(From Back Cover)
Based on 1973 2nd edition (Revised & Updated)

Martin Hengel gathers an encyclopedic amount of material, ancient and modern, to present an exhaustive survey of the early course of Hellenistic civilization as it related to developing Judaism. The result is a highly readable account of a largely unfamiliar world which is indispensable for those interested in Judaism and the birth of Christianity alike. An extensive section of notes and bibliography is included.

"Martin Hengel presents here, in a fine English translation, an excellent, comprehensive study of the impact of Hellenism on Judaism in the intertestamental period. Hengel has mastered all the primary material and given us a new, synthetic picture of the encounter, at all its different levels."
— Choice

"Hengel writes with equal mastery on the political, economic, intellectual, and religious aspects of the encounter between the Jews and the Greeks and has succeeded admirably in presenting the detailed information essential for the appraisal of the period without ever allowing the momentum of his argument to be lost."
— P. R. Ackroyd

"Hengel's fine book is a freshly thought-out and thoroughly researched study which cuts across the customary network of traditional opinion and unsubstantiated guesswork .... This will certainly be a standard work for decades to come."
— James Barr

Martin Hengel is Professor of New Testament Theology and Early Judaism at the University of Tubingen. Among his most recent works are Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity and Jews, Greeks and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenization of Judaism in the Pre-Christian Period.