ABSTRACT
This chapter mainly concentrates on how the Jews and Judaism were looked at in the wider context of the Hellenistic and Roman ancient Near East (we have no real information from the Persian period). Although including Palestine, it especially focuses on the Diaspora. The chapter brings together several disparate topics, but they all relate to two basic questions: How did the Jews see themselves? How were the Jews and Judaism perceived by non-Jews? Two issues of importance for the inside view are those of the land of Israel and attitudes toward it, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, and the question of gender and sexuality which affected how many individual Jews saw their own identity.
