoes of the Greek Bible at all in what survives of Hellenistic Greek literature. But knowledge and appreciation in philosophical and professional circles seems to have continued and it gathered strength in the Roman period. For all social classes, there was another kind of meeting ground in the realm of magic, where biblical quotations in Greek and biblical terminology, above all the Divine Name, were freely used by practitioners and evidently welcomed by their clients, as we can see from recipes, spells, and curse formulae. These were evidently handed down through the generations and they survive for us in papyri from late antiquity. Whatever scenario is conjured up to explain the production and use of such material, a level of awareness of Jewish Scripture on the part of non-Jews is implied.