Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use

Abstract

Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use Christopher T. Begg and Ian K. Boxall 1641. [Josephus; Paul] F. B. A. Asiedu, Josephus, Paul, and the Fate of Early Christianity: History and Silence in the First Century (Lanham, MD/Boulder, CO/New York/London: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019). Pp. xi + 349. $120, £80. ISBN 978-1-9787-0132-8. Flavius Josephus, the priest from Jerusalem who was affiliated with the Pharisees, is the most important source for the history of Jewish life in the 1st cent. His notice about the death of James, the brother of Jesus, suggests that Josephus knew about the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and Judaea. In Rome, where Josephus lived the remainder of his life after the Jewish War, a group of Christians appeared to have flourished during the same period, if 1 Clement is any indication. Josephus, however, says extremely little about the Christians in Judaea and nothing about those in Rome. He also does not reference Paul the apostle, a former Pharisee, who was a contemporary of Josephus's father in Jerusalem, even though according to Acts, Paul and his activities were known by two successive Roman governors (procurators) of Judaea, Marcus Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, and to King Herod Agrippa II and his sisters Berenice and Drusilla. The knowledge of Paul on the part of the Herodians in particular puts Josephus's silence about Paul in an interesting light, suggesting that it may have been deliberate. Josephus's writings likewise make very little reference to other contemporaries of his in Rome, so much so that if we were dependent on Josephus alone we might conclude that many of those historical characters either did not exist or had little to no impact in the first century. Against this background, A. comments both on the state of life in Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian and the ways Josephus and the Christians who [End Page 574] produced 1 Clement coped with the regime, even as their "pagan" contemporaries like Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and others did. Specifically, A. argues that most of Josephus's contemporaries at Rome practiced different kinds of silences in their references to the world around them. Consequently, the absence of references to Jews or Christians by Roman writers of the last three decades of the first century, including Josephus, should not be taken as proof of their nonexistence in Flavian Rome. [Adapted from published abstract]. The volume's five component chapters are titled respectively: (1) Josephus, Paul, and the Early Christians: Before and after 62 c.e.; (2) Reading Josephus's Silences: Writing Paul Out of the Jewish Archives of the First Century; (3) Josephus and Martial in Flavian Rome: The Rhetoric of Silence and the Language of Derision; (4) Martial, Tacitus, Pliny, and Friends: On Fear, Suspicion, Exile, and Death in Domitian's Rome; and (5) Paul, the Jewish Past, and the Roman Contexts of First Clement. 1642. [Apocalyptic Banquets] Claudia D. Bergmann, Festmahl ohne Ende. Apokalyptische Vorstellungen vom Speisen in der Kommenden Welt im antiken Judentum und ihre biblischen Wurzeln (BWANT 222; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2019). Pp. 310. €69. ISBN 978-3-17-036134-8. B. sets out to decipher the ritual code of food and eating as encoded in visionary meals designed by Jewish authors who developed ideas about a world to come in their apocalyptic scenarios. She starts with terminological and methodological clarifications in chap. 1. Then she describes the food at the imagined meals in the world to come: Leviathan and Behemoth, the tree of life, Manna, beverages (chap. 2). In chap. 3, B. reflects on suggested places for the meal in the world to come in the materials in question: the garden, paradise, and the mountain of God. Next, B. deals with the participants at this meal and the underlying idea that a meal constitutes social relationships (chap. 4). The participants are the faithful ones who observe God's ethical commandments and who belong to Israel, the Anointed One (Messiah), the fathers of the past (Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the leaders of the Exodus). Chap. 5 focuses on the structures of the meal and the structuring function of the meal. A...