Maria-Zoe Petropoulou's Animal sacrifice is an excellent idea for a book and surely makes a more than passable doctoral dissertation. It appears, however, that Oxford University Press has chosen to publish the dissertation ‘as is’, perhaps directly from the author's original discs with no editing process of any moment having taken place, including the leaving in of such infelicities as underlining for emphasis which lends the book a wholly unprofessional appearance (despite an outrageous price). These infelicities extend to content as well, such as an introduction on theories of sacrifice incorporating many pages of a potted (and much told) history of scholarship in this field from Tyler to now. This exercise, appropriate in a dissertation as a display of competence, has no place in a work of mature scholarship for publication and does absolutely no work whatever for the argument of this monograph. Worse, while all this useless work is being done, the author never quite gets around to introducing her own thesis and it is only well into the first chapter, some forty pages later, that one is able to descry the argument (not entirely convincing) for the ongoing vitality of Greek sacrifice (virtually unchanged) throughout the period. This argument would be more convincing had the author done that which she never does in the book, namely to present the evidence on which the competing theories are based and criticise it. Given this lack, the scattered crumbs of evidence for sacrifice during this period and the non-archaising nature of Pausanias's writing are less than compelling. This problem continues into her discussion of ‘Jewish’ sacrifice in the period as well. Only one illustration of her curious method of arguing can be presented in this short compass. At the beginning of her chapter on ‘Jewish animal sacrifice’ (pp. 127ff.) she claims that one need not argue for the continuing presence of sacrifices in the Jewish cult (as one had to for the Greeks) because (a) ‘any view about decline of Jewish sacrifices would only concern private offerings’; (b) ‘studies in favour of an alleged decline are mainly based on assumptions, and have no concrete evidence referring to the decline of Jewish sacrificial cult’; (c) ‘scholarship on Judaism has seen studies refuting the view of a declining Jewish sacrificial cult in the Second Temple Period’; and (d) ‘there is no sort of positive evidence from our period in favour of the one or the other thesis, namely the decline or flourishing of the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem’. As to (a), the claim is correct but irrelevant since it is precisely the private sacrifices that are at issue. As to (b), she never presents the arguments of the other scholars. As to (c), she only offers one such study, and then herself in a footnote remarks her own ‘doubts’ about its argument and conclusion. As to (d), it ought to lead to a non liquet rather than a thesis based on the continuation of such practices. I will just add that in the matter of ‘Judaism’, the scholarship is very out of date. A statement to the effect that ‘A basic characteristic of mainstream Judaism is that we cannot easily talk about its “Hellenization” or “Romanization”. These terms, when applied to religion in Palestine, rather concern the religion of the coastal cities which had been in contact with Greeks from the Hellenistic period, or the various inland cults other than that of mainstream Judaism’ (p. 123) belongs in some other century. Her misunderstandings of the basic Jewish texts with which she deals are risible. Thus she writes that ‘The rabbis are fully aware of the fact that the Temple has been destroyed, and they do not hesitate to say so, even if they confuse things somewhat (here the events of ad 70 with those of ad 135): “On the ninth of Av the decree was made against our forefathers that they should not enter the land, the first Temple and the second were destroyed, Betar was taken, and the city was ploughed up”.’ Petropolou seems to be labouring under the assumption that the text refers to the same 9th of Av and that, therefore, events of 70 and of 135 are confused, when, obviously, the Mishna is claiming that these events all took place on the 9th of Av but in different years, of course (else how could the first and second temples have been destroyed on the same day?).

My hard words here are not directed so much at the author of the book, as she will undoubtedly grow and develop as a scholar, but at her advisors and editors who did not provide the appropriate counsel to her for readying a manuscript for professional publication.