Rev. translation of: Yehude Mitsrayim ha-Helenistit veha-Romit be-maavakam al zekhuyotehem.

This is the story of the adventures and misadventures of the Jewish people in the land of Egypt. The author uses the clear light of scientific analysis and archaeological research to illuminate the reality underlying the images from the Biblical accounts and Jewish and pagan literary texts, through the great “love affair” between Jews and Hellenic culture. It ends with the brief but crucial episode when budding Christianity and the Alexandrian Jews parted company.

"In this lexicon Tal Ilan collects all the information on names of Jews in Palestine and the people who bore them between 330 BCE, a date which marks the Hellenistic conquest of Palestine, and 200 CE, the date usually assigned to the close of the mishnaic period, and the early Roman Empire. Thereby she includes names from literary sources as well as those found in epigraphic and papyrological documents. Tal Ilan discusses the provenance of the names and explains them etymologically, given the many possible sources of influence for the names at that time." "In addition she shows the division between the use of biblical names and the use of Greek and other foreign names. She analyzes the identity of the persons and the choice of name and points out the most popular names at the time. The lexicon is accompanied by a lengthy and comprehensive introduction that scrutinizes the main trends in name giving current at the time." --Book Jacket.

“A valuable and much needed contribution to the study of Alexandria and late antiquity” which presents “a vivid and interesting portrait” (Classical Review). A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Second only to Rome in the ancient world, Alexandria was home to many of late antiquity’s most brilliant writers, philosophers, and theologians—among them Philo, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, Hypatia, Cyril, and John Philoponus. Now, in Alexandria in Late Antiquity, Christopher Haas places these figures within the physical and social context of Alexandria’s bustling urban milieu. Haas explores the broad avenues and back alleys of Alexandria’s neighborhoods, its suburbs and waterfront, and aspects of material culture that underlay Alexandrian social and intellectual life. Moving between the city’s Jewish, pagan, and Christian blocs, he details the fiercely competitive nature of Alexandrian social dynamics. In contrast to the notion that Alexandria’s diverse communities coexisted peaceably, Haas finds that struggles for social dominance and cultural hegemony often resulted in violence and bloodshed. Haas concludes that Alexandrian society achieved a certain stability and reintegration—a process that resulted in the transformation of Alexandrian civic identity during the crucial centuries between antiquity and the Middle Ages.

In Pesher and Hypomnema Pieter B. Hartog compares ancient Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Bible with papyrus commentaries on the Iliad. Hartog shows that members of the Qumran movement adopted classical commentary writing and adapted it to their own needs.

This volume contains articles by Martha Himmelfarb on topics in Second Temple Judaism and the development and reception of Second Temple traditions in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The section on Priests, Temples, and Torah addresses the themes of its title in texts from the Bible to the Mishnah. Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls contains articles analyzing the intensification of the biblical purity laws, particularly the laws for genital discharge, in the major legal documents from the Scrolls. In Judaism and Hellenism the author explores the relationship between these two ancient cultures by examining the ancient and modern historiography of the Maccabean Revolt and the role of the Torah in ancient Jewish adaptations of Greek culture. The last two sections of the volume follow texts and traditions of the Second Temple period into late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The articles in Heavenly Ascent consider the relationship between the ascent apocalypses of the Second Temple period and later works involving heavenly ascent, particularly the hekhalot texts. In the final section, The Pseudepigrapha and Medieval Jewish Literature, Himmelfarb investigates evidence for knowledge of works of the Second Temple period by medieval Jews with consideration of the channels by which the works might have reached these later readers.

The Exilarchs, professed scions of the biblical Davidic royal line, were leaders of the Jews of Babylonia in antiquity. They were said to be powerful political figures and to lead a decadent lifestyle. Their princely trappings and high-handed manner were legend. They were reported to be completely assimilated into Persian culture. Geoffrey Herman examines the evidence, culled mainly from the Talmudic and Geonic literature, subjecting the institution of the Exilarchate to literary-historical and source-critical analysis. In addition, Herman innovatively utilizes comparative sources from the fields of Iranian studies and Persian Christianity to find the truth underlying the accounts of the historical Exilarchs.

Papers from a conference held 2007, Princeton University.

This volume provides a compendium of the history of and discourse about antisemitism - both as a unique cultural and religious category. Antisemitic stereotypes function as religious symbols that express and transmit a belief system of Jew-hatred, which are stored in the cultural and religious memories of the Western and Muslim worlds, migrating freely between Christian, Muslim and other religious symbolic systems.