This book contextualizes Rabbinic Judaism by emphasizing that the framers of Rabbinic thought were in conversation with cultures different from their own as much as with their own tradition. In a series of seven essays, presented here for the first time, the authors challenge the reader's assumptions about Judaism in the Second Temple period, late antiquity, and the early medieval era. Arranged in chronological order according to the period of time they focus on, the essays analyze texts such as the Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman Egyptian texts, Greek and Latin works, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early and late midrashic texts, the New Testament, the Church fathers' writings, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds, and Zoroastrian texts.

Contributions by: Lawrence Schiffman, Mayer Gruber, Reuven Kimelman, Holger Zellentin, Yaakov Elman, Herbert Basser, Rivka B. Kern Ulmer