This vol­ume gath­ers six­teen schol­ar­ly essays writ­ten by lead­ing researchers in the field of Sec­ond Tem­ple Judaism. They seek to under­stand the top­ics of monar­chy and pow­er in the Hel­lenis­tic peri­od by focus­ing atten­tion on bib­li­cal and Jew­ish evi­dence, and read­ing that evi­dence in new ways. The essays con­sid­er the kings, queens, and pow­er fig­ures of the Hel­lenis­tic dynas­ties, as well as ancient Israelite kings, the Baby­lon­ian and Per­sian rulers of the Bible, Parthi­ans, and Romans. One of the spe­cial fea­tures of this vol­ume is its explo­ration of the devel­op­ment and per­spec­tives of the Greek Bible (Sep­tu­agint) and of oth­er Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture of the peri­od, such as the Let­ter of Aris­teas (which pur­ports to record how the Sep­tu­agint came to be writ­ten under the reign of Ptole­my Philadel­phus), and how this lit­er­a­ture reflects, and reflects upon, the con­text of Hel­lenis­tic polit­i­cal thought and prac­tice. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, indexes.