Steve Mason Research Articles

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS: TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY, VOLUME 2A: JUDEAN WAR 4. By SteveMason. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xv + 325. Hardback, $212.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 48, Issue 4 p. 581-581 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Judaism (Hellenistic to Late Antiquity) FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS: TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY, VOLUME 2A: JUDEAN WAR 4. By Steve Mason. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xv + 325. Hardback, $212.00. First published: 30 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16157Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue4December 2022Pages 581-581 RelatedInformation

Review: Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

Review: <i>Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity</i>, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

"The Judeans" for οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι? Contested Ethnicity in the Fourth Gospel

Despite its apparent geographical restriction, the translation "the Judeans" for the Johannine expression οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι has gained many supporters in the past decade. This trend may have been influenced by the view of Steve Mason (2007) that the translation "the Judeans" is not limited to a geographical meaning but is inclusive of religious and political connotations as well. Subsequently, he posits that the term οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι should be translated "the Judeans" as it captures best the ethnic centrality of Judea in the lives of concurrent Ἰουδαῖοι as evinced, for example, in the writings of Flavius Josephus. This proposal calls our attention since we know that the Fourth Gospel was composed in the same generation, prompting us to ask whether we should also consider the rendition "the Judeans" for οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι or not. To answer this question, this article explores John’s ethnic portrayal of the Ἰουδαῖοι in his narrative and juxtaposes it with the Josephan understanding. Recognising the ambiguous and fluid nature of ethnic identification in the writings of John and Josephus, this article argues that the translation "the Judeans"—within Mason’s reasoning—does not match the contested ethnic context of the Johannine narrative.

Book Review: Steve Mason, A History of the Jewish War: A.D. 66–74

Book Review: Steve Mason, <i>A History of the Jewish War: A.D. 66–74</i>

Judaean Ethnicity and Christ-Following Voluntarism? A Reply to Steve Mason and Philip Esler

InNTS63 (2017), Steve Mason and Philip Esler responded to an earlier article of mine by setting out their grounds for a categorical distinction between Judaean ‘ethnic’ identity and Christ-following voluntary association and by rejecting the idea that drawing this contrast could reflect or legitimate modern notions of implicit Christian superiority. In this reply, intended to clarify the issues at stake and the grounds for disagreement, questions are first raised about various aspects of the approach to ethnicity that Mason and Esler adopt, illustrating the main points with brief examples from relevant texts and contemporary scholarship. Specifically, I consider the value of multiple rather than singular categorisations, the idea that ethnicity should be seen as multiple, fluid and hybrid in character, the relationship between ethnicity and religion, and the contrast between real and fictive kinship. Finally, I return to the issue of the ways in which scholarship may reflect its contexts of production and the need to probe this critically, offering specific illustrations of the reasons for my claims. Whether my particular suggestions concerning the implications of the dichotomy between Judaean/Jewish ethnicity and ‘trans-ethnic’ Christian identity are right or wrong, I argue for the importance of critical reflection on the impact of contemporary location on historical reconstruction.

Gendered Language and the Construction of Jewish Identity in 2 Maccabees

Gendered Language and the Construction of Jewish Identity in 2 Maccabees Joshua Ezra Burns (bio) When thinking about Judaism and gender, it is a common misconception to assume that the interface between the two is an exclusively modern phenomenon. According to conventional wisdom, Judaism is an ancient construction steeped in the scientific and sociocultural sensibilities of people who lived long before the contemporary distinction between sex and gender came to be articulated as such. Yet as that distinction has made its way into the discipline of Jewish studies, several scholars have observed that the ancient sages who authored Judaism's Talmudic intellectual canon exhibited acute anxieties about the instability of gender binaries analogous to those detected by contemporary gender theorists in modern texts. Thus, they have proposed to look within classical Jewish texts for signs of non-binary gender identities later written out of Judaism by self-appointed regulators of rabbinic orthodoxy.1 In this paper I hope to contribute to this project with a discussion of the earliest text that identifies Jewish culture as "Judaism." This text is 2 Maccabees, a second-century BCE Jewish composition predating the Talmudic era and preserved exclusively in Christian scriptural traditions. I shall contend that the author of 2 Maccabees used gendered language in his construction of Judaism to make the point that women were just as likely as men to exemplify its values, a point lost on subsequent Jewish generations who propagated more strictly hierarchical gender regimes. Finally, I argue that it useful to understand 2 Maccabees' negotiations between Jewish and Greek culture in the work. Interrogating Jewish Identity in Antiquity Before considering how 2 Maccabees articulates its author's sense of Judaism, it will be instructive to address what it meant to be a Jew in antiquity.2 Conventional wisdom has it that it meant something not unlike what it means to be a Jew today, namely to identify in whole or in part with the multifaceted religious, ethnic, and cultural system traditionally known as Judaism.3 Yet the very premise of describing "Jews" and "Judaism" in antiquity has been challenged [End Page 107] of late, eliciting a minor scholarly imbroglio with far-reaching implications for the documentation of the Jewish past.4 That debate is a consequence of an apologetic trend in biblical scholarship that started in the mid-twentieth century. After the Holocaust, Christian theologians became sensitive to the ills of antisemitism and sought to dull the sharp rhetoric against the Jews embedded within their sacred texts. Their solution, as it were, was to change the translation of the Greek term ioudaios (plural: ioudaioi), a linguistic cognate of "Jew" utilized in the New Testament and traditionally understood to indicate the Jewish identities of Jesus' opponents. As the hostile portrait of those Jews had given Jews in general a bad reputation in Christian discourse, scholars took to rendering ioudaios no longer as "Jew," but as "Judean," an ostensibly value-neutral demonym indicating nothing more than its subject's association with the long-since-vanished territory of Judea. The Christian animosity once heaped upon the Jews was thereby redirected toward the Judeans, a people who could not possibly be offended since they no longer existed as such.5 Yet what began as a well-meaning effort to circumvent the vilification of the Jew in early Christian texts eventually went off course. In his new edition of the writings of the first-century CE Jewish chronicler Flavius Josephus, Steve Mason decided to take the premise of recasting Jews as Judeans to its logical conclusion. Following the precedent of New Testament scholarship, Mason opted to render the generations of ioudaioi documented by Josephus as Judeans, effectively erasing every last Jew from the historian's work.6 He explained his rationale in a subsequent publication addressed to his detractors,7 first noting that the Greek word ioudaios and its Latin cognate iudaeus were commonly understood in antiquity to indicate one's nationality or ethnicity. According to Mason, the reinvention of the ethnic "Judean" as a religious "Jew" was the result of an invidious Christian arrogation of the terminology in question. Early Christian writers seeking to malign the erstwhile adversaries of Jesus, Mason maintained, cast...

More than Meets the Eye: Incongruity and Observation in Josephus’s Account of the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus

More than Meets the Eye: Incongruity and Observation in Josephus’s Account of the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus

Ἰουδαϊσμός – ἰουδαΐζειν – ἰουδαϊκῶς Sprachliche und semantische Überlegungen im Blick auf Gal 1,13 f. und 2,14

Abstract:Since late antiquity there has been diversity in the particulars of the interpretation of the Greek term Ἰουδαϊσμός in Galatians 1,13–14, but the prevailing notion in most cases is that Ἰουδαϊσμός signifies “Judaism”, the religion of the Jewish people. On the contrary, in a provocative article Steve Mason proposed a radical revision of this reading of Ἰουδαϊσμός and its cognates (cf. Gal 2,13–15; 3,28). According to him (and other scholars) there was no category of “Judaism” in the Graeco-Roman World, no “religion” too, and that the Ἰουδαῖοι were understood as an ethnic group comparable to other ethnic groups. Consequently Mason claims that the substantive adjective Ἰουδαῖος has always the ethnic-regional sense “Judean”, never the religious sense “Jew”. To my opinion this view is partly right and partly wrong. Starting from the grammatical and semantic data provided by 2 and 4 Maccabees and attested in the epigraphic record this essay aims at two points: It is argued, first, that due to the fact that Ἰουδαϊσμός and its cognates obviously denote also a religious dimension it seems very unlikely to hold the view of a purely ethnic centered conception of Jewish identity. Further, that the Galatian controversy and the incident at Antioch, described in Gal 2,11–14, reflect a quarrel within the early church about the crucial question concerning the constitutive requirements in regard to the construction, formation, and performance of Christian identity.

Josephus on James the Just? A re-evaluation of Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9.1

ABSTRACTThis article reviews the well-known (supposedly Josephan) mention of James as “the Brother of Jesus” (i.e. Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9.1.200). Here, with reference to, inter alia, the insights of Earl Doherty, Steve Mason, Peter Kirby, John Paul Meier, Nikos Kokkinos, as well as to certain key findings gleaned from critical readings of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew and Contra Celsum, I attempt to demonstrate Origen’s possible role in the creation of this long-suspected fraudulent text. In this regard, by highlighting a number of Origen’s key philosophical and theological refutations it becomes evident that apart from the unlikelihood of Josephus ever writing about James, Origen must now be considered the primary suspect for what is possibly a third century CE Christian forgery.

A History of the Jewish War a.d. 66–74 by Steve Mason

Reviewed by: A History of the Jewish War a.d. 66–74 by Steve Mason Carson Bay Steve Mason. A History of the Jewish War a.d. 66–74. Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 689. $150.00. ISBN 978-0-521-85329-3. One metric of scholarship considers how much it pushes the envelope in, or shifts, a given field. By this standard, Mason’s history receives high marks. [End Page 580] Reframing how the so-called “Jewish/Judean War” is understood according to various sources, this historical reconstruction challenges numerous longstanding assumptions and provides an essential guide to understanding the Judean revolt and Jerusalem’s subsequent destruction under the Flavians. The book’s strengths include attention to regional conflicts, which constitute the war’s oft-neglected backbone, and careful interdisciplinary analysis that allows tentative reconstructions. Weaknesses stem from neglect of important analytical lenses (like religion) and the “softness” of history that often relies heavily upon the imagination. Still, Mason’s work is exceptional, dealing holistically with complex historical dynamics of ambiguous events in a theoretically sophisticated, yet eminently readable fashion. Mason’s first chapter contextualizes the Judean War as one monumentalized as cosmically significant in the millennia since the events transpired, but which was in fact a relatively minor Roman accomplishment. Mason rightly explains that Titus’ triumph “screamed out ‘Made in Rome’” (21). Jerusalem’s destruction was not a triumph-worthy feat, but was publicized as such. Mason even states that Josephus’ Judean War propounds that the Flavians had not conquered Judaea; this point, I think, would take a very sharp-witted reader to understand, and I doubt that Josephus would have admitted as much at a book signing. Chapter 2 introduces history as “the methodological investigation of the human past” (71) and Josephus’ Judean War as situated rhetoric. The chapter contains much more as well, and illustrates Mason’s habit of using nineteenth- and twentieth-century parallels to make points applicable to the first century; for example, Mason uses Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm II as examples to show that “commanders of invading armies have always received exuberant affirmation from fast-thinking natives” (127)—comparanda that render Josephus’ fawning reception of Vespasian neither surprising nor unique. Chapter 3 makes putative realities of ancient warfare real for the reader, completing Mason’s foundational “Contexts” section. The fourth chapter contextualizes the causes of the Judean revolt, foregrounding Josephus’ “mostly political” interests. Mason assumes an ancient “realism” in which “each nation must attend to its own survival and well-being, because no one else will” (218). This perspective proves enlightening, especially in untangling the real yet rarely cited engine for the revolt: local tensions between poleis/ethnē, exacerbated by imperial pressure. This is where the insertion of religious factors would have helped Mason’s analysis. Mason has elsewhere argued, as he does here (88–91), that “Judaism” as a category is out of place when discussing the ancient world, because the reality of “religion” existed as part of an irreducibly complex cultural system. However, failure to employ religion as a heuristic lens here means that Mason’s analysis of the diverse ethnic groups which were at odds with one another in Syria and Palestine leading up to the war is not as sharp as it might be. Religion was a major factor in the history of the Judean War, and it could have received a little more attention here. Chapters 5 and 6 treat the Judean War’s precursors under Nero. Here Mason illustrates his “history as inquiry” principle by imagining realistic scenarios in which Roman peacekeeping in Judea turned unpredictably into real Roman–Judean conflict. Eschewing discussion of motives, Mason sifts recoverable data in designing a believable, if necessarily speculative, reconstruction. Chapters 7 and 8 bear the weight of Mason’s overall project, explaining what probably happened surrounding Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 ce. Significant here is Mason’s translation of Ζηλωτής as “disciple,” offloading the baggage of the English “zealot” and [End Page 581] signaling the (Semitic) term’s positive connotations; Mason’s translation may well be right, though some scholars will not like it. Chapter 8’s discussion of numismatic evidence from...

First Century Galilee: A Fresh Examination of the Sources by Bradley W. Root (review)

FIRST CENTURY GALILEE: A FRESH EXAMINATION OF THE SOURCES By Bradley W. Root. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 378. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. xvii + 228 pp.Bradley W. Root makes a significant contribution to ongoing conversations about the cultural, religious, and economic environment of first-century Galilee. His study, based on the 2009 University of California, San Diego history dissertation he wrote under David Goodblatt, focuses on seven issues: ethnicity, urbanization, economic conditions, political climate, religious ethos, Jewish-Gentile relations, and Galilean-Judean relations. In exploring these themes, Root argues that scholars often prematurely jump to historical reconstruction without sufficiently wrestling with the methodological problems posed by their sources. He thus devotes the bulk of his twelve-chapter book to critical analysis of individual sources, leaving historical synthesis for the end. He sifts through the writings of Josephus, the classic four sources of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, the hypothetical sayings source Q, special Matthean material, and special Lukan material), the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of John, and published archaeological reports. He does not engage rabbinic texts in depth because of the methodological difficulty of identifying traditions that accurately preserve glimpses of the first century.In combing through Josephus's Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, and Life, Root takes his methodological cues from scholars such as Steve Mason and Shaye J. D. Cohen. Noting the oft-discussed inconsistencies in Josephus's works, Root rightly concludes that some are so dramatic that they probably reflect a conscious decision by Josephus to alter his presentation of events. Furthermore, he observes, is about the events that took place in that region [Galilee] that Josephus had the greatest incentive to lie (11). Nonetheless, Root argues that the consistency of Josephus's comments about region suggests their general accuracy. Though Josephus drastically exaggerated the size of Galilee's population to boost his own prestige as its military commander, he probably not far off the mark when praising the region's agricultural productivity and general prosperity. Josephus was unable to come up with any major problems that Galilee experienced while Antipas Tetrarch (21) and he did not report the same level of mid-century banditry there that he does for Judea. Though Josephus depicted rural Galileans as hostile toward Sepphoris during the revolt, he did not attribute such antipathy to class, ethnic, or economic tensions. In short, Josephus's portrayal suggests a region that fared well in many respects for most of the first century, with relatively few communities suffering even in the revolt.Root's exploration of gospel materials pays careful attention to issues of provenance and Tendenz, finding varying amounts of information applicable to his chosen focal points. He finds little explicit support for views of the region as extensively hellenized or romanized, thoroughly urbanized, and in the midst of widespread upheaval because of economic crisis, and considerable evidence for a predominantly Jewish population with strong cultural ties to Judea. Though the Gospel of Thomas has figured prominently in much recent historical Jesus research, Root's evaluation of it finds few sayings that shed much light on Galilee's cultural ethos. …

Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 7b: Judean Antiquities 15, written by Steve Mason

Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 7b: Judean Antiquities 15, written by Steve Mason

Abstract IA18: A brain metastasis-promoting role for cathepsin S identified from analysis of tumor- and stroma-supplied proteolytic networks

Abstract Cancer cells in an aggressive primary tumor are adept at exploiting their local tissue microenvironment. In contrast, when metastatic cells leave these favorable surroundings, they must possess or acquire traits that will allow them to survive and colonize foreign, potentially hostile tissue environments. The obstacles that metastasizing tumor cells encounter vary from organ to organ, and are highly influenced by non-cancerous stromal cells of the tumor microenvironment. For example, the blood-brain barrier, composed of endothelial cells, astrocytes and pericytes, presents a far more formidable structure for tumor cells to penetrate, compared to the fenestrated capillaries in the bone marrow. While the primary tumor microenvironment has emerged as an important regulator of cancer progression, it is less well understood how different tissue environments influence metastatic processes. We used a dual species-specific microarray platform to uncover tumor-stroma interactions that modulate organ tropism of brain, bone and lung metastasis in animal models of cancer. Among the differentially regulated tumor- and stroma-specific genes, we identified cathepsin S as a novel regulator of breast-to-brain metastasis. In breast cancer patients, high cathepsin S expression at the primary site correlated with decreased brain metastasis-free survival. Both macrophages and tumor cells produce cathepsin S, and only the combined depletion significantly reduced brain metastasis in experimental models in vivo. We show that cathepsin S specifically mediates blood-brain barrier transmigration via proteolytic processing of the junctional adhesion molecule (JAM)-B. Pharmacological inhibition of cathepsin S significantly reduced experimental brain metastasis, supporting its consideration as a therapeutic target for this disease. Citation Format: Lisa Sevenich, Robert Bowman, Steve Mason, Daniela Quail, Franck Rapaport, Benelita Elie, Edi Brogi, Priscilla Brastianos, William Hahn, Leslie Holsinger, Joan Massagué, Christina Leslie, Johanna A. Joyce. A brain metastasis-promoting role for cathepsin S identified from analysis of tumor- and stroma-supplied proteolytic networks. [abstract]. In: Abstracts: AACR Special Conference on Cellular Heterogeneity in the Tumor Microenvironment; 2014 Feb 26-Mar 1; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(1 Suppl):Abstract nr IA18. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.CHTME14-IA18

How Many Judaisms Were There?

This article assesses two hypotheses connected with ancient Judaism: the view that Judaism was so diverse in antiquity that it is best understood as a multiple phenomenon ("Judaisms"), and the view that "Judaism" itself is a problematic concept for antiquity, in that there was no disembedded category for religion in antiquity, and thus ancient Jewishness can be understood only in ethnic, and not religious, terms. The dual concepts of "Judaisms" and "Judaismlessness" reflect larger assumptions with respect to definition, treatment of ancient sources, and scholarly commitments. Attention to the contributions of Jacob Neusner, Jonathan Z. Smith, Steve Mason, and Daniel Boyarin provide a context for analysis and critique, culminating in the argument for a radical narrowing of the scholarly definition of "religion."

A “Jew” by Any Other Name?

This essay reviews and assesses current theories concerning the origins of “Jew(s)” and their relation to “Judaean(s)” and “Judaism.” It is organized around the works of four scholars – Shaye Cohen, Joseph Blenkinsopp, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Steve Mason – that epitomize current contending schools of thought on these matters. While there is much of value in each scholar’s arguments, all suffer from problems associated with reserving the category “Jew(s)” exclusively for purported adherents of a system of theological belief termed “Judaism” as well as with historicized evolutionary narratives that find “ethnic Judaeans” superseded by “religious Jews” (Cohen, Blenkinsopp, Mason) or that find “Judaism and Jews” to be subjects of biblical accounts of the earliest Israelites (Brettler).

How Many Judaisms Were There?

This article assesses two hypotheses connected with ancient Judaism: the view that Judaism was so diverse in antiquity that it is best understood as a multiple phenomenon (“Judaisms”), and the view that “Judaism” itself is a problematic concept for antiquity, in that there was no disembedded category for religion in antiquity, and thus ancient Jewishness can be understood only in ethnic, and not religious, terms. The dual concepts of “Judaisms” and “Judaismlessness” reflect larger assumptions with respect to definition, treatment of ancient sources, and scholarly commitments. Attention to the contributions of Jacob Neusner, Jonathan Z. Smith, Steve Mason, and Daniel Boyarin provide a context for analysis and critique, culminating in the argument for a radical narrowing of the scholarly definition of “religion.”

The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations (review)

Reviewed by: The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations Stuart Robertson The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations, by Mark Andrew Brighton. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. 184 pages. $132.00. This book is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation under the direction of Prof. Steve Mason. It provides a careful "literary/rhetorical analysis" of Josephus' account of the Sicarii, the dagger-men among the Jewish insurgents against the Romans in the latter days of the Second Temple period. Here we find two views of "the mind of the maker," to use Dorothy Sayers' term. First we see into the mind of Brighton and see that unlike many modern scholars studying Josephus, he trusts this ancient author. Second, Brighton looks into Josephus' mind, perceiving that he subtly negotiated his way between the problem of denying to Rome the credit for ending the reign of terror of the Sicarii, and branding these assassins of their fellow Jews as without redeeming features. Josephus argues that the Sicarii got what they deserved, death for their actions that led to the destruction of the Temple. Yet, they gave evidence of some of the nobility of the Jewish martyrs who in other circumstances preferred death to either losing their freedom or denying their God. It was God rather than Rome, Josephus subtly argues, who deserves the credit for the way the Sicarii at Masada met their end. Brighton shows that Josephus does not always use the term Sicarii to refer to perpetrators of every violent criminal act of Jews hostile to Rome. What was unique about the Sicarii is that they killed fellow Jews. They are usually being referred to when Josepus uses the terms lestai (bandits), stasis (civil unrest), or tolmé (daring). Josephus states that the Sicarii took this name for themselves because the daggers they used in their assassinations were like the Roman siccus, a short sword, easily hidden in one's garments. It was unclear to me if Josephus meant they earned this epithet, or that they composed the title [End Page 178] for themselves. Why would Jews so zealous for freedom and purity of religion choose such a negative appellation? In the end, Brighton is convinced that the zealots that fortified themselves and laid down their lives at Masada were Sicarii, even though Josephus does not refer to them as such. Those that died at Masada merited this name for their periodic raids in which they killed fellow Jews. The author perceives a chiasmic structure in the Judean War as it reports rebellious movements at the beginning and at the end. Towards the beginning, War 1.32 tells of stasis during the latter days of the Maccabees, when dissension erupted among some of the "Jewish nobles" so that followers of Tobias actually plundered the temple and interrupted the sacrifices, causing Onias, his rival for the high priesthood, to retreat to Heliopolis in Egypt, where he built a temple like that in Jerusalem. At the end of the story, in War 7.426, Onias' temple is described as unlike the Jerusalem Temple, but with an altar like that in Jerusalem. After this temple was destroyed by the then governor, the Sicarii carried on their violent deeds elsewhere in north Africa, in Cyrene—as the Sicarii at Masada did away from Jerusalem. Their ringleader, Jonathan, like Eleazar who had led the Sicarii at Masada, did not succeed, but his lack of success was more inglorious because Jonathan died in monumental agony, whereas Eleazar had died nobly at Masada. Josephus reports that he was exonerated when the Sicarii in Cyrene tried to implicate him in their misdeeds. Perhaps this too is part of the chiasm, the coming around again of this tragic element in the story of the Jews in the latter days of the Second Temple. Despised by many fellow Jews as a parvenu after his capture and support by the Flavian emperors, at the end Josephus is freed from blame, at least on the account of complicity with the Sicarii (7,448). This excellent book is organized succinctly so as to keep in focus the author's objective...

Josephus's Essenes and the Qumran Community

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Since the discovery of the first scrolls in caves near Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls), scholars have noted many similarities between these texts and the accounts of the Essenes in the works of Josephus, Philo, Pliny, and others. From the beginning of Qumran studies until the present, most researchers have agreed with the proposal first put forth by Eleazar L. Sukenik that the Qumran community was a branch of the larger Essene movement, a theory often referred to as the Qumran-Essene hypothesis.1 Increasingly, however, this thesis has been challenged by a number of scholars who argue that the supposed parallels between the scrolls and the classical sources have been exaggerated or misunderstood, and that the archaeological remains at Khirbet Qumran do not match the lifestyle described in any of these texts. In recent years these critics have claimed that Josephus-arguably the most important source of information for proponents of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis-should be read on his own terms, without any reference to the Qumran scrolls, to understand how he creatively shaped his source material regarding the Essenes to fashion a distinctive narrative of the past. This view, while recognizing Josephus's creativity, suffers from the same criticism that it levels against the thesis that it seeks to overturn: it fails to read the Qumran scrolls on their own terms apart from other ancient accounts of the Essenes. This article focuses on three issues in the current debate, the interconnectedness of which is often overlooked: the relationship between the dates of the Qumran scrolls, the archaeological remains at Khirbet Qumran, and Josephus's accounts of the Essenes. The first section highlights some basic methodological issues relevant to the present discussion, particularly the nature of the sources and their interpretation. The second section focuses on the relationship between the Community Rule and other works found among the Qumran scrolls to show that a distinctive sectarian community produced and collected these documents.2 The third section establishes the connection between the scrolls and Khirbet Qumran. The fourth section examines aspects of Josephus's testimony about the Essenes to show that his account of this sect closely matches the lifestyle described in the Community Rule and other sectarian scrolls and reflected in the archaeological remains at Khirbet Qumran. It also suggests that Josephus described a later phase of this movement that was close to but not identical with the sectarian community depicted in the majority of scrolls, which date to the first century b.c.e.We conclude that Josephus's testimony is a valuable source of information for understanding the sectarian community at Qumran, whose members were part of the wider Essene movement. I. The Nature of the Debate In a series of influential articles, Steve Mason has posed what is perhaps the most significant recent challenge to the Qumran-Essene hypothesis. He criticizes the use of Josephus's accounts of the Essenes to establish the identity of the Qumran sectarians.3 Mason's objections reflect the recent trend in Josephus research that eschews using the historian's works as a list of facts to compare with other texts, without any regard for his literary creativity. As Mason and other opponents of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis note, scholars have long used the Qumran texts as a guide for interpreting the Greek and Latin sources, while at the same time drawing on the latter texts to understand the scrolls. With his insistence that we must reevaluate Josephus' Essenes in situ-without assuming a DSS [Dead Sea Scrolls] referent, Mason echoes the views of others who have likewise argued against using Josephus in conjunction with the scrolls and archaeology to buttress the Qumran- Essene hypothesis.4 Josephus's books must occupy a central place in the discussion of the Qumran- Essene theory since he is the only ancient writer who claims to have intimate knowledge of the Essenes (Life 10-12). …

Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of my Border Lines )

Rethinking Jewish Christianity:An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of my Border Lines) Daniel Boyarin (bio) Keywords Daniel Boyarin, Oskar Skarsaune, Reidar Hvalvik, Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, Matt Jackson-McCabe, Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups, Jewish Christianity, early Judaism, soggenante, Ioudaismos Reflections occasioned by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, eds. Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007. Pp. xxx + 930. Matt Jackson-McCabe , ed. Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2007. Pp. x + 389. It is not just to be clever that I have appropriated Michael Williams's title;1 I want to suggest that the argument for dismantling the one (Gnosticism) is startlingly similar to the argument for dismantling the other (Jewish Christianity). Adding Karen King's important insights into the comparative mix,2 I would say that the term "Jewish Christianity" always functions as a term of art in a modernist heresiology: It is a marker of the too Jewish side of the Goldilocks fairytale that is "ordinary" Christianity, to cite for the moment Oskar Skarsaune's heresiological terminology.3 I propose that any definition of "Jewish Christianity" implies an entire theory of the development of early Christianity and Judaism,4 and I will [End Page 7] sketch out such a theory that, if accepted, virtually precludes, in my opinion, any continued scholarly usefulness for the term. Two recent essays introducing two volumes of new thinking on the topic of sogennante Jewish Christianity exemplify for me the pitfalls of using this terminology itself, even in the hands of very critical writers indeed. My case for abandoning this term is an argument in three movements. In the first movement, I will present evidence and discuss evidence already given for the claim that there is never in premodern times a term that non-Christian Jews use to refer to their "religion," that Ioudaismos is, indeed, not a religion (this term to be defined), and that consequently it cannot be hyphenated in any meaningful way. In the second movement, I will try to show that the self-understanding of Christians of Christianity as a religion was slow developing as well5 and that a term such as "Jewish Christian" (or rather its ancient equivalents, Nazorean, Ebionite) was part and parcel of that development itself and thus eo ipso, and not merely factitiously, a heresiological term of art. In the third movement, I will try to show that even the most critical, modern, and best-willed usages of the term in scholarship devolve willy-nilly to heresiology. If my arguments be accepted, there should be as little justification for continued use of the term "Jewish Christianity" as a scholarly designation as there is for the term "heresy" itself (except as the very object of heresiological discourse). 1. There is No Judaism It seems highly significant that there is no word in premodern Jewish parlance that means "Judaism." When the term Ioudaismos appears in non-Christian Jewish writing—to my knowledge only in 2 Maccabees—it doesn't mean Judaism the religion but the entire complex of loyalties and practices that mark off the people of Israel; after that, is used as the name of the Jewish religion only by writers who do not identify themselves with and by that name at all, until, it would seem, well into the nineteenth century.6 It might seem, then, that Judaism has not, until some time in modernity, existed at all, that whatever moderns might be tempted to abstract out, to disembed from the culture of Jews and call [End Page 8] their religion, was not so disembedded nor ascribed particular status by Jews until very recently. In a recent article, Steve Mason has decisively demonstrated that which other scholars (including the writer of these lines) have been bruiting about in the last few years, namely, that there is no "native" term that means "Judaism" in any language used by Jews of themselves until modernity,7 and, moreover that the term Ioudaioi is almost never, if ever, used by people to refer to themselves as "Jews."8 In a fascinating and [End Page...

Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times (review)

Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times, by Alice Whealey. Studies in Biblical Literature 36. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. 231 pages. $65.95. The passage in Josephus' extensive bequest to posterity most discussed today is one not everybody is sure he wrote. The Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus' comment on Jesus Christ, was apparently not of great interest in the first two centuries. This may be because it wasn't available. But interest in this questionable passage since the Protestant Reformation has more than made up for the early lack of it. Alice Whealey's last comment in this book is, . . after four hundred years the question of the Testimonium Flavianum's authenticity has still not been settled (p. 195). It appears that Whealey shares the view of Louis Feldman, whose influence is strong in her study, that some form of the received text is authentic, though not that Josephus wrote, He was the Christ. (I will refer to the passage in question as TF.) Josephus wrote under the patronage of the Flavian dynasty of Roman emperors, and apparently all that he wrote was stored in the imperial library in Rome. Christians handed on Josephus' works through the centuries after this library perished, probably at the time the barbarians sacked the city in the early fifth century CE. A question Whealey doesn't address that is pertinent to the matter of the early Christian use of Josephus is how Christians would have had access to the imperial library before Emperor Constantine lifted the ban on Christianity. The received text is first quoted outside of Antiquities 18 in the writings of Eusebius, who wrote after Christianity was a legal religion. Constantine was Eusebius' patron, so he would have granted him access to the imperial library. But was this library moved to Constantinople when Constantine established his headquarters at the eastern capital? How did Origen (185-254 CE) know of Josephus' works, living in Alexandria in a time when Christianity was an illegal religion? This question surely bears on the matter of why Christians before Eusebius didn't make more use of Josephus. Josephus on Jesus is divided into five chapters. In the first two chapters the author asks what sort of writers cited TF and why? She is very interested in detecting the motives of those who used TF. The last three chapters explore in detail later moments in the controversy, beginning with the sixteenth century and ending with the modern author Shlomo Pines' discussion of the medieval Arabic translation of Agapius of Hierapolis, which he takes to be an authentic citation of TF. I pass over the author's discussion of the early history of the argument that has been adequately presented elsewhere, as in Steve Mason's Josephus and the New Testament (which Whealey does not mention), etc. It is the discussion of the periods after the Reformation that are the contribution of particular interest here. Whereas the major participants in the controversy are often mentioned in summary form elsewhere, Whealey provides details from lesser-known writers, some of whom may constitute the chief interest in this book for many. Where else can one find such intriguing detail brought together in a small, albeit not inexpensive book ($66)? For example, the author traces the discussion prompted by the late sixteenth-century legal scholar, Hubert Giphanius, who argued that TF is spurious (pp. 77ff). What Giphanius actually wrote does not survive. Did he actually write what is attributed to him? A report of what he wrote is found in an extract of a letter by Sebastian Lepusculus, a contemporary Greek and Hebrew professor at Basel. One senses the delight in Whealey, the sleuth, as she pursues the question of what Giphanius wrote from the conflicting reports of what he said in the paper trail that followed. Here is a story within a story, as discussion of a disputed passage in Josephus is traced through a disputed passage in Giphanius! …