A study of the Siege of Jerusalem in its physical, literary and historical contexts. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. 2000 (original) (raw)
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Medium Aevum, 2011
In the very early fifteenth century, an English preacher, frightened by the desolations of the Hundred Years War, advised his congregation to take stock of the apocalyptic signs around them, and to view themselves in the likeness of the Jewish community under attack by Titus and Vespasian during the first-century Roman siege of Jerusalem. Aligning a late medieval Christian parish with an embattled Jewish community would prove to be an effective rhetorical device that dared its audiences to imagine not only a shared ruin, but also a shared humanity. A few years earlier, the romance entitled "The Siege of Jerusalem" began to circulate in England, dramatizing the events of the first-century siege, and embellishing these happenings with chivalric trappings. By that time, England had already experienced invasions on its shores and limitations on its sea powers imposed by Castilian-French forces, as well as repeated incursions from the north, as Scottish and English troops harassed one another’s borders. In North Yorkshire, where the romance originated, many locals made their living by fighting with Scottish neighbours, and had themselves participated in sieges directly across the English Channel. In exploring the "Siege" poem as an apocalyptic text, I draw attention to an often-overlooked moment nevertheless vital to medieval Christian religious narrative: the interval between the Passion of Christ and the later destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This forty-year span was interpreted by Christian exegetes as the historical moment when the Jewish people awaited divine vengeance for their role in the Crucifixion. Significantly, this moment would also become an appropriate analogue to the apocalypse. The poet depicts these four decades as heavily freighted with expectation and the trappings of suspense, coming to a crisis point in the siege.The complex presentation of the Jews suggests that the poet and his source saw value in making Jewish figures relatable, thereby inviting the audiences to entertain the possibility of a better fate for the holy city’s citizens. In doing so, the narrative emphasizes this weighty moment between Passion and Vengeance and thereby offers a more nuanced reading of the "Siege" as an apocalyptic text. Certainly the ugly narrative of violence and retribution is present, but the faculty of agency receives special attention in the poem. This article continues my work on Jerusalem and Jewish identities as spaces of premodern Christian affective piety. This piece draws from Christian homiletic and apocalyptic texts which remember the first-century siege alongside Jewish ritual remembrances on the 9th of Av (Tisha b'Av).
in I. Pardes, O. Münz-Manor (eds.), Psalms In/On Jerusalem (Berlin: De Gruyter 2019), pp. 27-42. , 2019
This article is dedicated to a literary and ritual examination of a qina [Hebrew, elegy] that dates to the fourth or fifth century C.E. The elegy juxtaposes the lament on the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple with verses from the Book of Psalms and with an extraordinary lament of the signs of the zodiac. It belongs to a special payytanic genre for the Ninth of Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The author of the qina is unknown and the work was transmitted to us in manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and from medieval Europe. It is a short elegy, consisting of twenty-two verses and a refrain that appears after every two verses.Thematically, the elegy presents a lament on Jerusalem by the signs of the zodiac, a rather unusual theme in Jewish texts from this period.
Pathos and Passions in Josephus' Judaean War: A Tragic Vision of History and Politics
Passion, Persecution and Epiphany in Early Jewish Literature, 2019
This is the final typescript (AAM) of a chapter that will appear in Nicholas Allen, ed., Passion, Persecution and Epiphany in Early Jewish Literature. After surveying the range of senses of Greek pathos, from suffering to emotion, incidentally arguing that the pathe of 4 Maccabees are much more instances of suffering than emotions (as usually translated), this essay explores the senses of this key term in Josephus' Judaean War. It finds that, although Josephus fuses the two senses, suffering is primary; emotion (suffering of the mind) follows from that. Finally, this emphasis on suffering connects with a deeply tragic view of political relations, which today we would call 'realist'.
The City Lament: Jerusalem Across the Medieval Mediterranean
Comparative Literature Studies, 2021
Tamar M. Boyadjian's The City Lament is an important contribution to medieval Mediterranean studies. Through her analysis of laments over Jerusalem in Latin, Arabic, and Armenian literature, Boyadjian challenges the traditional Crusader framework that often reduces discussions of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages to a Christian-Muslim oppositional binary. In this book, Boyadjian explores how various ethnoreligious cultures in the Mediterranean participated in the tradition of city laments going back to ancient times. Rather than treating literary texts strictly within traditional national boundaries, Boyadjian emphasizes cross-cultural contact in the Mediterranean and demonstrates shared participation in the tradition of city laments across ethnoreligious groups. As she notes, "Using the Mediterranean, rather than the Crusades, as a framework for analysis encourages readings that move beyond European realities; such readings recognize reciprocal exchanges and commonalities across cultures in the period and acknowledge the significance of the impact of Mediterranean networks on literary works that have only been considered within national frameworks in the past" (9). Boyadjian's framing results in readings that illustrate localized uses of motifs that demonstrate commonalities across cultures. Chapter 1 outlines the qualities of lamenting Jerusalem for various ethnoreligious groups active in the Mediterranean and how medieval laments adapted thematic tropes of lamentation from the Hebrew Bible, especially the Book of Lamentations, to their own social and political needs. Motifs of Mesopotamian city laments that influenced the Hebrew Bible are also identified, such as personifying the city as a morally impure woman, attributing the fall to the sins of the inhabitants, and the eventual reconquest of the city. The remainder of the chapter addresses the role and perception of
Between Triumph and Tragedy: Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 7.121–157
Reading Greek and Hellenistic-Roman Spolia Objects, Appropriation and Cultural Change (ed. I.J.F. de Jong & M.J. Versluys), 2024
This paper looks at how Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian writing in Greek in the first century AD writes about the Roman Triumph of 71 AD. This Triumph was celebrated by the new emperors Vespasian and Titus over Judaea (today's Israel), which they had restored to the Roman Empire after an uprising. The paper shows that Josephus' account is layered. On the surface he praises the conquering emperors, but if we delve deeper, he in fact displays pity with the conquered Jews. The paper focuses in particular on the objects from the now destroyed Jewish Temple which are carried along in the triumphal procession: the implied emotional evocation of the temple spoils is reinforced when readers recall two earlier descriptions of the temple treasures in Josephus' work. When looked at by uncomprehending ‘Roman eyes’, the objects are stripped of their symbolical significance, but those who have read Josephus’ work are in the know about their true meaning.
THE WARS OF THE JEWS OR THE HISTORY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM
1. (1) WHEREAS the war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations; while some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given false accounts of things, and this either out of a humor of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews; and while their writings contain sometimes accusations, and sometimes encomiums, but no where the accurate truth of the facts; I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians; (2) Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work].