Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian

Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, most studies of that topic maintain. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century C. E., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive responses from the non-Jewish population, and he challenges the conception of Jewish history as years of uninterrupted weakness and suffering. ''Feldman's book is ... the most comprehensive recent study of relations between Jew and Gentile in the ancient world. It will take its place with the classic works ... as an indispensable resource for the study of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman world.''--John J. Collins, Journal of Biblical Literature ''Feldman is a world-class expert in the difficult but vitally important area of the intersection of Jewish and Gentile cultures in the Greco- Roman world. His encyclopedic knowledge of pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings of the period is nothing less than breathtaking. Scholars are deeply indebted to his writings, which are unfailingly accurate and unfailingly fair. Our ... debt to him is only increased by this latest exciting work.''--John P. Meier, The Catholic University of America