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2 Maccabees, the first work to pose an opposition between Judaism and Hellenism, sees Hellenism as a new kind of threat in Jewish history. Previously, foreign cultures were perceived as dangerous because of the temptation posed by their gods. But for 2 Maccabees, Hellenism involves a system of values distinct from idolatry, the values associated with the gymnasium. 2 Maccabees condemns Jews who adopt these values even as they remain loyal to the God of Israel. Yet 2 Maccabees itself shows the influence of Hellenism in many ways. This article considers particularly its descriptions of the martyrs and other heroes, which employ a vocabulary of praise drawn from Greek culture rather than the biblical tradition. Yet 2 Maccabees artfully deemphasizes the associations of this language with the gymnasium and physical culture. For example, the martyrs with their passive courage are called noble, a term frequently used in Greek literature of warriors, while the category of gentlemanliness, a characteristic Greek value, is applied to elderly men who could not possibly participate in the characteristic sphere of the Greek gentleman, the gymnasium. Thus 2 Maccabees does not simply borrow but rather transforms these Greek categories as it integrates them into Judaism.

This article explores the question of the Hebraic and Hellenic heritage in the Jewish Middle Ages by examining the portrait of wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir, considered by scholars to be the first kabbalistic work to surface in twelfth-century Provence. In more specific terms, I investigate the interplay of two different depictions of wisdom in the Bahir against the complicated cultural composite of Hebraism and Hellenism: the mythically oriented characterizations of wisdom as a divine hypostasis and the philosophic characterization of wisdom as the demiurgical Logos. In the bahiric text, the mythic/Hebraic element becomes entwined in philosophic/Hellenic discourse. Many of the scriptural interpretations in the Bahir related to the topic of wisdom reflect the conflation of the mythopoeic and the logocentric orientations. Rather than viewing the kabbalistic doctrine of wisdom as the internal, mythic antidote to the external, philosophical ideal, I propose to examine the more nuanced cultural mix that underlies the speculation on wisdom in the bahiric text. By reexamining this issue, then, we reopen the key question of the relationship of philosophy and mysticism in the period when kabbalistic literary creativity flourished.

Hebraism and Hellenism reflect their mutual flow of ideas and rapports especially in their relationship to magic and science. The emphasis of this article is threefold. First, it points out the background of some customs and beliefs, which in the Rabbinic literature are called \"ways of the Amorite,\" and their similarity to Greco-Roman practices, which, in Pliny's Natural History are named \"magic deceits.\" Next, it identifies the halakhic principles that led the Rabbis to forbid or permit a custom or a belief. Finally, Pliny's attitudes on magic and experimental science are compared to those of the Rabbis. The examples of lore, magic, and custom that, in Rabbinic Judaism, were labeled as \"ways of the Amorite\" show the deep similarities between Jewish and Roman minds. Both Pliny and the Rabbis reflect a pragmatic mentality, intent on examining and judging instructions that could be helpful or harmful for the eventualities of everyday life.

From ancient Hellenism to modern Hellenism: It would be easy to imagine that a straight line joins the one to the other. In reality the line is far from straight. In late antiquity the very term Hellene virtually disappeared from general Greek usage for several centuries, which is not to say, however, that Greek language and culture disappeared in the intervening period. They were maintained, in various ways, by Christians and to a more limited extent by Jews, in unbroken continuity, although thoroughly transformed by the admixture of a determinative \"Hebraic\" (by which I mean essentially Biblical) element, which on the Christian side often threatened and on the Jewish side actually managed to overwhelm the Hellenic tradition. It is a very complex story, the skeins of which have not yet been thoroughly disentangled. On the majority Christian culture, a good deal has been written (see particularly Mango 1965, Browning 1983, Garzma 1985), but very little attempt has been made so far to elucidate the Jewish experience. I have discussed elsewhere the continuity of the use of the Greek language by Jews (de Lange 1990c). In the present essay I consider the relationship between language and self-definition for Jews in the Byzantine Empire.

This essay explores the impact of Greco-Roman erotic narrative on Rabbinic literature. Two specific cases of influence are explored. The first treats the influence of a specific character type and plot convention derived from the Greco-Roman novel-the beautiful but innocent and sexually chaste protagonist who is sexually tormented-on the construction of martyrological narratives in Rabbinic literature that also use the erotic ordeal as their central focus. The second analyzes a Rabbinic midrash of Deuteronomy 21:10-14 (the laws dealing with the beautiful woman taken captive in war) that is based on a kind of implied narrative derived as well-so this article argues-from Greco-Roman erotic narratives of the kind found in Parthenius' Peri Erotikon Pathematon. Indeed, not only is the midrash based on the conventions of this erotic narrative; the Rabbis may also have used the erotic narrative as a kind of foundational myth upon which they represented their own relationship to the pagan world in which they lived.