Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers (review)

In opposition to the consistent practice of biblical scholars to treat the Greek Bible merely as an aid in correcting its Hebrew original, the contributors of this fine volume (Dines, Grabe, and van der Kooij) wholeheartedly embrace Elias Bickerman's half-century-old call to research the Septuagint in its own right and in its Hellenistic context. Traditionally, the Hellenistic Jewish literature in Greek that emerged around the time of the Septuagint under the names of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha fell in the domain of biblical scholars, and not of classicists, whose expertise was challenged because of their insufficient grounding in Semitic languages. Now, however, bringing classical and biblical studies together has become a guiding principle of the "AHRC Parkes Greek Bible in the Graeco-Roman World Project," which in 2003 sponsored an international colloquium on "Representations of Hellenistic Kingship." In this volume, the project's editorial board collected sixteen conference papers which are not only well rooted in both Hellenistic history and Jewish literature, but also thoroughly and successfully committed to putting "the spotlight on both sides" (4).

Murray's excellent article on the role of philosophers in the Hellenistic royal houses, and Rowlandson's well-supported insights on the dynamics of the Ptolemaic court, set the scene for the topic of this volume: construction of Hellenistic rulers by Greek-speaking Jews. Instead of a standard discussion on dating and provenance, the remainder of the volume is animated by a comparative methodology based on the principle of "actualization" and "contemporization"—i.e., the "reading of the past in terms of the present" (3)—which opens up unlimited possibilities for research and yields refreshing results. Rajak's Jewish image of the "Angry Tyrant," Honigman's literary analysis of Aristeas, Evans' "Hellenistic interpreter," and van Henten's "Royal ideology," all testify to the versatility of this method. Even Alexander and Alexander's proposition that Greek Esther was a response to 3 Maccabees, although somewhat speculative, is a remarkable and innovative proposal.

The greatest value of this volume is its pointing to new directions for future research based on the best of recent scholarship. Fowler's presupposition that Hellenistic influences last longer and have a wider reach than had previously been thought allows for the inclusion of the Parthians into the discussion. Gruen underlines that the search for historicity in Hellenistic literature really reveals more about the Jewish authors than it does about Hellenistic rulers, and Edwards goes one further by arguing for the greater use of archeology to offset the overreliance on literary sources in Hellenistic studies. Pearce calls for a careful reexamination of previous scholarship, even that of the rightly influential Bickerman. And, lastly, Fowler's "Kingship and Banditry" brings to the study of the Hellenistic past our modern-day experiences with freedom fighters and terrorism.

The pity is that this collection of exceptionally fine articles is poorly edited. In the first place, the logic behind the structure and fourfold division of the book is never explained and seems arbitrary. Why Gruen's discussion of non-Greek biblical texts from the Persian period opens the section on "Rulers in Greek-Jewish Texts" is a case in point. Rajak's introduction could have offered some help, but here the attention she pays to each article varies greatly and is dictated by her narrative on the conference's overall concerns. Perhaps a standard introduction that explained the ordering of the articles and summarized them sequentially would have greatly helped the reader to use each of these essays independently. Luckily, the titles represent their contents well, a virtue frequently lacking in current academic writings.

Moreover, the indexes are fraught with problems too many to enumerate here, and only a few examples must suffice. First, the references to Jeremiah jump indiscriminately between Hebrew and Greek numbering conventions. Secondly, Greek Esther, though cited (228), is not indexed. Third, a number of references in the...