This collection of essays contains fifteen chapters on a range of topics that reflect the depth and breadth of B.'s scholarly career. All the chapters have previously been published elsewhere (as far back as 1999), sometimes in venues that are difficult to access. The only exception is the fifteenth and final chapter (‘Testa incognita: The History of the Pseudo-Josephus Bust in Copenhagen’), which has since been published in a collection of essays dedicated to Daniel Schwartz (R. Brody et al. [edd], A Vision of the Days [2024]). Chapters 2 (‘Moses and the Charlatans: On the Charge of γόης καὶ ἀπατεών in Contra Apionem 2.145, 161’), 6 (‘Show and Tell: Myth Tourism, and Jewish Hellenism’), 12 (‘A Leap into the Void: The Philo-Lexicon and Jewish-German Hellenism’) and 14 (‘Polytheism and Monotheism in Antiquity: On Jan Assmann's Critique of Monotheism’) have been translated into English from their German originals by Carson Bay for this occasion. The increased accessibility of B.'s work is a major reason why this collection of essays represents a valuable contribution to scholarship.

In the book's acknowledgements B. states that the book demonstrates that the study of Jewish literature and culture in the Hellenistic and Roman periods involves ‘much more than simply the reflection of a minority finding its place in the large context of the ancient Mediterranean’, although ‘it is that, too’ (p. xi). Indeed, both the collection as a whole and the individual essays invite readers to reflect critically on a range of topics related to ancient Judaism, but with a wider resonance in ancient world studies as a subject and as a discipline. What I mean by the latter (‘as a discipline’) is that some of B.'s essays, particularly in the final section on ‘Antisemitism and Reception’, resonate with recent critiques of, for instance, Classics as a discipline and the move towards a more inclusive Classics. A publication on a subject that is traditionally under-represented in Classics is, to some extent, a product of the move towards a more inclusive discipline of Classics. But inclusive Classics also means asking critical questions about the origins of these disciplines.

B. skilfully accomplishes this, for instance, in Chapter 11 on antisemitism, where he examines the modern study of ancient antisemitism, starting with the ‘great German historian Theodor Mommsen’ (p. 223), whose sweeping statements shaped generations of research across the disciplines of Classics, ancient history and early Jewish studies. B.'s work raises the crucial issue of how the study of ancient antisemitism is not only contemporary with the beginnings of modern antisemitism in the late nineteenth century; it is also deeply conditioned by that social backdrop, including German antisemitic propaganda before and during World War II, the deeply disturbing Shoah that followed, and the foundation of the modern nation-state of Israel. In this context B., for example, points to the problematic roots of the term ‘Antisemitismus’, which was originally a term coined by the ‘Antisemiten-Liga’ in 1979. This league aimed to reduce Jewish influence throughout the German Empire, and so the term comes from Germans who identified themselves as ‘anti-Semites’ (p. 227). Fundamental contributions such as these contain an open invitation to rethink the conceptual arsenal that is all too often taken for granted, despite the often problematic roots and connotations of certain terms and concepts.

B.'s deep knowledge of and admirable engagement with the history of scholarship is evident throughout the volume. The chapter on the Pseudo-Josephus bust, identified by Robert Eisler in 1930 as a representation of Josephus, is a case in point. B. shows how the ideas of Eisler, himself an Austrian Jew converted to Catholicism, were deeply rooted in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ethnological literature, which assumed Jewish racial inferiority based on their physical appearance (pp. 327–9). Eisler boldly claimed (without any evidence) that the bust was commissioned by Josephus between 76 and 80 ce, after he successfully published the Jewish War. Eisler's hypothesis, ‘unscientific and based on racist stereotypes’ (p. 333), was problematic in many respects, but it was nevertheless widely adopted among scholars because of its convenience, especially because the bust is a ‘conventional placeholder for a vacuum which seems difficult to accept’ (p. 335). Yet such conventional placeholders – the orientalising portrait of Josephus that faces many (though not the original) editions of William Whiston's very popular (because widely distributed in print and in more recent decades freely available online) but desperately out-of-date Josephus translation is another example – may be extremely problematic and deeply racist in their origins, as B. aptly reminds us.

The book's title, Ancient Jewish Diaspora. Essays on Hellenism, can in some ways be read as a conventional placeholder for B.'s diverse and case-study-based contributions to scholarship. But the thoughts underlying B.'s choice become evident in the book's introduction, in which B. introduces readers to the complexities underlying the study of ‘Jewish Hellenism’ (p. 4) via yet another case study: the story of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem as narrated by the historian Josephus (AJ 11.329–32). ‘[A]ll the words in this book's title’, B. explains, ‘have been subject to much discussion in recent scholarship’ (p. 4). So, when we think of the study of ‘ancient’ Judaism, we might ask ourselves about possible alternatives such as ‘early’ Judaism. B. explains his preference for ‘ancient’ because it avoids parallelism with early Christianity, which is not ‘free of an agenda’ (p. 5). Likewise, B. explains his use of ‘Hellenism’ as informed by A. Chaniotis's use of the idea, which revolves around globalisation (multiculturalism), the centrality of large cities, the appearance of new religions and forms of governance (pp. 6–7). B.'s discussion here is, however, quite brief. I would therefore refer readers to other publications by B. to grasp better the complexities involved in studying ‘Jewish Hellenism’ (especially R. Bloch and S. Pearce [edd.], ‘What is Hellenistic Judaism’, JSJ special issue in 53.4–5 [2022]).

While critical engagement with Hellenism is not difficult to come by in the study of Judaism, the same cannot be said for the ‘commonly used umbrella’ of diaspora (p. 6). B.'s use of the term draws on pioneering work in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, scholars such as J. Barclay and E. Gruen have done much to challenge the prototypical notion of diaspora-as-exile, and Gruen in particular has suggested that ‘diaspora’ may contain misleading and anachronistic assumptions, such as perpetuating a Land of Israel/Diaspora dichotomy. For one thing, the homeland to which B. refers was radically diverse and centred around numerous competing poleis, each with its unique demographic composition of majority and minority populations. The homeland, whatever its boundaries, could be a hostile place (see especially S. Mason, ‘Eretz-Israel and Diaspora: Variations on the Category Blues’, in: L. Capponi [ed.], Tra politica e religione: i Giudei nel mondo greco-romano. Studi in onore di Lucio Troiani [2019], pp. 225–46). B.'s essays imply some of this (e.g. Chapters 4–5), but B. fails to explain how he proposes to counter such assumptions, nor does he clarify the heuristic value of retaining this umbrella term. Engagement with the lively discussion in diaspora studies, which emerged as a field in the early 1990s (W. Safran, J. Clifford, R. Cohen, R. Brubaker, I. Demir etc.), or with recent work on migration in the ancient world (e.g. E. Isayev, L. Tacoma) would have gone a long way towards remedying this lack of conceptual clarity.

Be that as it may, each of the individual essays in the volume contains valuable insights into ancient Jewish culture and its reception, including the writings of Philo, Josephus and Tacitus, but also the interplay between literary and material culture. They provide a convenient entry point into a rich scholarly journey, on which B. sometimes looks ‘back with a smile’, disagreeing with an earlier version of himself (p. ix). Yet B.'s scholarly journey is far from over, and I look forward to seeing what this eminent scholar has to offer the field in the decades to come.