confluence reinvention hellenistic civilization

books:

Caesars and Apostles: Hellenism, Rome and Judaism
Emil Bock

Floris Books, 1999

An unusual perspective on the cultural and political milieu in existence at the time of the emergence of Christianity. Events such as the Persian Wars are examined with a view to understanding the spiritual struggles raging between those forces that wished to promote a newly emerging human consciousness, based on independent thought and a growing sense of egocentricity; and those forces that wished to preserve the authoritarian structures of the ...

Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews

3 reviews
Victor Tcherikover

Hendrickson Publishers, 1999

This Book is in the Wrong Place if it is not in your Library
Tcherikover introduces a new approach to the concept of "Hellenization" in the eastern lands of the Mediterranean world by approaching the topic from the historical situation prominent both in Syria and Egypt. Unlike other historians who deal with the pan-Hellenic campaigns of Alexander and the extensive results that Hellenism had in the Levantine countries of Syro-Palestine, Tcherikover ...

Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence?

1 review
Lee I. Levine

Hendrickson Publishers, 1999

A tentative answer
This book constitutes an excellent review on the interaction between the monotheism in the Hasmonean kingdom and the hellenistic way of life which was the civilised world of that period. It focuses on the interaction between the "Palestinian " Jews and Graeco-Roman world.

Athens in Jerusalem: Classical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew
Yaacov Shavit

Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999

From the eighteenth century on. Jews seeking to acquire a modern identity began to take a new interest in classical antiquity and Hellenistic civilization as a key to the secular Jewish culture they sought to develop. It was of course not the 'real' classical Greece to which they aspired but rather its idealized image as perceived through contemporary eyes, but this image became an important element in the search for a new Jewish self-awareness. ...

Athens in Jerusalem: Classical Antiquity & Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew (The Littman ...

2 reviews
Jacob Shavit, Yaacov Shavit

Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997

How much Hellenism in Judaism?
In the ongoing dispute over how much Hellenistic thought and society influenced Talmudic Judaism, this is yet another contribution from the side that lends weight to Hellenistic influence. Shavit acknowledges that the Talmud was not quick to adopt Greek words and mythological motifs, but argues that the influence of Greece and Rome were considerable nonetheless. The main task of the Talmudic ...

Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide

1 review

Westminster John Knox Press, 2001

A DICHOTOMY THAT WON'T DI
When applied to Paul and his environment, the terms Judaism and Hellenism are "strongly ideological" (page 3). So states the editor of this volume. And if true, editor Troels Engberg-Pedersen asserts, NT Scholarship should "give up altogether operating with the dichotomy." The Apostle Paul himself apparently thought the terms should be tossed. Paul wrote (Gal 3:28) "there is neither Jew nor ...

Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Hellenistic Culture & Society)

4 reviews
Erich S. Gruen

University of California Press, 2002

A Different Way of Seeing
Erich Gruen a Classicist and historian of the Roman Republic and Empire has gone somewhat far afield here to review the Greek language literature authored by Jews during the Hellenistic period. Literary criticism of the traditional nature is the chosen vehicle for his investigation. The text and what it says is Gruen's predominate concern. Only after such an analysis has been employed, and its ...

Hidden Lights

1 review
R' Pinchas Stolper

Israel Book Shop, 2005

embarrassing
The density of errors in word usage and punctuation, the awkward writing that no amount of punctuation could repair, and weak organization, made reading this book an aggravating experience. The author devotes part of the book to the sequence of historical events from a traditional Jewish perspective, and much of the book to polemics. Although the author's ideas are adult, the author ...

Did Moses Speak Attic?: Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (Journal for the Study ...

1 review

Sheffield Academic Press, 2001

The OT... a Hellenistic Novel?
Presented in this book are a series of papers presented to the European Seminar on Methodology in 1998 (Cracow) and 1999 (Helsinki). As Grabbe outs it, the purpose of the papers is to "thrash out questions of historical methodology" and unlike other forums there is a diversity of views. In one way or another all of these essays address Niels Peter Lemche's 1993 essay "The Old Testament -- a ...