A Companion to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Book

This book describes how Jewish people and Greek people interacted with one another during the second temple period, especially from 200 BC to 200 AD. Collins does this primarily through looking at apocryphal Jewish writings from this period, but also by looking at historical and social elements.

Gentiles, to some extent, took on Jewish customs during this period--many began to take off one of the days of the week. Some went to synagogue. Many were impressed by Judaism as a kind of philosophic religion or by the fact that it was monotheistic. But the focus isn't as much on those who took on Jewish customs as on the ways that Jews reacted to Gentiles.

In that respect, Jews wrote with various strategies to show that they were in fact every bit as intelligent their Greek conquerors. One strategy included playing up the philosophical angle of the religion. Another strategy included claiming that Greek ideas actually originated with the Jews. With many diaspora Jews, the law, while important, was not the overwhelming concern that we think of it being in rabbinical Judaism. Greeks might have as much affinity and promise of a good life as a Jew if they generally stuck to moral laws of God--dietary laws, circumcision, these things didn't matter so much in much of the diaspora literature.

Collins provides some great summaries and analysis of Alexandrian thought and history, more than I can sum up here, as he does of various specific texts, most of which I have never read.