Shem in the Tents of Japhet : Essays on the Encounter of Judaism and Hellenism

Kugel, James L. Shem in the Tents of Japhet : Essays on the Encounter of Judaism and Hellenism. Leiden: Brill, 2002. First edition. Octavo. vi, 286pp. Indices. Blue cloth lettered in gilt with publisher’s device on front cover. An ex-library copy with minimal rubber stamping on title & at bottom of text block, otherwise fine.

These essays, by some of today’s greatest scholars of Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity, explore a variety of ways in which these two great civilizations interacted. The common focus of these studies is the transition from one culture to the next – how words or concepts or conventions from the one came to be transplanted, and often modified in the process, in the other. Taken together, however, they provide something broader: a large, variegated picture of the cultural interaction that was to prove so crucial for the later history of Judaism and Christianity. (Publisher)

Contents: Were the Greeks different? If so, how and why? / Albert I. Baumgarten. — Issues of language. Bilingual Jews and the Greek Bible / Albert I. Baumgarten. — Context and connotation. Greek words for Jewish concepts in Philo / Naomi G. Cohen. — Hellenism in Jewish writings. Hellenism in the fragmentary Hellenistic Jewish authors. Resonance and resistance / Carl R. Holladay. — Apocalyptic eschatology in philosophical dress in the Wisdom of Solomon / John J. Collins. — Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon on creation, revelation, and providence : the high-water mark of Jewish Hellenistic fusion / David Winston. — Eudaimonism in Hellenistic-Jewish literature / David T. Runia. — Josephus between rabbinic culture and Hellenistic historiography / Chaim Milikowsky. — The reception of Judaism by the Greek fathers. One of us or one of them? Christian reception of Philo the Jew in Egypt / David T. Runia. — Assessing Philo’s influence in Christian Alexandria : the case of Origen / Annewies van den Hoek. — “Vanity of vanities”? Solomon’s trilogy and the patristic subversion of scripture / Nicholas Constas. (OCLC)

Volume 74 of the Brill series, “Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism.” (J.S.J.S.) near fine. Hardcover. (53205) $95