A Hellenized Abraham in the Greco-Roman Jewish Imagination

Rabbinic Judaism presents Abraham as the founder of what would come to be known as ethical monotheism, a belief system founded on the notion of a single beneficent, morally perfect deity worthy of worship. However, certain prominent Jewish writers living at the turn of the first millennium, under Greek and Roman rule, negotiated between their countercultural belief in monotheism and their simultaneous veneration of Greco-Roman culture and intellectual life. The latter included a commitment to Greco-Roman notions of philosophy, biography, and historiography. The Alexandrian Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo (d. ca. 50 CE) and the Judean historian Josephus (d. ca. 100 CE) describe Abraham’s theological and philosophical contributions to civilization in a manner that reflects their Greco-Roman context.