Heritage and Hellenism

Heritage and Hellenism PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520235061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In these fictive creations, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us vital insights into Jewish self-perception.

Heritage and Hellenism

Heritage and Hellenism PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520235061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
In these fictive creations, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us vital insights into Jewish self-perception.

Heritage and Hellenism

Heritage and Hellenism PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520929195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables—not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era.

Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy

Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520204836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Gruen studies the Hellenization of Rome during the middle Republic years, where changes in arts, religion and philosophy, and politics altered Roman public life by introducing Greek learning.

Heritage and Hellenism

Heritage and Hellenism PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520929197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables—not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era. The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks

Hellenistic Constructs

Hellenistic Constructs PDF Author: Paul Cartledge
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
The Hellenistic period (approximately the last three centuries B.C.), with its cultural complexities and enduring legacies, retains a lasting fascination today. Reflecting the vigor and productivity of scholarship directed at this period in the past decade, this collection of original essays is a wide-ranging exploration of current discoveries and questions. The twelve essays emphasize the cultural interaction of Greek and non-Greek societies in the Hellenistic period, in contrast to more conventional focuses on politics, society, or economy. The result of original research by some of the leading scholars in Hellenistic history and culture, this volume is an exemplary illustration of the cultural richness of this period. Paul Cartledge's introduction contains an illuminating introductory overview of current trends in Hellenistic scholarship. The essays themselves range over broad questions of comparative historiography, literature, religion, and the roles of Athens, Rome, and the Jews within the context of the Hellenistic world. The volume is dedicated to Frank Walbank and includes an updated bibliography of his work which has been essential to our understanding of the Hellenistic period.

Alexander to Actium

Alexander to Actium PDF Author: Peter Green
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520083493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1006

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Book Description
A meticulous analysis of Hellenistic culture spanning three centuries, from the death of Alexander the Great in 325 B.C. Green surveys every significant aspect of Hellenistic cultural development in this colorful, complex period that will fascinate all readers. 217 illustrations, 30 maps.

Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome

Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801480416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
A compelling account of the assimilation and adaptation of Greek culture by the Romans during the middle and later Republic.

The Greeks and Their Heritages

The Greeks and Their Heritages PDF Author: Arnold Toynbee
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Explores successfully the heritage of the Mycenaean Greeks, the Hellenic Greeks, the Byzantine Greeks, and the Modern Greeks.

Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church

Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church PDF Author: Susanna Elm
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520287541
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
This groundbreaking study brings into dialogue for the first time the writings of Julian, the last non-Christian Roman Emperor, and his most outspoken critic, Bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, a central figure of Christianity. Susanna Elm compares these two men not to draw out the obvious contrast between the Church and the Emperor’s neo-Paganism, but rather to find their common intellectual and social grounding. Her insightful analysis, supplemented by her magisterial command of sources, demonstrates the ways in which both men were part of the same dialectical whole. Elm recasts both Julian and Gregory as men entirely of their times, showing how the Roman Empire in fact provided Christianity with the ideological and social matrix without which its longevity and dynamism would have been inconceivable.

Rethinking the Other in Antiquity

Rethinking the Other in Antiquity PDF Author: Erich S. Gruen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691156352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Prevalent among classicists today is the notion that Greeks, Romans, and Jews enhanced their own self-perception by contrasting themselves with the so-called Other--Egyptians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Gauls, and other foreigners--frequently through hostile stereotypes, distortions, and caricature. In this provocative book, Erich Gruen demonstrates how the ancients found connections rather than contrasts, how they expressed admiration for the achievements and principles of other societies, and how they discerned--and even invented--kinship relations and shared roots with diverse peoples. Gruen shows how the ancients incorporated the traditions of foreign nations, and imagined blood ties and associations with distant cultures through myth, legend, and fictive histories. He looks at a host of creative tales, including those describing the founding of Thebes by the Phoenician Cadmus, Rome's embrace of Trojan and Arcadian origins, and Abraham as ancestor to the Spartans. Gruen gives in-depth readings of major texts by Aeschylus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and others, in addition to portions of the Hebrew Bible, revealing how they offer richly nuanced portraits of the alien that go well beyond stereotypes and caricature. Providing extraordinary insight into the ancient world, this controversial book explores how ancient attitudes toward the Other often expressed mutuality and connection, and not simply contrast and alienation.