Reflections on the Cultural Encounter between the Jews and the Greeks and Romans in Jewish Coin Iconography of the Hellenistic-Roman Period

Contrary to the written and archaeological sources, the numismatic material from the Persian, Hellenistic, and particularly the Roman Imperial periods in Palestine constitutes an almost uninterrupted material source from which detailed knowledge can be drawn concerning the political, cultural and—by extension—even social processes. In this article examples reflecting the results of the cultural encounter between the Jewish and the Greco-Roman world are discussed, which are well illustrated by the differences in the iconography of the Jewish coinages of the first century BCE and first century CE respectively.