Tessa Rajak, “Josephus,” in Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield, eds., The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 585-596 (original) (raw)

Thinking through Josephus and his Readers

2017

rom antiquity to the present day Yosef ben Matityahu, alias Titus Flavius Iosephus, has been undoubtedly the best source on the history of Judea in the Roman period and on the history of the Second Temple period in general. Without Josephus we would know little about the Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE; or indeed on Judean politics and society in the Roman period, on king Herod, but also on the intellectual traditions that formed Josephus' own sources. A Jewish priest of royal descent born in Jerusalem in 37 CE, a leader of the Jewish revolt against Rome, and thereafter, a friend of the Flavians, a Roman citizen, and a writer in Rome, Josephus is a multifaceted figure that is hard to confine under a single label. Was he a Roman historian? Was he an historian at all? Serious or critical engagement with his work has emerged since the 1970s. Previously, scholars regarded him as simple and careless compiler, or a mine where information could be extracted regardless of its context, audience, aims, literary form: that was the 'classical conception of Josephus'.

Josephus, in Oxford History of Historical Writing

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.