The book contains 30 studies, the majority of which were written in the past five years, on a wide variety of aspects of religious interaction in the Hellenistic and Roman periods: between Jews and Samaritans, Jews and Greeks, Christians and Greeks, Jews and Christians.

In this book, published on the occasion of Pieter W. van der Horst's 60th birthday and his retirement from the chair of early Christian, Jewish, and Hellenistic studies at Utrecht University, the author presents a selection of 30 essays (most of them recent) on the religious and cultural milieu of early Christianity. The focus is especially on Jewish culture in the centuries around the turn of the era in its interaction with Hellenism. The book also contains various studies on translation problems in the New Testament in the light of Greek philology, on the Samaritan world in its conflict with Judaism, on beliefs and usages in the pagan Hellenistic world and on a variety of patristic documents. One finds studies thematically as far apart as the anthropology of the rabbis and the origins of Greek atheism. The unity in this variety is that all these studies aim at shedding new light on the world of the early Christians in the first six centuries of the Common Era, a field of research to which the author has been contributing for more than 35 years.

Autorentext
Born 1946; 1978 Ph.D.; Professor of New Testament, Early Christian Literature, Ancient Judaism, and Hellenism at Utrecht University.

Inhalt
Introduction
The Jews of Ancient Crete
The Jews of Ancient Cyprus
The Jews of Ancient Sicily
The Synagogue of Sardis and its Inscriptions
Jews and Blues in Late Antiquity
A Note on the Evil Inclination and Sexual Desire in Talmudic Literature
"His Days Shall Be One Hundred and Twenty Years". Genesis 6:3 in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity
Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. A Review Article
Huldah's Tomb in Early Jewish Tradition
Pseudo-Phocylides on the Afterlife. A Rejoinder to John Collins
Philo's In Flaccum and the Book of Acts
Common Prayer in Philo's In Flaccum 121-124
Philo and the Rabbis on Genesis. Similar Questions, Different Answers
Philo of Alexandria on the Wrath of God
Anti-Samaritan Propaganda in Early Judaism
Jacques Basnage (1653-1723) on the Samaritans. Or: How much did one know about the Samaritans three centuries ago in the Netherlands?
Once More: The Translation of . in Matthew 28:17
Abraham's Bosom, the Place Where He Belonged. A Short Note on in Luke 16:22
"Snorting Threat and Murder". The Hellenistic Background of Acts 9:1
"Only then will all Israel be saved". A Short Note on the Meaning of in Romans 11:26
Macarius Magnes and the Unnamed Anti-Christian Polemicist. A review article
A New Early Christian Poem on the Sacrifice of Isaac (Pap. Bodmer 30)
The Role of Scripture in Cyril of Scythopolis' Lives of the Monks of Palestine
Twenty-Five Questions to Corner the Jews. A Byzantine Anti-Jewish Document from the Seventh Century
"The Most Superstitious and Disgusting of All Nations". Diogenes of Oenoanda on the Jews
The Shadow in Hellenistic Popular Belief
The First Atheist
Subtractive Versus Additive Composite Numerals in Ancient Languages
The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (PGM IV) and the Bible
"The God Who Drowned the King of Egypt". A Short Note on an Exorcistic Formula
Original places of publication
Bibliography of Pieter W. van der Horst, 1970-2005