Remember Amalek!

Because of my own work with the traditions of 'zealotism' in ancient Israel and up to 1. century CE, I have notified a new book by Louis H. Feldman. I have not seen the book yet, as it is published quite recently. But I will have to look into it.Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!” Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus. Published by Hebrew Union College Press/Wayne State University Press, 2004. $34.95s cloth. 250 pages.
The Publishers own announcement runs thus: The divine commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites—men, women, children, even animals who have no free will—is what in contemporary terms has been called no less than genocide. Louis Feldman helps us to understand how three ancient Jewish commentators on the Bible—Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus—wrestled with the issues involved in this divine command, especially its provisions that an entire people must be punished for all time for the misdeeds of their ancestors.
Feldman broadens the issue by examining several biblical parallels both where God commands the destruction of whole groups of people, and where there was no specific divine commandment. Finally, he considers the issue of the justification of God's reward to Phineas for his zealotry in bypassing the law when he put to death a Jew and a non-Jew for their immorality. All of these biblical passages raise difficult questions, to which, Feldman demonstrates, there are no simple answers.