Erich S. Gruen, a leading Greco-Roman historian, here presents the results of several years of research in the field of Jewish history. Positioning himself as the gadfly in his adopted field, he describes certain consensus positions of scholars in Jewish studies and proceeds seriatim to question or deconstruct them. This makes for interesting reading, and in some cases a significant challenge to the standard views of textbooks on the subject. Only some of his challenges can be mentioned here.