inquisitive historical description. It is true that the older idea about a “normative” Palestinian Judaism (read “Rabbinic”) in distinction from a Hellenistic Judaism in the diaspora (read “unorthodox”) is now discredited, mainly because the very strong influence of Hellenistic thought and practice has been documented for Palestine as well as for the diaspora. But the resulting conception of a pervasive Hellenistic cast to all Judaisms of the period is not necessarily an advance. One monolithic notion