Jewish War Research Articles

The ‘Maria Story’ in Greek, Latin, & Hebrew

This article provides the first close comparative analysis of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew versions of the ‘Maria Story’ or teknophagia, the account of the mother who ate her child within a besieged Jerusalem first recorded in Flavius Josephus’ Jewish War 6.201–203. Josephus’ original account was written in Greek in the first century. Within the following half-millennium, three Latin versions of the story developed: those of 1) the Latin translation of the War, 2) Rufinus of Aquileia’s translation of Eusebius’ Church History, which contains Josephus’ Greek version of the story, and 3) the Latin adaptation of Pseudo-Hegesippus or On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano). This latter text comprises a late fourth-century Christian rewrite of the War and served as the most important source for a Jewish text that would emerge five hundred years later: the so-called Sefer Yosippon, an early tenth-century Hebrew text which is arguably the first and most important installment of medieval Jewish historiography. Each of these texts has received scholarly attention, and sometimes several of them have been discussed together; the Maria Story itself has not escaped scholarly treatment. Yet for all this research the exact relationship between these texts and particularly their accounts of the Maria Story has never been explained clearly and in detail. This article fills this gap in the research and uses the Maria Story to explore source-critical, literary, philological, and rhetorical questions pertaining to these five versions of the Maria Story, with an emphasis upon De Excidio and Sefer Yosippon, the most understudied iterations of this developing ancient and medieval tradition, enhancing scholarly knowledge and appreciation of all these works as distinctive iterations of an interconnected web of tradition.

The spectre of the thing: The construction of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust memorial

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial is situated on the western side of Green Park in Darlinghurst, in Sydney, Australia. Darlinghurst is considered the heart of Sydney's gay and lesbian population, having been the site of demonstrations, public meetings, Gay Fair Days, and the starting point for the AIDS Memorial Candlelight Rally. It is also very close to both the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Jewish War Memorial. The planning and construction of the Memorial between 1991 and 2001 was a process framed by two competing imperatives. Balancing the commemoration of a subset of victims of the Holocaust with a positioning of the event as a universal symbol of the continuing persecution of gays and lesbians was a challenge that came to define the ten year struggle to have the memorial built.

Divine Providence and Human Response in Josephus’s Jewish War

본 연구는 『유대전쟁사』에 나오는 요세푸스의 바리새파 신인협력 신학을 조명한다. 그동안 하나님의 결정론적 역사하심에 대해서는 종종 논의되어 왔지만(6.250; 6.428), 요세푸스의 바리새파 신학에 나타난 하나님과 인간사이의 관계적 역동성은 충분히 논의되지 않았다. 따라서 본 연구는 요세푸스의 바리새파 신인협력주의적 관점과 일치하여 하나님의 섭리가 역사 속에 드러나는 데 있어 인간의 응답 역시 중요한 요소로 작용할 수 있음을 보여준다. 이 신인협력주의적 관점을 통하여 하나님이 비록 유대인들의 패배를 결정하셨지만, 인간의 선택 또한 역사의 결과에 영향을 미칠 수 있음을 조명한다.<BR>요세푸스는 꿈속에서(3.351-352) 그의 동족이 패배할 것임을 보지만, 인간의 응답 역시 하나님의 섭리와 맞물려 역사 속에서 발생하는 결과에 영향을 미칠 수 있음을 시사한다. 그의 연설에서(5.362–419) 요세푸스는 동족에게 로마에 항복할 것을 촉구한다. 그는 그의 신학적 확신에 따라 유대인들이 로마에 투항함으로 그들의 목숨과 성전을 보존하게 되므로 그들을 향한 하나님의 심판의 결과를 어느 정도 면하거나 완화할 수 있다고 주장한다. 요세푸스와 마찬가지로, 아그립바 왕도 역사 속에서 하나님이 로마를 통해 일하고 계심을 확인하고, 그의 연설에서 사람들에게 로마와의 전쟁을 피하라고 요청한다(2.345-401). 정리하면, 요세푸스와 아그립바에게 로마와의 전쟁은 하나님의 섭리적 활동에 반하는 것이다. 반대로, 로마에 투항하는 것은 하나님의 섭리에 순응하는 것이다. 따라서 본 연구는 인간의 응답이 하나님의 섭리와 양립하여 역사의 결과에 영향을 미칠 수 있음을 밝힌다. 이를 위해 본 연구는 요세푸스의 꿈과 그의 연설, 그리고 아그립바의 연설속에 나타난 요세푸스의 바리새파 신인협력 신학을 논의한다.

Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under Hitler

Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under Hitler

Disease and the Christian Discourse of Jewish Death in "De Excidio Hierosolymitano" 5, 2

The late-fourth century work called On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), or “Pseudo-Hegesippus”, records the history of the Roman-Jewish War (66-73 CE) and particularly the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. As a Christian version of this history based largely upon Flavius Josephus’ earlier Jewish War, De Excidio understands himself to be telling the story of the effective death of the Jews in history. One major aspect of this narrative, I argue, is a discourse of Jewish disease, wherein Ps-Hegesippus portrays the Jews as “sick” with the plague of civil insurrection and sedition. But this discourse goes much further as well, cutting to the very core of De Excidio’s narrative logic. Here I argue that this discourse of Jewish disease finds its most powerful expression in one particular chapter of the work, Book 5, Chapter 2. I show that De Excidio 5.2 epitomizes the work’s rhetoric of Jewish contagion, which can nevertheless be traced throughout the entirety of the work.

The Temple on the Coins of Bar Kokhba – a Manifestation of Longing or a Political Programme? A Few Remarks

The article is an attempt to answer the question of whether the building on coins issued during the Bar Kokhba revolt, usually interpreted as the Temple in Jerusalem, was a testimony of the control of Jerusalem by the rebels or a manifestation of the political programme of the revolt. This meant that perhaps also worship on the Temple Mount was resumed. The image of the building itself is analysed against a comparative background composed of other sacred buildings shown on earlier Jewish coins, in particular those coming from the period of the First Jewish War with Rome. Coins from other areas where similar buildings are represented were also used as comparative material. Consequently, the answer to the basic question of whether the possible Temple on Bar Kokhba coins was a confirmation of the historical fact of taking power over the Jewish capital or was it only a manifestation of longing – firstly after the loss of the Temple in 70, and secondly after the restoration of Jerusalem as the spiritual and political centre of the Chosen Nation – clearly leads to the second conclusion.

A New King David for Late Antiquity: Classical Exemplarity and Biblical Personality in Pseudo-Hegesippus

In late ancient Christian literature, King David is ubiquitous. Not simply cited as the famous author of many psalms, he almost always appears as a model of penitence, a foreshadow of Christ, or a paradigm of Christian virtues and values. But not always. In one fourth-century Christian text, King David appears in a striking and distinctive relief. This Latin text, known as De excidio Hierosolymitano (On the Destruction of Jerusalem), sometimes called PseudoHegesippus, presents King David as a figure familiar from Judaeo-Christian tradition, but in a way that resonates most strongly with classical Greco-Roman literary norms. This text rewrites Josephus’s Jewish War from a Christian perspective, and mentions David at a dozen points. In each case, David appears as an exemplum associated with a particular biblical episode or theme. Often, the treatment of these episodes in Josephus or other early Christian literature helps explain why Pseudo-Hegesippus presents David in particular lights. However, taking all of the appearances of David in De Excidio into view, this article shows that Pseudo-Hegesippus is not only beholden to biblical, Josephan, or early Christian precedents, but creatively constructs his own portrait of David within his historiographical framework. This article then suggests that this David’s rhetorical valence and distinctive character are best explained vis-à-vis the traditional (Greek and) Roman use of exempla inasmuch as Pseudo-Hegesippus’s David conspicuously lacks any of the theological, doctrinal, or ethical features so characteristic of his portrayal in most of ancient Christian literature. Pseudo-Hegesippus portrays King David in terms resonant of both Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions.

A History of the Jewish War: AD 66–74

A History of the Jewish War: AD 66–74

Refeeding syndrome as described in 1507 by Antonio Benivieni in Florence.

In 1981, Weinsier and Krumdieck described death resulting from overzealous total parenteral nutrition in two chronically malnourished, but stable, patients given aggressive total parenteral nutrition. This was the birth of what is now called the refeeding syndrome, a nutrition-related disorder associated with severe electrolyte disturbances. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that refeeding syndrome was first described medically in Florence by Antonio Benivieni in 1507 in his book On Some Hidden and Remarkable Causes of Diseases and Cures. What we now know as refeeding syndrome was described in Report No. LVII of that book. The condition occurred as a result of the famine that affected Florence in 1496. The report documents (i) death due to starvation, (ii) death due to ingestion of deteriorated/toxic foods (inevitable in times of famine when healthy food is scarce), (iii) death caused by excessive food ingestion after forced, prolonged abstinence from food in adults, (iv) the death of breast-fed children and of their starved mothers eating to satiety and (v) the more favourable clinical outcome of those admitted to hospitals. It is possible that Benivieni was inspired by the description of the deaths of starved deserters in the book The Jewish War (70 AD) by the Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Nevertheless, Benivieni wrote the first medical account of the central clinical features of refeeding syndrome. The main, broad clinical aspects of refeeding syndrome, described by Weinsier and Krumdieck in 1981, had been documented in medical literature four centuries earlier by Benivieni.

Josephus’s The Jewish War: A Biography, written by Martin Goodman

Josephus’s The Jewish War: A Biography, written by Martin Goodman

Mc 8,27-33. Una propuesta de identidad para discípulos en tiempos de crisis

This paper deals with the pericope of Mk 8:27-33 as an example of readingfrom a contextual methodology, from the resource of its historical situation.In the framework of the Jewish War, the identity of the followers of Jesus was questioned, especially in those who came from Palestinian Judaism. The indicated pericope presents a “third position” that seeks not to ally itself with the Roman power,represented by the references to the Herodian family, nor to the armed resistance, represented by the “messianic” confession of Peter and the reprimand directed by Jesus. This reading is possible if the story is understood as a response to the trauma experienced by its first readers.

The Trauma of Autopsy and the Transgression of History in Josephus’ Jewish War

Abstract In the opening of the Jewish War, Josephus claims not only that his history represents the true and full account of the war, but that, in violation of Greek historiographical conventions, its language expresses his personal grief. Josephus’ expression of personal emotion differentiates him from the Greek tradition, in which lament is customarily expressed in other genres. Josephus borrows instead from the biblical tradition of lament to mourn the fall of Jerusalem. The concept of moral injury from trauma studies describes the psychological damage caused by betrayal in combat settings, a phenomenon which Josephus’ comments about the causes of the disaster resemble. This elucidates why Josephus emphasizes his emotions in his history, drawing on past Jewish responses to imperial-colonial encounters to shape his personalized response to the catastrophe of his own day.

Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use

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...

The Use of the Term “Galileans” in the Writings of Flavius Josephus Revisited

Among central players of Josephus’s autobiography are those he refers to as the Galileans. Patronized by their one-time general as a restive and emotional mob ready to ignite at slightest indignation, the are of vital importance to Josephus’s imagined success as general of Jewish forces in Galilee. Josephus’s condescension toward the Galileans, strange as it is, is compounded by fact that he regularly contrasts them with inhabitants of Galilee’s major cities, principally Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Gabara. This essay revisits curious presentation of the in Josephus’s writings, picking up inchoate suggestion of Shaye Cohen of a Galilean ethnos. I argue that Josephus does indeed view the as ethnos of their own, distinguishable from Jews of Galilee, who mainly reside in region’s urban centers. That is, term Galileans in Josephus’s works functions first as a marker of ethnic belonging and so is not equivalent to an inhabitant of Galilee tout court. Josephus’s presentation of the Galileans, moreover, is colored by ethnic prejudice that essentializes a few traits and makes them foils for virtues of Josephus and Jews. The introduction to the in his Jewish War (J.W. 3.42), which portrays them as pugnacious from infancy, converges with their characterization in Life, written some two decades later. I briefly consider historical implications that follow from this reevaluation of the in Josephus.

«Повесть о разорении Рязани Батыем» в составе рукописных тематических ансамблей XVI–XVIII вв.

The article presents the results of the analysis of manuscript miscellanies from the sixteenth—eighteenth centuries which include senior redactions of The Tale of the Destruction of Riazan by Batu (redactions A, B1, and B2) and also seventeenth-century reworking of the text. The unity of the so-called “Zarazskii cycle”, a group of works of various genres all related, to a different extant, to miracles from the icon of St. Nicholas of Korsun (Zaraisk), suggested by V. L. Komarovich and D. S. Likhachev, turned out to be rather relative. In its entirety it is extremely rare, the sequence of texts varies, and quite often the “cycle” includes the legendary Tale of the Killing of Batu. Along with this local cycle, there is another historical All-Russian cycle about Batu’s invasion found in the Chronograph of 1599 (chapter 195) and the Russkii Vremennik. In manuscripts, the older redactions of The Tale of the Destruction of Riazan could be incorporated into more extensive selections of hagiographic texts together with lives of Russian saints, including those whose fate had been connected with the consequences of the Mongol-Tatar invasion (the lives of Metropolitan Alexey, Sergius of Radonezh, Alexander Nevsky). The article points out a tendency to form different types of historical thematic selections (“ensambles”), which combined literary works about battles with the Mongols (Story about the Bloody Battle of Mamai, Kazan History, Tales of Azov), other historical battles (Alexandria, History of the Jewish War, History of Troy, The Tale of the Capture of Tsargrad by the Turks) and texts about the Time of Troubles

“If You Are Not the King You Will Be Eventually …”: Eastern and Western Prophecies Concerning the Rise of Emperors

This article compares three literary-historical texts—two from the Jewish world and one from Mongolia—that record prophecies given to military commanders asserting that they will become the rulers of great empires and civilizations. In his The Jewish War, Josephus tells us that he prophesied that Vespasian would become emperor, an act that appears to have saved his life. A rabbinic tradition, related in several versions, similarly recounts that R. Johanan b. Zakkai prophesied that Vespasian would rise to power—he, too, thus being granted his freedom and the opportunity to rebuild his life and community in Yavneh. I compare Josephus and R. Johanan’s prophecies in the light of The Secret History of the Mongols. A chronicle describing the life of Temüjin, the founder of the Mongol Empire who gained fame as Genghis Khan (1162–1227), this tells how Temüjin, the young commander, was predicted to unite all the Mongol tribes and rule over a vast empire. The article analyzes the three prophecies, which occur in diverse genres, in the light of their historical background, hereby demonstrating the way in which written sources can serve anthropological phenomenological research and shed new light on ancient Jewish texts.

유대 전쟁(66～73)에서 사용된 로마군의 공성전 전술과 그 의미

유대 전쟁(66～73)에서 사용된 로마군의 공성전 전술과 그 의미

Johannesoffenbarung (Offb 1,1–5,14

Johannesoffenbarung (Offb 1,1–5,14

Taking Herod to Task: Source Critical and New Historical Methods of Reading Herod’s Trial

AbstractFor nearly three decades scholars of the first-century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, have debated this author’s methodologies and goals in writing his Jewish Antiquities. While source-critics view Josephus as a compiler, new historians have chosen to read Antiquities as primarily a literary work which reveals social, political, and intellectual history. A series of recent publications place these methodologies side by side but rarely coordinate them, which leaves out important insights of each group. At stake is how we moderns read Jewish history of the first century CE. I explore how parallel accounts of Herod’s trial while he was Tetrarch of the Galilee in Jewish War and in Antiquities can be justified by employing source-critical analysis as a first step to explain the changes made to the text of Antiquities before turning to new historians’ methodologies. We can better understand the function of Herod’s trial in Antiquities through this process.

Мессия, царь, пророк: священническое мировоззрение в книге Иосифа Флавия «Иудейская война» и в межзаветной литературе

Мессия, царь, пророк: священническое мировоззрение в книге Иосифа Флавия «Иудейская война» и в межзаветной литературе