Ebook: Israel and Hellas

Brown’s massive comparison of Israel and Greece as the two free and innovative societies of the ancient world comes to its conclusion in this third volume of Israel and Hellas. The first volume appeared as BZAW 231 in 1995; the second volume, subtitled Sacred Institutions with Roman Counterparts, was published as BZAW 276 in 2000. This trilogy, in excess of 1450 pages itself, possesses a complex redactional history. Brown began the project in 1960 and several parts of the first two volumes appeared in separate articles. Of the seven chapters in the third volume, three chapters were previously published (as early as 1991) and three other chapters have been re-published elsewhere. This subsequent publication was Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece: Religion, Politics, and Culture (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; xiv, 229 pages), which combined one chapter from volume I of Israel and Hellas, two chapters from the second volume, and three chapters from the third volume. As such, Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece offers a relatively brief and affordable paperback compendium of BZAW’s three-volume collection of Brown’s essays. Except for matters of typography (mostly concerning original languages), errata sheets, and cumulative indexes, the essays in the fulsome Israel and Hellas are virtually unchanged from their original or subsequent publications, with the result that some of the research may seem dated.