Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.

This volume describes the attitudes towards Gentiles in both ancient Judaism and the early Christian tradition. The Jewish relationship with and views about the Gentiles played an important part in Jewish self-definition, especially in the Diaspora where Jews formed the minority among larger Gentile populations. Jewish attitudes towards the Gentiles can be found in the writings of prominent Jewish authors (Josephus and Philo), sectarian movements and texts (the Qumran community, apocalyptic literature, Jesus) and in Jewish institutions such as the Jerusalem Temple and the synagogue. In the Christian tradition, which began as a Jewish movement but developed quickly into a predominantly Gentile tradition, the role and status of Gentile believers in Jesus was always of crucial significance. Did Gentile believers need to convert to Judaism as an essential component of their affiliation with Jesus, or had the appearance of the messiah rendered such distinctions invalid? This volume assesses the wide variety of viewpoints in terms of attitudes towards Gentiles and the status and expectations of Gentiles in the Christian church.

Taking a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews and Judaism, Peter Schafer locates the origin of anti-Semitism in the ancient world. Judeophobia firmly establishes Hellenistic Egypt as the generating source of anti-Semitism, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic history. A pattern of ingrained hostility toward an alien culture emerges when Schafer surveys an illuminating spectrum of comments on Jews and their religion in Greek and Roman writings, focusing on the topics that most interested the pagan classical world: the exodus or, as it was widely interpreted, expulsion from Egypt; the nature of the Jewish god; food restrictions, in particular abstinence from pork; laws relating to the sabbath; the practice of circumcision; and Jewish proselytism. He then probes key incidents, two fierce outbursts of hostility in Egypt: the destruction of a Jewish temple in Elephantine in 410 B.C.E. and the riots in Alexandria in 38 C.E. Asking what fueled these attacks on Jewish communities, the author discovers deep-seated ethnic resentments. It was from Egypt that hatred of Jews, based on allegations of impiety, xenophobia, and misanthropy, was transported first to Syria-Palestine and then to Rome, where it acquired a new element: fear of this small but distinctive community. To the hatred and fear, ingredients of Christian theology were soon added--a mix all too familiar in Western history.

A magisterial history of the titanic struggle between the Roman and Jewish worlds that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Martin Goodman—equally renowned in Jewish and in Roman studies—examines this conflict, its causes, and its consequences with unprecedented authority and thoroughness. He delineates the incompatibility between the cultural, political, and religious beliefs and practices of the two peoples and explains how Rome's interests were served by a policy of brutality against the Jews. At the same time, Christians began to distance themselves from their origins, becoming increasingly hostile toward Jews as Christian influence spread within the empire. This is the authoritative work of how these two great civilizations collided and how the reverberations are felt to this day.

Collected here in one unabridged edition are all 20 books of Flavius Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews. Antiquities of the Jews was first published in 94 AD it is history of the Jewish people written in Greek for Josephus' gentile patrons. It begins with the creation of Adam and Eve and follows the events of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible often adding information that we might not otherwise have today

These collected studies, previously published in diverse places between 1990 and 2006, discuss important and controversial issues in the study of the development of Judaism in the Roman world from the first century C.E. to the fifth.

Discusses social, economic, and political aspects of antisemitism in the ancient (Greco-Roman) world, based extensively on the writings of Josephus Flavius and Philo.

Jew and Gentile have always had a symbiotic relationship. This relationship, always challenged throughout history, will one day emerge unfettered by historical anti-Semitism, and God's kingdom as it was intended will emerge. Today, we are seeing ancient paths uncovered, that reveal what has been ordained from the eternities of time.

In this book, Eung Chun Park reconstructs a focused and coherent narrative of the last two decades of the life of Paul as it revolved around the Gentile mission. The result is a detailed and thorough analysis of the Pauline letters that demonstrates how Paul's theology changed over the course of his life as a consequence of his struggle to defend the gospel against the attacks from people who advocated a different kind of gospel. This book traces the development of the two gospels (one that advocated freedom from circumcision and one that advocated observance of circumcision) as they encountered such landmark events as the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, the Antioch incident, the Galatian incident, the Corinthian incident, and Paul's last visit to Jerusalem.