Preliminary material /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- TESTIMONIA /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- FRAGMENTA /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- NOTES TO THE TESTIMONIA /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- NOTES TO THE FRAGMENTS /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- INDEX OF ANCIENT AUTHORS AND WORKS /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST -- ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA to the first edition /PIETER WILLEM VAN DER HORST.

Twenty scholars have contributed to this book which deals with the development and characteristics of the literature of ancient Egypt over a period of over more than two millenia, from the monumental origins of autobiography at the end of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2150 BC) down to the latest literary compositions in Demotic during the Graeco-Roman period (300BC-200AD). The book is divided into thirty chapters concerned with the definition of literary discourse, the history and genre of the texts, their linguistic and stylistic features and the image of Egypt as displayed in later literary traditions - Greek, Coptic and Arabic. Thoroughly interdisciplinary.

The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables—not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era.

In their long history, Jews encountered political, social, cultural, and religious crises which threatened not only their very existence but Jewish identity as well. Examples for such crises include the Babylonian Exile, the so-called Hellenistic Religious reforms, the first and second Jewish war, the inquisition, and the Shoah, but also the encounter of modernity or socio-economic developments. Political, cultural, and religious crises did not coin Jewish culture, thought, and religion but forced Jews from the very beginnings of Judaism until today to rethink and shape their Jewish identity anew. This volume asks how Jews coped with events that threatened Jewish existence, culture, and religion and how they responded to them. Each crisis was different in nature and evoked hence different developments in Jewish culture, thought, and religion.