Introduction : The Voice of Jacob.

The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.Genesis 27:22Jewish literature of the Hellenistic and Roman periods has attracted different groups of scholars for different reasons. In modern times, it was Western Christian scholars—or Western scholars interested in the beginnings of Christianity—who first took up the challenge. They were fascinated by the opportunity to reconstruct the context and background of the New Testament world and benefited from the accessibility of manuscript sources preserved in Greek, Latin, and the vernacular languages of the West. Eastern Christian scholars, in turn, often belonged to emergent national schools and were thrilled that their heritages, typically unknown to Western scholars, could also contribute to the study of an ancient and universal legacy....