Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography

In third-century CE Palestine, the leading member of the rabbinic movement put together a highly popular wisdom treatise entitled Tractate Avot. Though Avot has inspired hundreds of commentaries, this book marks the first comprehensive effort to situate Avot within the socio-political and intellectual context of the Graeco-Roman Near East. Probing comparable Jewish, Greek, Roman and Christian sources, Amram Tropper interprets Avot in light of the local Jewish context as well as the ambient cultural atmosphere of the contemporary Near East.