""Oil and Water"" is set nearly a century after the building of Jerusalem's Second Temple. Alexander the Great, the Greek conqueror, is dead and his empire is split; its Middle Eastern division contested by the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Syrian Seleucids. Tens of thousands of Jews, taken to Egypt as slaves some decades before, have only recently been freed. Some of these Jews, though deeply changed by their difficult experiences, sought to return to a homeland many of them had never seen...a homeland which might not even want them back. ""Oil and Water,"" an historical novel, explores ancient...