Jonathan Price | Tel Aviv University (original) (raw)
Papers by Jonathan Price
This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultur... more This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultural setting of Greek epic and dramatic poetic texts (“Text”) and their afterlives (“Intertext”) in Antiquity. Spanning texts from Hittite archives to Homer to Greek tragedy and comedy to Vergil to Celsus, the studies here were all written by friends and colleagues of Margalit Finkelberg who are experts in their particular fields, and who have all been influenced by her work. The papers offer close readings of individual lines and discussion of widespread cultural phenomena. Readers will encounter Hittite precedents to the Homeric poems, characters in ancient epic analyzed by modern cognitive theory, the use of Homer in Christian polemic, tragic themes of love and murder, a history of the Sphinx, and more. Text and Intertext in Greek Epic and Drama offers a selection of fascinating essays exploring Greek epic, drama, and their reception and adaptation by other ancient authors, and will be of interest to anyone working on Greek literature.
K. Berthelot, ed., Reconsidering Roman Power: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perceptions and Reactions, l’École Française de Rome 2020, 255-67. , 2020
Rome's Empire prompted historians to think universally. From the Second Punic War, the history of... more Rome's Empire prompted historians to think universally. From the Second Punic War, the history of the oikoumenē was for Greek and Latin historians a history of Rome's empire. Polybius said this first. In the Preface to his innovative and ambitious History, he explained that «previously the doings of the world had been, so to say, dispersed, as they were held together by no unity of initiative, results or locality; but ever since this date [of the second war between Rome and Carthage] history has been an organic whole». 2 Polybius claims not only that world history had entered a new, unprecedented age, in which everything is connected, but that his account of it will perforce be a unique (idion) way of writing history. Many others followed, their names familiar even if their texts have not survived: Posidonius, Pompeius Trogus, Nicolaus of Damascus; the remains of Diodorus Siculus' compilation are illuminating about the genre. These writers often-logically-began their histories long before the rise of Rome to emphasize not only the theme of unifying conquest but also the pattern of rise and fall, the fate of empires. 3 Even histories solely of Rome from its foundation, and even accounts solely of early Rome before its empire, could have a kind of universalizing purpose, to explain the
4. J.J. Price and K. Berthelot, eds., The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Visions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 2020
A historical theory of uncertain origin is directly relevant to how Roman historians, particularl... more A historical theory of uncertain origin is directly relevant to how Roman historians, particularly those who wrote in Greek, understood the future of Rome: four empires have dominated the world, Rome is the fifth, signifiying either the continuation of a natural process or the end of the historical cycle. This 4+1 model of world empires occurs also in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic, deriving ultimately from the Book of Daniel, where it may be a reworking of a Zoroastrian tradition. 1 So compelling was the idea for the Jews and Christians living in the Roman Empire, nursing messianic dreams, that its absence in a major Jewish thinker of the first century requires explanation. 2 Among historians of Rome the model first appears as a tool of explanation and prediction in Polybius' Greek history of Rome, then in Latin Aemilius Sura 3 and Pompeius Trogusin each of these first cases, indirectly, or in quoted fragmentsthen certainly in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and later Greek writers. Thus, the 4+1 scheme appears in Greek prose literature from as early as the second century BCE, around the time that the Book of Daniel was being redacted. Philologists and historians have naturally been drawn to the compelling questions of origin, dating, and influence, i.e., the direction and circumstances of travel of an idea and literary trope. This problem, even if it could be conclusively solved, is unimportant to understanding the three Greek historians under investigation here, whose cosmos of literary reference was Greek and Roman historiography and other literature. A foreign germ entering the Greek stream was beyond their ken.
4. J.J. Price and K. Berthelot, eds., The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Visions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 2020
How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations livi... more How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations living in the Roman Empire? It emerges from this collection of essays by a distinguished international team of scholars that Romans, Greeks, Jews and Christians had strikingly different answers to that question, revealing profound differences in their conceptions of history and historical time, the purpose of history and the meaning of written words and oral traditions. It is also argued that practically no one living under Rome's rule, including the Romans themselves, did not think about the question in one form or another.
SCI 40, 2021, 31-47, 2021
Despite his long dismissal in Classical scholarship as an unoriginal historian, Appian of Alexand... more Despite his long dismissal in Classical scholarship as an unoriginal historian, Appian of Alexandria wrote a panoramic history of the Roman Empire according to an original conception and methodology. His work is far more than its former classification as a hunting-ground for lost sources. Two aspects of originality and independent thought are examined here. First, his innovative organization of a huge amount of material according to ethnic divisions, as a method to explain Rome's historical achievement. Second, his choice of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus as the first incident in the Roman civil war, revealing his conception of the last century of the Roman Republic as a single prolonged, episodic event, a conception influenced by Thucydides' model of stasis.
Eretz Israel 34, Ada Yardeni Volume, 2021, 130*-141*, 2021
A Preliminary Analysis of the Ḥawrān Aramaic Script 95* Bezalel Porten A Dozen Idumean Fragments ... more A Preliminary Analysis of the Ḥawrān Aramaic Script 95* Bezalel Porten A Dozen Idumean Fragments 120* Jonathan J. Price The Ḥimyarites at Beth SheꜤarim 130* Émile Puech Les inscriptions 10 et 7 de Ḥorvat ꜤUza: deux documents administratifs 142* Matthieu Richelle A Re-Examination of the Reading BT DWD ("house of David") on the Mesha Stele 152*
Scripta Classica Israelica vol. 41 2022 pp. 63–76, 2022
An unexcavated ancient building in the ruins of the Arab village of Sejara is tentatively identif... more An unexcavated ancient building in the ruins of the Arab village of Sejara is tentatively identified as a synagogue from the Roman or Late Roman period. This suggestion is based on architectural fragments found on the site, in the modern village Ilaniya and at a nearby moshav, as well as an inscription in secondary use photographed in the 1920s. The surviving portion of the dedicatory text seems to mention two women with Latin names, Lucilla and Sacerdotilla, the second being quite rare.
Y. Shachar and M. Finkelberg, eds., Rome: An Empire of Many Nations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2021
List of Abbreviations [xii] 5 Roman Reception of the Trojan War [87] margalit finkelberg 6 Claimi... more List of Abbreviations [xii] 5 Roman Reception of the Trojan War [87] margalit finkelberg 6 Claiming Roman Origins: Greek Cities and the Roman Colonial Pattern [100] cédric brélaz 7 Roman Theologies in the Roman Cities of Italy and the Provinces [116] john scheid v Bibliography [332] General Index [386] Index Locorum [396] vi Contents
W. Ameling, ed., Centre and Periphery: Working with Inscriptions of Iudaea/Palaestina. Antiquitas 76, 2022, 103-24, 2022
D. Hofmann, A. Klingenberg and K. Zimmermann, eds., Asia Minor Studien 102: Religion und Epigraphik: Kleinasien, der griechische Osten und die Mittelmeerwelt: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Walter Ameling, Bonn 2023, 119-135., 2023
It would be difficult to find another writer in Graeco-Roman antiquity such as Flavius Josephus w... more It would be difficult to find another writer in Graeco-Roman antiquity such as Flavius Josephus who learned two separate, independent historiographical traditions-in Josephus' case, Greek and biblical-and combined them into unitary works of history. This chapter is not a general introduction to Josephus or a survey of his works, but an assessment of his place in the Graeco-Roman and biblical or Jewish historiographical traditions. As a Jewish priest, self-styled prophet, and self-appointed explicator and defender of Judaism, he wrote and rewrote in Greek a grand historical narrative from biblical times to his day, using Greek literary models and a biblical conception of the direction and purpose of history. As a Greek historian of the Roman Empire recounting central events in Roman history, he wrote in direct and open imitation of Thucydides, declared rigorous adherence to objective truth, quoted numerous classical authors, assiduously sought out sources, adopted Greek rhetorical techniques and historiographical topoi, paid homage to a Greek idea of tyche (Fortune) in historical processes, and translated Jewish concepts and phenomena into Greek and Roman terms. Yet in his conception of the historical process, the meaning of the past and its connection to the present, and the role of the divine in human history, he remained deeply rooted in his Jewish origins. In trying to satisfy, persuade, and educate different audiences with sometimes contradictory needs, and in trying to hammer vast, multifarious material into a coherent narrative, Josephus discovered ingenious solutions, and sometimes failed. He was well aware of the differences between Greek and Jewish historiographical traditions, and even discussed the problem openly. As a Jewish historian, Josephus reflects the currents of Jewish debate and thought of his day on the existential questions preoccupying Jews. As a Roman historian, Josephus reflects, at one and the same time, the view of Rome from the provinces, and from Rome itself where he wrote all his books.
Like any good Greek historian, Josephus salted his BJ with rhetorically elaborate speeches in dir... more Like any good Greek historian, Josephus salted his BJ with rhetorically elaborate speeches in direct discourse in order to explore the psychological interior of important historical players and to provide insight into motivations for the characters' actions at critical junctures in the narrative. The earliest methodological statement about speech-writing in an historical narrative fairly describes Josephus' own method in the BJ. I refer of course to Thucydides' famous, if perennially debated and reinterpreted, declaration at the end of his socalled Archaeology:
Near the end of his life, writing about the political assassinations committed by the Sicarii in ... more Near the end of his life, writing about the political assassinations committed by the Sicarii in the temple before the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion, Josephus was led to reflect on the meaning of the catastrophe which ensued:
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultur... more This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultural setting of Greek epic and dramatic poetic texts (“Text”) and their afterlives (“Intertext”) in Antiquity. Spanning texts from Hittite archives to Homer to Greek tragedy and comedy to Vergil to Celsus, the studies here were all written by friends and colleagues of Margalit Finkelberg who are experts in their particular fields, and who have all been influenced by her work. The papers offer close readings of individual lines and discussion of widespread cultural phenomena. Readers will encounter Hittite precedents to the Homeric poems, characters in ancient epic analyzed by modern cognitive theory, the use of Homer in Christian polemic, tragic themes of love and murder, a history of the Sphinx, and more. Text and Intertext in Greek Epic and Drama offers a selection of fascinating essays exploring Greek epic, drama, and their reception and adaptation by other ancient authors, and will be of interest to anyone working on Greek literature.
K. Berthelot, ed., Reconsidering Roman Power: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perceptions and Reactions, l’École Française de Rome 2020, 255-67. , 2020
Rome's Empire prompted historians to think universally. From the Second Punic War, the history of... more Rome's Empire prompted historians to think universally. From the Second Punic War, the history of the oikoumenē was for Greek and Latin historians a history of Rome's empire. Polybius said this first. In the Preface to his innovative and ambitious History, he explained that «previously the doings of the world had been, so to say, dispersed, as they were held together by no unity of initiative, results or locality; but ever since this date [of the second war between Rome and Carthage] history has been an organic whole». 2 Polybius claims not only that world history had entered a new, unprecedented age, in which everything is connected, but that his account of it will perforce be a unique (idion) way of writing history. Many others followed, their names familiar even if their texts have not survived: Posidonius, Pompeius Trogus, Nicolaus of Damascus; the remains of Diodorus Siculus' compilation are illuminating about the genre. These writers often-logically-began their histories long before the rise of Rome to emphasize not only the theme of unifying conquest but also the pattern of rise and fall, the fate of empires. 3 Even histories solely of Rome from its foundation, and even accounts solely of early Rome before its empire, could have a kind of universalizing purpose, to explain the
4. J.J. Price and K. Berthelot, eds., The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Visions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 2020
A historical theory of uncertain origin is directly relevant to how Roman historians, particularl... more A historical theory of uncertain origin is directly relevant to how Roman historians, particularly those who wrote in Greek, understood the future of Rome: four empires have dominated the world, Rome is the fifth, signifiying either the continuation of a natural process or the end of the historical cycle. This 4+1 model of world empires occurs also in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic, deriving ultimately from the Book of Daniel, where it may be a reworking of a Zoroastrian tradition. 1 So compelling was the idea for the Jews and Christians living in the Roman Empire, nursing messianic dreams, that its absence in a major Jewish thinker of the first century requires explanation. 2 Among historians of Rome the model first appears as a tool of explanation and prediction in Polybius' Greek history of Rome, then in Latin Aemilius Sura 3 and Pompeius Trogusin each of these first cases, indirectly, or in quoted fragmentsthen certainly in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and later Greek writers. Thus, the 4+1 scheme appears in Greek prose literature from as early as the second century BCE, around the time that the Book of Daniel was being redacted. Philologists and historians have naturally been drawn to the compelling questions of origin, dating, and influence, i.e., the direction and circumstances of travel of an idea and literary trope. This problem, even if it could be conclusively solved, is unimportant to understanding the three Greek historians under investigation here, whose cosmos of literary reference was Greek and Roman historiography and other literature. A foreign germ entering the Greek stream was beyond their ken.
4. J.J. Price and K. Berthelot, eds., The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Visions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 2020
How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations livi... more How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations living in the Roman Empire? It emerges from this collection of essays by a distinguished international team of scholars that Romans, Greeks, Jews and Christians had strikingly different answers to that question, revealing profound differences in their conceptions of history and historical time, the purpose of history and the meaning of written words and oral traditions. It is also argued that practically no one living under Rome's rule, including the Romans themselves, did not think about the question in one form or another.
SCI 40, 2021, 31-47, 2021
Despite his long dismissal in Classical scholarship as an unoriginal historian, Appian of Alexand... more Despite his long dismissal in Classical scholarship as an unoriginal historian, Appian of Alexandria wrote a panoramic history of the Roman Empire according to an original conception and methodology. His work is far more than its former classification as a hunting-ground for lost sources. Two aspects of originality and independent thought are examined here. First, his innovative organization of a huge amount of material according to ethnic divisions, as a method to explain Rome's historical achievement. Second, his choice of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus as the first incident in the Roman civil war, revealing his conception of the last century of the Roman Republic as a single prolonged, episodic event, a conception influenced by Thucydides' model of stasis.
Eretz Israel 34, Ada Yardeni Volume, 2021, 130*-141*, 2021
A Preliminary Analysis of the Ḥawrān Aramaic Script 95* Bezalel Porten A Dozen Idumean Fragments ... more A Preliminary Analysis of the Ḥawrān Aramaic Script 95* Bezalel Porten A Dozen Idumean Fragments 120* Jonathan J. Price The Ḥimyarites at Beth SheꜤarim 130* Émile Puech Les inscriptions 10 et 7 de Ḥorvat ꜤUza: deux documents administratifs 142* Matthieu Richelle A Re-Examination of the Reading BT DWD ("house of David") on the Mesha Stele 152*
Scripta Classica Israelica vol. 41 2022 pp. 63–76, 2022
An unexcavated ancient building in the ruins of the Arab village of Sejara is tentatively identif... more An unexcavated ancient building in the ruins of the Arab village of Sejara is tentatively identified as a synagogue from the Roman or Late Roman period. This suggestion is based on architectural fragments found on the site, in the modern village Ilaniya and at a nearby moshav, as well as an inscription in secondary use photographed in the 1920s. The surviving portion of the dedicatory text seems to mention two women with Latin names, Lucilla and Sacerdotilla, the second being quite rare.
Y. Shachar and M. Finkelberg, eds., Rome: An Empire of Many Nations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2021
List of Abbreviations [xii] 5 Roman Reception of the Trojan War [87] margalit finkelberg 6 Claimi... more List of Abbreviations [xii] 5 Roman Reception of the Trojan War [87] margalit finkelberg 6 Claiming Roman Origins: Greek Cities and the Roman Colonial Pattern [100] cédric brélaz 7 Roman Theologies in the Roman Cities of Italy and the Provinces [116] john scheid v Bibliography [332] General Index [386] Index Locorum [396] vi Contents
W. Ameling, ed., Centre and Periphery: Working with Inscriptions of Iudaea/Palaestina. Antiquitas 76, 2022, 103-24, 2022
D. Hofmann, A. Klingenberg and K. Zimmermann, eds., Asia Minor Studien 102: Religion und Epigraphik: Kleinasien, der griechische Osten und die Mittelmeerwelt: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Walter Ameling, Bonn 2023, 119-135., 2023
It would be difficult to find another writer in Graeco-Roman antiquity such as Flavius Josephus w... more It would be difficult to find another writer in Graeco-Roman antiquity such as Flavius Josephus who learned two separate, independent historiographical traditions-in Josephus' case, Greek and biblical-and combined them into unitary works of history. This chapter is not a general introduction to Josephus or a survey of his works, but an assessment of his place in the Graeco-Roman and biblical or Jewish historiographical traditions. As a Jewish priest, self-styled prophet, and self-appointed explicator and defender of Judaism, he wrote and rewrote in Greek a grand historical narrative from biblical times to his day, using Greek literary models and a biblical conception of the direction and purpose of history. As a Greek historian of the Roman Empire recounting central events in Roman history, he wrote in direct and open imitation of Thucydides, declared rigorous adherence to objective truth, quoted numerous classical authors, assiduously sought out sources, adopted Greek rhetorical techniques and historiographical topoi, paid homage to a Greek idea of tyche (Fortune) in historical processes, and translated Jewish concepts and phenomena into Greek and Roman terms. Yet in his conception of the historical process, the meaning of the past and its connection to the present, and the role of the divine in human history, he remained deeply rooted in his Jewish origins. In trying to satisfy, persuade, and educate different audiences with sometimes contradictory needs, and in trying to hammer vast, multifarious material into a coherent narrative, Josephus discovered ingenious solutions, and sometimes failed. He was well aware of the differences between Greek and Jewish historiographical traditions, and even discussed the problem openly. As a Jewish historian, Josephus reflects the currents of Jewish debate and thought of his day on the existential questions preoccupying Jews. As a Roman historian, Josephus reflects, at one and the same time, the view of Rome from the provinces, and from Rome itself where he wrote all his books.
Like any good Greek historian, Josephus salted his BJ with rhetorically elaborate speeches in dir... more Like any good Greek historian, Josephus salted his BJ with rhetorically elaborate speeches in direct discourse in order to explore the psychological interior of important historical players and to provide insight into motivations for the characters' actions at critical junctures in the narrative. The earliest methodological statement about speech-writing in an historical narrative fairly describes Josephus' own method in the BJ. I refer of course to Thucydides' famous, if perennially debated and reinterpreted, declaration at the end of his socalled Archaeology:
Near the end of his life, writing about the political assassinations committed by the Sicarii in ... more Near the end of his life, writing about the political assassinations committed by the Sicarii in the temple before the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion, Josephus was led to reflect on the meaning of the catastrophe which ensued:
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
Routledge, 2020
This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultur... more This collection presents 19 interconnected studies on the language, history, exegesis, and cultural setting of Greek epic and dramatic poetic texts (“Text”) and their afterlives (“Intertext”) in Antiquity.
Spanning texts from Hittite archives to Homer to Greek tragedy and
comedy to Vergil to Celsus, the studies here were all written by friends and colleagues of Margalit Finkelberg who are experts in their particular fields, and who have all been influenced by her work. The papers offer close readings of individual lines and discussion of widespread cultural phenomena.
Readers will encounter Hittite precedents to the Homeric poems, characters in ancient epic analyzed by modern cognitive theory, the use of Homer in Christian polemic, tragic themes of love and murder, a history of the Sphinx, and more.
Text and Intertext in Greek Epic and Drama offers a selection of fascinating essays exploring Greek epic, drama, and their reception and adaptation by other ancient authors, and will be of interest to anyone working on Greek literature.