A Companion to Josephus E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1275

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A Companion to Josephus presents a collection of readings from international scholars that explore the works of the first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

• Represents the first single-volume collection of readings to focus on Josephus
• Covers a wide range of disciplinary approaches to the subject, including reception history
• Features contributions from 29 eminent scholars in the field from four continents
• Reveals important insights into the Jewish and Roman worlds at the moment when Christianity was gaining ground as a movement

Named Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 by Choice Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association

Leseprobe

BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD

This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises approximately twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

Ancient History

Published

A Companion to the Roman ArmyEdited by Paul Erdkamp

A Companion to the Roman RepublicEdited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx

A Companion to the Roman EmpireEdited by David S. Potter

A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl

A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell

A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau

A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees

A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin

A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James

A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd

A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington

A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos

A Companion to AugustineEdited by Mark Vessey

A Companion to Marcus AureliusEdited by Marcel van Ackeren

A Companion to Ancient Greek GovernmentEdited by Hans Beck

A Companion to the Neronian AgeEdited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter

A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman RepublicEdited by Dean Hammer

A Companion to LivyEdited by Bernard Mineo

A Companion to Ancient ThraceEdited by Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger

Literature and Culture

Published

A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola

A Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner

A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden

A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf

A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall

A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington

A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley

A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory

A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot

A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox

A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker

A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss

A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam

A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis

A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldsEdited by Beryl Rawson

A Companion to Greek MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone

A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson

A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Emma Pagán

A Companion to Women in the Ancient WorldEdited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon

A Companion to SophoclesEdited by Kirk Ormand

A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel Potts

A Companion to Roman Love ElegyEdited by Barbara K. Gold

A Companion to Greek ArtEdited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos

A Companion to Persius and JuvenalEdited by Susanna Braund and Josiah Osgood

A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman RepublicEdited by Jane DeRose Evans

A Companion to TerenceEdited by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill

A Companion to Roman ArchitectureEdited by Roger B. Ulrich and Caroline K. Quenemoen

A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman AntiquityEdited by Paul Christesen and Donald G. Kyle

A Companion to PlutarchEdited by Mark Beck

A Companion to Greek and Roman SexualitiesEdited by Thomas K. Hubbard

A Companion to the Ancient NovelEdited by Edmund P. Cueva and Shannon N. Byrne

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient MediterraneanEdited by Jeremy McInerney

A Companion to Ancient Egyptian ArtEdited by Melinda Hartwig

A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient WorldEdited by Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Food in the Ancient WorldEdited by John Wilkins and Robin Nadeau

A Companion to Ancient EducationEdited by W. Martin Bloomer

A Companion to Ancient AestheticsEdited by Pierre Destrée and Penelope Murray

A Companion to Roman ArtEdited by Barbara Borg

A Companion to Greek LiteratureEdited by Martin Hose and David Schenker

A Companion to JosephusEdited by Honora Howell Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers

A COMPANION TO JOSEPHUS

Edited by

Honora Howell Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers

This edition first published 2016© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to Josephus / edited by Honora Howell Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers.  pages cm. – (Blackwell companions to the ancient world) Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4443-3533-0 (hardback)1. Josephus, Flavius. 2. Judaism–History–Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.-210 A.D. I. Chapman, Honora Howell, editor. II. Rodgers, Zuleika, editor. DS115.9.J6C66 2016 933′.05–dc23

     2015025352

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Detail of Josephus from CBL W 167, f.1r © The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

Notes on Contributors

Eran Almagor is the author of papers and articles on Strabo, Plutarch’s Lives, Greeks and barbarians, Achaemenid Persia, Ctesias and the reception of antiquity in modern popular culture. He is the co-editor of Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches (2013).

John Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University. He is the author of the latest English translation and commentary on Josephus’s Against Apion (Brill Josephus Project) (2007); he has written on Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora (1996) and has published a number of essays and articles on Josephus.

Albert I. Baumgarten is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. He is the author of The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (1997) as well as of numerous articles on ancient Jewish sectarianism. His most recent book is Elias Bickerman as a Historian of the Jews: A Twentieth Century Tale (2010).

Helen K. Bond is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins at Edinburgh University. She is the author of The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed (2012), Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus? (2004), and Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (1998).

Silvia Castelli, MA in Classics (1997) and PhD in Jewish Studies (2001), has been Assistant Professor of Ancient History at the University of Trento (2005–2009), and is currently a PhD researcher in New Testament Studies (18th-century Textual Criticism) at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She is author of an Italian translation and commentary of Book 3 of Josephus’s Judean Antiquities (2002), as well as of several articles on Josephus’s work and its reception.

Honora Howell Chapman, PhD Stanford, is Professor of Classics and Humanities at California State University, Fresno, USA. She is a contributing author to the Brill Josephus Project for Books 2 and 5 of Judean War and served as co-chair of the Josephus Seminar/Group of the Society of Biblical Literature for nine years.

Saskia Dönitz is a Research Assistant at the Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Seminar für Judaistik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.

Erich S. Gruen is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics. Among his books are Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (1998), Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans (2002), and Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (2012).

Gohei Hata is Professor Emeritus at Tama Art University in Tokyo. His ninety publications include the translation into Japanese of the works of Josephus, Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History and Life of Constantine, Philo’s Against Flaccus and Embassy to Gaius, and Philostratus’s Apollonius of Tyana. He is now preparing a Japanese translation of the Septuagint. Recently a Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall and of Wolfson College, Cambridge, he is currently a Visiting Fellow at Yale University.

Tal Ilan is Professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie University in Berlin. In addition to her work on the general history of Late Antiquity, her research focuses on gender issues in rabbinic literature and the Hebrew Bible, and in the field of Jewish onomastics. She is the author of Integrating Jewish Women into Second Temple History (1999) and Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women (2006).

Sabrina Inowlocki is the author of Eusebius and the Jewish Authors (2006), Reconsidering Eusebius (2011), and various articles on ancient Jewish and Christian literature. She is currently an independent researcher.

David A. Kaden received his PhD from the University of Toronto and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College. His PhD on “Law and Power: Matthew, Paul, and the Anthropology of Law” will appear in the WUNT II series published by Mohr Siebeck.

Richard Kalmin is Theodore R. Racoosin Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on the interpretation of rabbinic stories, ancient Jewish history, and the structure and development of rabbinic literature. Among his books are Jewish Babylonia Between Persia and Roman Palestine (2006) and he is currently working on a book for the University of California Press entitled Migrating Tales: Judaism, Christianity, and Stories in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity.

Karen M. Kletter is Associate Professor of History at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. The main focus of her present work is medieval historiography and the intellectual context of Jewish-Christian relations.

Kate Leeming (Adcock) studied Classics and then researched medieval translations from Greek to Arabic at Oxford University. She co-edited the Slavonic Version of Josephus’s Jewish War with Henry Leeming (Brill 2003). Her paper on Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk’s reading of Josephus is available on the AHRC Josephus project website. She is an organist, music teacher, and Assistant Editor of ARA, the Bulletin of the Association for Roman Archaeology.

Tommaso Leoni teaches Greek and Roman history at York University, Toronto. He has published articles on Josephus in journals such as Ostraka, the Journal of Jewish Studies, Athenaeum, La Parola del Passato, Materia giudaica, Latomus, and the Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period. He is currently working on two different monographs, both devoted to the second Flavian emperor: one on Titus’s use of the ‘beneficial ideology,’ the other on the lost triumphal arch dedicated in 81 C.E. commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem (Urbem Hierusolymam delevit: The Arch of Titus in the Circus Maximus in Antiquity and the Middle Ages).

David B. Levenson is University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Religion Department at Florida State University, USA. His research focuses on early Jewish-Christian relations, the Emperor Julian, and the text of Josephus. He is currently engaged in preparing a commentary and translation for on Book 6 of the Jewish War with Thomas R. Martin for the Brill Josephus Project.

Thomas R. Martin is Jeremiah W. O’Connor Jr. Professor in Classics at Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, USA. His research focuses on Greek and Roman history, including numismatics. With David B. Levenson he is preparing a commentary on and translation of Book 6 of the Jewish War for the Brill Josephus Project.

Steve Mason, former Canada Research Chair in Greco-Roman Cultural Interaction at Toronto’s York University, has recently moved to Groningen as Distinguished Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Cultures. Mason’s books include Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (1991), Josephus and the New Testament (2003), and Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories (2009). His most recent monograph, A History of the Jewish War, 66–74, is in production with Cambridge University Press. He edits the multi-volume series, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary (Brill Josephus Project), to which he has contributed the volumes Life of Josephus and Judean War 2.

James S. McLaren is Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Power and Politics in Palestine (1991) and Turbulent Times? (1996), the editor of two books and has written numerous articles and book chapters on aspects of first-century Jewish and early Christian history. He is preparing the translation and commentary for Book 7 of the Judean War in the Brill Josephus Project.

David Nakman (Nachman) is the head of Ein Prat Academy for Leadership at Kfar Adumim, Israel, and teaches the history of Second Temple and Talmudic period at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem.

Maren R. Niehoff is Max Cooper Chair in Jewish Thought, Head of AMIRIM the interdisciplinary honors program in the Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She has published extensively on Philo, Hellenistic Judaism, and on exegetical contacts between Jews, Greeks and early Christians. Among her publications are: Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship (2011), Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture (2001), and The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (1992).

Zuleika Rodgers, is Lecturer in Jewish Studies and Director of the Herzog Centre at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. She was President of the British Association for Jewish Studies (2013–2014).

Jonathan P. Roth is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1991. A specialist in Roman military history and first-century Judaism, he is Professor of Ancient History at San Jose State University, earning its Outstanding Professor award in 2005. Roth is the author of two books, The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (1998) and Roman Warfare (2009) and numerous articles, chapter and reviews, as well as a 48-part video series on “War and World History” for the Teaching Company. He serves as the director of SJSU’s Burdick Military History Project and Coordinator of the Jewish Studies Program.

Daniel R. Schwartz is the Herbst Family Professor of Judaic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His work focuses on ancient Jewish history and historiography. Recently he has published Reading the First Century: On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century (2013) and Judeans and Jews: Four Faces of Dichotomy in Ancient Jewish History (2014). He is preparing Antiquities 18–20, translation and commentary, for the Brill Josephus Project.

Paul Spilsbury is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Ambrose University College, Calgary, Canada. He is the author of The Image of the Jew (1998), The Throne, the Lamb, and the Dragon(2002), and co-author with Christopher Begg of Judean Antiquities Books 8–10: Translation and Commentary (2005) (Brill Josephus Project).

Jan Willem van Henten is Professor of Religion, in particular, Ancient Judaism and Ancient Christianity, and Director of the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is also extra-ordinary Professor of Old and New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He is the author of Martyrdom and Noble Death (2002; with Friedrich Avemarie) and co-editor of Powers: Religion as a Social and Spiritual Force (2010; with Meerten ter Borg), and Coping with Violence in the New Testament (2012; with Pieter de Villiers). His Brill commentary on Antiquities 15, with a new translation, was published in 2014.

Zeev Weiss is the Eleazar L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Trained in Classical Archaeology, he specializes in Roman and Late Antique art and architecture in the provinces of Syria-Palestine. He is the Director of the Sepphoris excavations on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His interests lie in various aspects of town-planning, architectural design, and mosaic art, as well as the evaluation of archaeological finds in light of the socio-cultural behavior of Jewish society and its dialogue with Greco-Roman culture and Christian cultures.

Alice Whealey has a BA in history from Stanford University, CA, and a PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. In addition to her book, Josephus on Jesus (2003) and other writings about the Testimonium Flavianum, she has published articles on late antique Greek Christian texts, and on early Eastern Christian responses to Muslim conquest and rule of the former Roman Near East.

Abbreviations

4QpNah

Cave 4, Qumran,

pesher

(commentary), Book of Nahum

Abr.

Philo,

Abraham

Abst

.

Porphyry,

On Abstinence

Acts

Acts of the Apostles

Aet

.

Philo,

On the Eternity [of the World]

Agr

.

Tacitus,

Agricola

Ann

.

Tacitus,

Annals

Ant.

Josephus,

Judean Antiquities

Ant. rom

.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus,

Roman Antiquities

Apol

.

Lucian,

Apology [for the Dependent Scholar]

Att

.

Cicero,

Letters to Atticus

Aug.,

De civ. D

.

Augustine,

City of God

b. Baba Batra

Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra (“The Last Gate”)

b. Sanhedrin

Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin (“Assembly”)

b. Ta‘anit

Babylonian Talmud, Ta‘anit (“Tractate”)

b. Yoma

Babylonian Talmud, Yoma (“Day”)

Bibl.

Photius,

Bibliotheca

(

Library

)

BJP

Brill Josephus Project

Brut

.

Cicero,

Brutus

Cassius Dio

Cassius Dio,

Roman History

Cat

.

Sallust,

War with Catiline

C. Cels

.

Origen,

Against Celsus

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Critical Editions of Christian Texts in Latin)

Cic.,

Tusc. Disp

.

Cicero,

Tusculan Disputations

Cod.

Codex

Contr

.

Seneca the Elder,

Controversiae

(

Rhetorical Forensic Exercises

)

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Works of Church Fathers in Latin)

De excidio

Pseudo-Hegesippus,

De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae

De fort. Rom.

Plutarch,

On the Fortune of the Romans

De orat

.

Cicero,

On the Orator

De ord. libr

.

Galen,

On the Order of My Own Books

Dem. evan

.

Eusebius,

Demonstration of the Gospel

De vir. ill.

On Illustrious Men

(Plutarch or Jerome)

Dial.

Tacitus,

Dialogue on Oratory

Dio Chrys.

Or

./

Orr

.

Dio Chrysostom,

Oration/Orations

Diog. Laert.

Diogenes Laertius,

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Dom

.

Suetonius,

Domitian

El.

Euripides,

Electra

Ep

.

Martial,

Epigrams

Ep

.

Pliny,

Epistles

Ep. ad Tryph.

Quintilian,

Epistle to Trypho

Epist

.

Jerome,

Epistles

Epit.

Justin,

Epitome

Fam

.

Cicero,

Letters to Friends

FGrH

Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker

(collected by Felix Jacoby)

Flac

.

Philo,

Against Flaccus

Fr. in Lam.

Origen,

Fragments of Commentary on Lamentations

fragm.

fragment

Her

.

Euripides,

Herakles

Heracl

.

Euripides,

Herakles’ Children

Hist

.

Histories

(Herodotus or Tacitus)

Hist. conscr

.

Lucian,

How to Write History

Hist. eccl.

Eusebius,

History of the Church

Hyp

.

Philo,

Hypothetica

In Ctes.

Aeschines,

Against Ctesiphon

In Lam.

Origen,

Commentary on Lamentations

Inst

.

Quintilian,

Institutes of Oratory

Iul

.

Suetonius,

Julius Caesar

Lat.

Latin (manuscript)

LCL

Loeb Classical Library

Legat

.

Philo,

Embassy (to Gaius)

Lev

Leviticus

LXX

Septuagint (Greek translation of Hebrew Scriptures)

Mem.

Xenophon,

Memorabilia

(

Memoirs

)

Mil

.

Vegetius

, Concerning Military Matters

Mor

. [

Praec

.]

Plutarch,

Moral Essays

(

Precepts [of Statecraft]

)

Mos.

Philo,

Moses

NH

Pliny the Elder,

Natural History

NT

New Testament

Oed. Rex

Sophocles,

Oedipus the King

Opif

.

Philo,

On the Creation [of the World]

Or.

Dio Chrysostom,

Orations

Orr

.

Orations

Paneg

.

Pliny,

Panegyric

Part. or

.

Cicero,

On Oratorical Partitions

PG

Patrilogia Graeca (Writings of the Church Fathers in Greek)

Phoen.

Euripides,

Phoenician Women

PL

Patrilogia Latina (Writings of the Church Fathers in Latin)

Plut.

Plutarch

Plut.,

Cat. M.

Plutarch,

Cato the Elder

Plut.,

Dem

.

Plutarch,

Demosthenes

Poet.

Aristotle,

Poetics

praef.

preface

Praep. evan

.

Eusebius’s

Praeparatio evangelica

Pro Rosc

.

Cicero,

For Sextus Roscius of Ameria

Prob.

Philo,

[Every] Good Man [is Free]

r

recto (front side of a manuscript)

Rhet. praec

.

Lucian,

A Professor of Public Speaking

Rom. or.

Aelius Aristides,

Roman Oration

Sat

.

Juvenal,

Satires

Silv

.

Statius,

Silvae

Spec. Laws

Philo, Special Laws

Suas

.

Seneca the Elder,

Suasoriae

(

Rhetorical Persuasive Exercises

)

Tit

.

Suetonius,

Titus

Troi

.

Euripides,

Trojan Women

v

verso (back side of a manuscript)

Vat.

Vatican

Verr

.

Cicero,

Against Verres

Vesp

.

Suetonius,

Vespasian

Vir. ill

.

Jerome,

On Illustrious Men

Virtues

Philo,

On the Virtues

VS

Philostratus,

Lives of the Sophists

Werd

manuscript: Berlin lat. 226

y. Yoma

Palestinian Talmud, Yoma (“Day”)

Introduction

Honora Howell Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers

It is surprising that this volume is the first introductory companion, or scholarly guide, to the writings of Flavius Josephus. From antiquity to the present day, his works have served as an incomparable source for the world of Judea in the Roman period. What would we know of the Herodian dynasty or of the Jewish War and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 C.E. without Josephus’s writings? How limited would our knowledge be of the Judean social and political landscape in the Roman period without the details he provides on the priesthood, the “sects,” and other movements and individuals? What would historians and archaeologists make of Masada or Gamla? Would we have such a clear view of the topography of the region and of the architectural achievements of Herod the Great?

Josephus’s works provide these important details and more. He is a witness to biblical textual and interpretative traditions, as well as to the development of halacha. Examining the reception of Josephus reveals much about the way in which Christian societies engaged with Jews and Judaism. Later Jewish interest in his writings indicates something of how different generations interacted with their past.

Josephus, writing in Greek and drawing on Greco-Roman intellectual traditions, in the context of Flavian Rome, and as a proud Jewish priest offers an interpretation of his people’s past and a defense of their culture, while providing a unique glimpse into the complexities of identity politics in the worlds he inhabited.

Yet serious critical engagement with Josephus’s works has only emerged since the 1970s. Previously, scholars—of the Bible, Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament and early Christianity, and archaeologists and historians of ancient Judea—used his writings as a source for external realities but gave little consideration to the narratives themselves in terms of audience, aims, and literary form. Critical engagement with Josephus’s narratives or his literary techniques was limited; he was regarded as a simple (and usually careless) compiler of sources whose bias or agenda could be stripped away to reveal an authentic source or facts about the past. Discrete pieces of information could be extracted from the text without any attempt to understand the way in which the author selected or presented his material. In his review of scholarship in 1988, Per Bilde calls this approach the “classical conception of Josephus” (Bilde 1988, 126–141).

Pioneering thematic studies of Josephus started to appear in the 1970s with books by Helgo Lindner (1972), Harold Attridge (1976), and Shaye Cohen (1979). Louis H. Feldman’s groundbreaking thematic and literary studies of Josephus’s biblical interpretation contributed to the new approaches and the development of “Josephan studies.” In the 1980s, the field was advanced by Tessa Rajak’s fine monograph (1983) and two specialized and thematically oriented collections by Louis Feldman and Gohei Hata (1987 and 1989), which have also served as guides for scholars.

From the 1990s, critical studies have increased exponentially. A number of doctoral dissertations have appeared on thematic and literary studies of Josephus’s writings, and international scholars have gathered to share ideas about the Jewish historian, including: the International Josephus Colloquia (published in several volumes), the York University conference (published in Edmondson, Mason, and Rives 2005), and the Josephus Seminar/Group, which has hosted at least two panels annually at the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting since 1999. New translations that give attention to the original language and form of Josephus’s writings have appeared in English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Japanese. Since 2000, seven volumes of the Brill Josephus Project, edited by Steve Mason, have presented the first comprehensive English translations of, and commentary on, Josephus’s works (see Further Reading).

Steve Mason has also developed a website called PACE (Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement), which has links to each of Josephus’s texts in Greek (connected to Perseus’s word parsing) and English translations, as well as abstracts of dissertations on Josephus. The digital nature of the commentaries means they can easily be updated. Advances in the field have been facilitated by the development of such research tools, starting with the Rengstorf (1973–1983) and Schalit (1968) Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus, Heinz Schreckenberg’s text-critical and bibliographical studies (1972 and 1977), and Louis H. Feldman’s annotated bibliographies (1984; Feldman and Schreckenberg 1986).

This paradigmatic shift demands that Josephus’s writings be subject to the type of critical analysis that takes consideration of the structure of each narrative, its literary form and rhetorical devices, as well as the context in which it was written. Recognition of the importance of both Josephus’s historical method and his immediate context in Flavian Rome is central to modern scholarship. As Steve Mason, who has been a leading figure in this methodological revolution, observes, “[T]he movement towards reading Josephus through, and not merely reading through Josephus to external realities, now provides the dominant agenda” (Mason 2003).

In recent years, an appreciation of how Josephus’s works have also shaped the interaction with the ancient Jewish past has emerged with studies of the history of their transmission and reception in a wide variety of contexts. The recent research project in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University led by Martin Goodman and Tessa Rajak has brought together scholars from a number of disciplines to trace the Jewish reception of Josephus since Late Antiquity.

Given this intense scholarly attention to the Jewish author and his works, it seems to be the appropriate time to gather together major strands of Josephan scholarship into a Companion that can serve as an introduction for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars to an author whose works inform and cross several disciplinary boundaries, including Biblical Studies; Second Temple Studies; New Testament/Early Christianity; Near Eastern and Roman Archaeology; first-century Roman literature, culture, and history; Jewish Studies; Patristics; and Medieval Studies. To maximize accessibility for readers, all Greek and Hebrew words have been transliterated, and translations are provided, including ones from the Loeb Classical Library (LCL) and the Brill Josephus Project (BJP). Authors have chosen either “Jewish” or “Judean” to translate the Greek term “Ioudaios.”

I.1 Structure of the Book

The organization of this volume falls into four major sections: Part One, Writings, Part Two, Literary Contexts, Part Three, Major Themes, and Part Four, Transmission and Reception History. Each scholar has of necessity focused attention on key elements of a given topic, while reconsidering older interpretations and providing new readings. Since Josephus’s texts cover his reckoning of Jewish history from Creation to the Flavian era, and have been read for two millennia, it would be impossible to touch upon all the riches to be discovered in his thirty volumes. But at the same time, this volume provides the most up-to-date investigation of the Latin manuscripts of Josephus, which is helpful for anyone interested in text criticism or reception. Notably, we are not providing the traditional biographical information about Josephus; almost all of what we seem to know about him comes from his self-presentation in his own works, which as literary constructions replete with rhetorical and historical concerns cannot provide us simply with facts.

Perhaps it is best to leave it here with what Suetonius a generation later says of Josephus in Vespasian 5.6, after reporting that the future emperor received good news from the oracle at Carmel in Judea: “one of the noble captives, Josephus, when he was being thrown into chains, very firmly insisted that he would be released by the same man [Vespasian] soon, but by that time as emperor.” This same confidence and sense of his place in the world as an elite Jew mark all of his writings.

Opening the first section on each of Josephus’s four texts, Steve Mason argues in Chapter 1 that we need to explore questions regarding Judean War’s date, context, purposes, content, structures, themes, and devices. By examining the length of each of the seven books, the text’s symmetry, four major themes, and seven major speeches, Mason challenges us to see the author in control of his text—and his own self-image in that text. Chapter 2 treats Josephus’s longest work, Jewish Antiquities, a twenty-book survey of 5,000 years of Jewish history from Creation to 66 C.E., the outbreak of the Judean revolt. Daniel Schwartz proposes that the chronological order in this magnum opus was controlled by the author Josephus, not by the sources he used. Schwartz examines which main sources Josephus employed for which sections of his history, as well as his technique for ordering the material: a filing system that arranged material into chronological sections devoted to major historical periods with dividers labeled according to each of the early Jewish leaders/rulers, then high priests, and finally Roman governors of Judea. The latter half of Jewish Antiquities is an essential source for anyone wishing to work on the Second Temple period, while the entire work provides a window into what interested and mattered to Josephus composing his works at Rome for an audience towards the end of the first century. For Josephus’s Life, Steve Mason provides in Chapter 3 an analysis that dates the work within its historical context and examines its possible purposes, content, structures, and themes. Mason favors dating the text to 93/94 C.E., and he examines the text within the larger context of Romans writing about the lives of great men in several (overlapping) genres. Mason warns that searching for “history” in Life requires first an appreciation of its rhetoric. In Chapter 4, John Barclay analyzes Josephus’s Against Apion as a text written to combat prejudices against the author and his people. Barclay lays out the organization of the entire work, explaining how Josephus responds to the snobbery and slurs directed at Jews with a positive, welcoming picture of them, while utilizing an apologetic (legally defensive) stance that will later be imitated by Christians. After describing Josephus’s direct or indirect sources, Barclay suggests the “declared,” “implied,” “intended,” and “actual” audiences for this text, and concludes with a postcolonial reading of the text that provides an alternative to the scholarly mining for snippets that so often happens with Against Apion.

Josephus’s literary context shapes Part Two of this Companion. Regarding Josephus as a Roman historian, in Chapter 5, Steve Mason considers how Romans authors presented their texts to their audiences and finds Josephus’s texts to have been produced under the normal circumstances at Rome, with a patron and an audience. With respect to the emperors, Mason shows that Josephus struck three poses: (1) flattery and dissimulation; (2) honesty; and (3) ironic flattery; this does not stop him from questioning the explosive issue of hereditary monarchy in Flavian Rome, proposing aristocracy as a better form of government than “tyranny.” In Chapter 6 on Josephus and Greek literature, Eran Almagor presents a case for viewing Josephus as being right in the thick of late first-century cultural activity surrounding the production of literature, especially oratory. He demonstrates that scholars have generally overlooked Josephus’s texts in their surveys of the “Greek Renaissance” of this period. Setting aside the problem of Josephus’s “assistants,” Almagor explains that Josephus refers to two types of Greco-Roman oratory, and proceeds to examine examples of these in light of what Philostratus tells us about the birth of the Second Sophistic. Almagor concludes that Josephus, like others wishing to make their mark on the cultural scene of his day, plays the role of the exiled “outsider” well—so well, in fact, that this may be why his texts are not studied adequately in classics programs.

The second section of this volume also treats Josephus in his Jewish literary context. In Chapter 7, Paul Spilsbury establishes the education in the Hebrew Bible that Josephus might have received, which with his priestly status and belief in the prophetic role of historians in the Bible as well as dream interpretation, informed his identity and self-presentation. Spilsbury illustrates that Josephus’s texts serve a larger purpose of creating a safe space for Jews to live peacefully within the Roman Empire while enjoying self-determination regarding their laws; this constitution, however, seems predicated on a functioning temple, thus Josephus’s concern for genealogies of priests. Spilsbury urges us to read Josephus’s re-casting of Hebrew Scriptures in the light of his pride in his own culture and perhaps his subtle defiance of Roman culture as well. Considering Josephus within the wider context of Jewish intellectuals at Rome, in Chapter 8, Maren Niehoff focuses upon Philo as another figure from the Greek East who paved the way for Josephus as he worked in different genres to discuss Jewish laws, Roman emperors, and philosophical concepts. Philo’s polemics against Greeks (or Greek culture?) will later be found in Josephus as well, allowing both to construct a “Roman” identity. Niehoff concludes that both Philo and Josephus are trying to convince audiences of the superiority of Jewish thought over Greco-Egyptian religious and philosophical options. In Chapter 9 on Josephus and the New Testament, Helen Bond provides an analysis of three main issues regarding the relationship of Josephus’s works to the New Testament writings: how scholars have used Josephus’s historical record of events in the late Second Temple period in order to understand better the world in which Jesus lived and the movement that followed him; how Josephus illustrates what we find in the Gospels, but also two cautionary examples (Pharisees/Sadducees and messianism); and how Josephus presents key figures rhetorically, and thus differently, in Judean War and Judean Antiquities. Josephus’s works, therefore, provide a counterpoint to the New Testament texts, which have their own rhetorical and theological concerns.

The third section focuses on important themes that are of interest to scholars. In Chapter 10, Zeev Weiss’s in-depth examination of Josephus and the archaeology of Galilee examines the interplay between Josephus’s texts and the material culture of Galilee in the first century C.E., observing that Josephus presents the Galilee and the Golan as Jewish regions. Archaeological evidence can provide insight into questions about the local populations, the level of Hellenization, and the background for the lives of Jesus and his early followers. Examining evidence from both rural and urban centers, Weiss shows that Galileans held on to ancestral customs and chose their own wares over gentile ones, while their coinage also asserted their identity. Considering Josephus as a military historian, in Chapter 11, Jonathan Roth invites readers to view Josephus’s texts as providing critical information about ancient military affairs pertaining to the Romans, Jews, and other ancient nations. While scholars may focus on rhetoric in Josephus’s writings, his accounts, including Judean Antiquities, deserve scrutiny for their depictions of different types of combat in his day, the equipment used, and most famously, the Roman army in Judean War 3, in which he emphasizes training and discipline. Roth encourages readers to investigate the Josephan texts for descriptions of insurgency and counterinsurgency, issues that are certainly of interest to modern military and political leaders.

As this third thematic section turns to Josephus’s treatment of Jewish rulers, Tal Ilan notes in Chapter 12