Ancient Jewish diaspora: essays on Hellenism

Intro -- ‎Contents -- ‎Acknowledgments -- ‎Introduction -- ‎Part 1. Moses and Exodus -- ‎Chapter 1. Alexandria in Pharaonic Egypt: Projections in De vita Mosis -- ‎Chapter 2. Moses and the Charlatans: On the Charge of γόης καὶ ἀπατεών in Contra Apionem 2.145, 161 -- ‎Chapter 3. Moses: Motherless with Two Mothers -- ‎Chapter 4. Leaving Home: Philo of Alexandria on the Exodus -- ‎Part 2. Places and Ruins -- ‎Chapter 5. Geography without Territory: Tacitus's Digression on the Jews and its Ethnographic Context -- ‎Chapter 6. Show and Tell: Myth, Tourism, and Jewish Hellenism -- ‎Chapter 7. What If the Temple of Jerusalem Had Not Been Destroyed by the Romans? -- ‎Part 3. Theater and Myth -- ‎Chapter 8. Philo's Struggle with Jewish Myth -- ‎Chapter 9. Part of the Scene: Jewish Theater in Antiquity -- ‎Chapter 10. Take Your Time: Conversion, Confidence and Tranquility in Joseph and Aseneth -- ‎Part 4. Antisemitism and Reception -- ‎Chapter 11. Antisemitism and Early Scholarship on Ancient Antisemitism -- ‎Chapter 12. A Leap into the Void: The Philo-Lexikon and Jewish-German Hellenism -- ‎Chapter 13. Tacitus's Excursus on the Jews through the Ages: An Overview of its Reception History -- ‎Chapter 14. Polytheism and Monotheism in Antiquity: On Jan Assmann's Critique of Monotheism -- ‎Chapter 15. Testa incognita: The History of the Pseudo-Josephus Bust in Copenhagen -- ‎Index of Cited Passages -- ‎Index of Names and Places -- ‎Index of Subjects.

In the Hellenistic period, Jews participated in the imagination of a cosmopolitan world and they developed their own complex cultural forms. In this panoramic and multifaceted book, René Bloch shows that the ancient Jewish diaspora is an integral part of what we understand as Hellenism and argues that Jewish Hellenism epitomizes Hellenism at large. Relying on Greek, Latin and Hebrew sources, the fifteen papers collected in this volume trace the evidence of ancient Jews through meticulous studies of ruins, literature, myth and modern reception taking the reader on a journey from Philo?s Alexandria to a Roman bust in a Copenhagen museum