Jews, Pagans and Christians in Conflict

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What were the political, social and intellectual relations between different religious groups in the Hellenistic and Roman world? David Rokeah suggests that they were marked by ongoing propaganda wars, and that the pagan-Jewish polemic served as the foundation for the subsequent pagan-Christian polemic. He proves that the Jews were not a party of the pagan-Christian polemic, but that their very existence and independent attitude towards Christianity and paganism alike, their holy writings and those of Hellenistic Jewry, all helped to shape the pagan-Christian conflict. Against a historical background, the author examines specific philosophical-theological motifs of the polemic, such as religious myth, divine providence, and the election of Israel. A wealth of material from Greek, Latin and Hebrew sources presented in a fresh English translation, so as to help the reader sense the spirit of this important age in world history.