This book is a collection of 26 previously published articles, with a number of additions and corrections, and a long new introduction on "The Influence of Hellenism on Jews in Palestine in the ...Hellenistic Period.".
Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how ...did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.
"Feldman is a world-class expert in the difficult but vitally important area of the intersection of Jewish and Gentile cultures in the Greco- Roman world. His encyclopedic knowledge of pagan, Jewish, ...and Christian writings of the period is nothing less than breathtaking. Scholars are deeply indebted to his writings, which are unfailingly accurate and unfailingly fair. Our ... debt to him is only increased by this latest exciting work."--John P. Meier, The Catholic University of America
Presents the most comprehensive study of Philo's De Vita Mosis that exists in any language. Feldman, known for his work on Josephus and ancient Judaism, here paves new ground using rabbinic material ...with philological precision to illuminate important parallels and differences between Philo's writing on Moses and rabbinic literature.
This volume contains essays, previously published in various places, dealing with Josephus, Judaism and Christianity, Latin literature and the Jews, the Romans in Rabbinic literature, and other ...studies in Hellenistic Judaism.
The present volume, consisting of 35 studies of various portions of Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, is an attempt to examine the oldest systematic commentary on the historical books of the Bible that ...has come down to us. It considers how Josephus resolves apparent contradictions, obscurities, and theological and other questions, as well as the historicity of biblical events, which have puzzled classical commentators on the Bible. It attempts to explain cases, notably Ahab, Hezekiah, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, where Josephus seems to change the biblical text radically.
This prospective, multicenter, community‐based and academic‐based, open‐label, investigator‐initiated, U.S. study evaluated efficacy and safety of pegylated interferon (PEG‐IFN) alfa‐2b plus a flat ...or weight‐based dose of ribavirin (RBV) in adults with chronic hepatitis C. Patients (n = 5027) were randomly assigned to receive PEG‐IFN alfa‐2b 1.5 μg/kg/week plus flat‐dose (800 mg/day) or weight‐based (800‐1400 mg/day) RBV for 48 weeks (patients with genotype 1, 4, 5, or 6) and for 24 or 48 weeks (genotype 2/3 patients). Primary end point was sustained virologic response (undetectable <125 IU/mL serum hepatitis C virus RNA at 24‐week follow‐up). Sustained virologic response, but not end‐of‐treatment, rates were significantly higher with weight‐based than with flat‐dose RBV (44.2% versus 40.5%; P = 0.008). Sustained virologic response rates by intention‐to‐treat analysis were 34.0% and 28.9%, respectively, in genotype 1 patients (P = 0.005) and 31.2% and 26.7%, respectively, in genotype 1 patients with high baseline viral load (P = 0.056). In genotype 2/3 patients, rates were not significantly different (61.8% and 59.5%, respectively) regardless of treatment duration. Besides greater hemoglobin reductions with weight‐based RBV, safety profiles were similar across RBV dosing groups, including the 1400‐mg/day group. Conclusion: PEG‐IFN alfa‐2b plus weight‐based RBV is more effective than flat‐dose RBV, particularly in genotype 1 patients, providing equivalent efficacy across all weight groups. RBV 1400 mg/day is appropriate for patients 105 to 125 kg. For genotype 2/3 patients, 24 weeks of treatment with flat‐dose RBV is adequate; no evidence of additional benefit of extending treatment to 48 weeks was demonstrated. (HEPATOLOGY 2007;46:971–981.)
