Why Did Paul Go West?

Doron Mendels is Max and Sophie Mydans Professor in the Humanities at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His recent publications include: Identity, Religion and Historiography and The Media Revolution of Early Christianity.

• 1. Why Did Paul Go West?2. How Was Antiquity Treated in Societies with a Hellenistic Heritage? And Why Did the Rabbis Avoid Writing History?3. Can We Read a Historical Text as a Musical Score? A New Approach to Polyphony and Simultaneity in 1 Maccabees4. The Conceptual Linearity of Historical Narrative and Its Distortion. A Preliminary Note5. Memory and Memories. The Attitude of 1 and 2 Maccabees toward Hellenization and Hellenism6. Phases of Inscribed Memory Concerning the Land of Israel in Palestinian Judaism of the Second Century BCE. The Case of 1 Maccabees7. Etiquette I: Was the Rejection of Gifts One of the Reasons for the Outbreak of the Maccabean Revolt? A Preliminary Note on the Role of Gifting in the Book of 1 Maccabees8. Etiquette II: Honor and Humiliation as a Factor in Hasmonean Politics According to the Narrator of 1 Maccabees9. Political Theology I: Deus Duplex to Deus Silens. The State of Exception in the Political Theology of 1 Maccabees10. Political Theology II: 1 Maccabees and Liberation from a Competing King-God and the Phenomenon of Rifts Inherent in Ancient IsraelSelected Bibliography

Doron Mendels is one of our finest historians of Judaism in the Hellenistic age. In the series of essays that make up this splendid volume, he offers numerous fresh insights into early Jewish historiography. The essays are notable for their combination of theoretical sophistication and careful textual analysis. The series of studies on the political theology and rhetorical strategies of 1 Maccabees are especially welcome and whet one's appetite for Mendels' forthcoming commentary on this vitally important book.