Review of The Oxford handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: The Oxford handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.

The Oxford handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East Rubina Raja, The Oxford handbook of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Oxford handbooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. Pp. 944. ISBN 9780190858155.

Review by
Céline Debourse, Harvard University. cdebourse@fas.harvard.edu

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

This impressive collection of essays brings together a wide range of scholarship dealing with the Near East under Hellenistic and Roman rule, from Alexander’s death in 323 BCE into the eighth century CE. Its overarching aim, in the editor’s words, is to apply “both local as well as global lenses” to bring “new perspectives on this central region” (abstract). In fifty chapters covering 940 pages, Rubina Raja and her contributors do indeed deliver a breath-taking overview of topics in sectors as diverse as geography, climate, economy, religion, politics, and culture.

[...]

Apparently the volume does not include Egypt and it oddly neglects Mesopotamia. But in the TOC I see many articles of interest to PaleoJudaica: on Judea and the Galilee (several), Edessa, Europos-Dura (sic), Palmyra, Phoenicia, Petra, and more.

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