In third-century CE Palestine, the leading member of the rabbinic movement put together a highly popular wisdom treatise entitled . Though has inspired hundreds of commentaries, this book marks the first comprehensive effort to situate within the socio-political and intellectual context of the Graeco-Roman Near East. Probing comparable Jewish, Greek, Roman and Christian sources, Amram Tropper interprets in light of the local Jewish context as well as the ambient cultural atmosphere of the contemporary Near East.