Let us begin with a deceptively simple, terminological question: what do we mean by ‘apologetics’? A survey of literature on the topic of ‘Jewish apologetics’ would reveal wide discrepancies in the use of this term, whose capacity to create confusion is correspondingly large. Moreover, careful attention to these varied uses would indicate that within such diversity there lurk different perceptions of the character and conditions of Jewish dialogue with the non-Jewish world. To discuss ‘Jewish apologetics’ in the Graeco-Roman world is to reveal how we perceive the problems and ambitions of Jews in antiquity.