The aim of this volume is to give access to sources which illustrate Graeco-Roman views of Judaism and Christianity from 200 BC to AD 200. Almost all the authors quoted are pagan, a word used here and throughout the book as a convenient term to cover any religion other than Judaism and Christianity, without implying any value-judgement. The translations are my own, except for translation from the Arabic of Galen and the biblical passages which are from the New English Bible. Sometimes passages survive only in quotation by a Jewish author such as Josephus or by a later Christian writer. Occasionally Christian writers, e.g. Prudentius, have been cited to give evidence for practices which were current earlier, but for which we have no contemporary literary attestation.

Pagan references illustrating attitudes towards Judaism are of two kinds, the historical and the incidental. Tacitus prefaces his account of the siege of Jerusalem with a sketch of the origins, customs, geography and history of the Jews. This has been quoted in full. Strabo, the historian and geographer, devotes a section to the Jews and so, briefly, does Dio Cassius. These are valuable, not only for the information which they contain but also for the light they throw on the writer's view of the Jews in the context of his own period.

Rather different are historians whose works only survive in quotation. Here, information about the author who quotes them and his date and background is essential.