'The essays in this volume richly document the productive ambivalence of Milton's thinking about the Jews. On the one hand the suffering Jew who endures the Babylonian captivity and remains faithful to his God is a model for God's Englishman. On the other, the literalist, surface-loving Jew - the outer Jew - exemplifies the idolatrous materialism that links him with the Turk and with Asian cybarites. Milton's complex deployment of these two figures of the Jew, the contributors show, is a key to the structure of his thinking about almost every issue that arises in both the poetry and the prose. All this and the incidental pleasure of learning that Sin is Jewish. Who knew.' Stanley Fish