This document was developed by prosecutor A. Josephus Jitta, Chief, Office of Justice, Alkmaar, The Netherlands, with assistance from physicians and is typical of the euthanasia report forms completed by medical examiners and coroners In The Netherlands.

Translation:Hendrik Josephus POS, „Phénoménologie et linguistique.“ In: Keur uit de verspreide geschrift en van Dr. H. J. Pos. Vol. I. Assen: Van Loghum Slaterus 1957, p. 131–141.

Names of Romans in Josephus are notoriously liable to corruption. Two minor characters in his account of the assassination of Caligula have so far defied plausible emendation, ‘Timidius’ in A.J. 19.33–4 and ‘Bathybius’ in 19.91. The sources of Josephus’ account of this dramatic episode were unquestionably high class—two, rather than one, Latin historians, as Wiseman has demonstrated, the main one being Cluvius Rufus, the other possibly Fabius Rusticus.

Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 82:6, ‘I said, You are gods’, a riposte to the accusation that he had blasphemed by making himself equal to God, has attracted considerable attention. The latest suggestion by Jerome H. Neyrey rightly insists that any solution to the problem should take account of the internal logic of the Psalm and argues that it derives from or prefigures a rabbinic Midrash on the Psalm which refers it to the restoration of the immortality lost by Adam to (...) Israel at the giving of the Torah on Sinai. This immortality was then lost again because of the sin of the golden calf. Whilst agreeing that the Psalm is interpreted in the context of the giving of the Torah on Sinai, this article argues that its reference is directed towards Moses on Sinai rather than Israel in general. This accords with the interpretation of Philo and Josephus and other sources much earlier than the Mekkilta de Rabbi Ishmael that Moses is rightly called a god and is assumed to heaven in glory without dying. Rather than deny this attribution of divine features to Moses due to his reception of the Torah on Sinai, John argues that the Torah was received from the hands of Jesus as the Logos. Therefore, Moses’s derivative divine features simply confirm the true divinity of the Logos as the expression of the Father. Moses could be called a god because he knew Jesus as Logos and wrote about him, but he sinned and died like any mortal. The corollary is that Moses and his disciples lost their status and died like any mortal, whilst the disciples of Jesus who are ‘taught by God’ and believe in the Incarnate Logos, have not only seen the glory denied to Moses but are born from above to become divinised as tekna theou and do not die. (shrink)

The Hebrew Bible mentions 12 precious stones arranged in four rows of three each on the high priest’s breastpiece in two lists (Ex 28:17–20 and 39:10–13). Nine of these precious stones reappear in the Tyrian king’s ‘covering’ in Ezekiel 28:13 in three groups of three. Although the two lists in Exodus are identical, the order in Ezekiel is slightly different. In Septuagint (LXX) Ezekiel there are 12 precious stones. However, the number and order in the LXX lists (LXX-Ex 28:17–20 and (...) 36:17–20; LXX-Ezk 28:13) are constant in all three cases. The same 12 stones as in the LXX appear, but with variation in order, in two accounts found in Josephus ( The Wars of the Jews Book 5, Chapter 5, Section 7; The Antiquities of the Jews Book 3, Chapter 7, Section 5). The list of precious stones in Revelation 21:19–20 that adorn the 12 foundations of the New Jerusalem is reminiscent of the breastpiece, but it shows four new names along with eight that are known from the LXX; it is not clear if it is a fresh translation from the Hebrew list. This article focuses on the relationships amongst these lists by examining the arrangement, translation and symbolism of these precious stones. Contribution: The precious stones in the high priest’s breastpiece (Exod 28:17–20, 39:10–13) were rendered differently and re-arranged by the Septuagint and other later versions for new contexts, audiences and theological purposes. Unknown stones were rendered with similar stones known to the translator or the incipient text terms were transliterated. (shrink)

Nabataean history is significantly overlooked in the works of ancient historians. Josephus is an exception to this, as he includes several important events from Nabataean history in De Bello Judaico and Antiquitates Judaicae. However, his retelling of these events differs between the two works. In this paper, I argue that Josephus became more “pro-Roman” over time and eventually overshadowed an accurate portrayal of Nabataean history in his later narrative. He undermined moments of tension between Rome and Nabataea in (...) order to showcase Roman power in the Near East, even beyond reality. In support of this argument, I analyze the Nabataean sections of Josephus’ works, as each passage has overlapping details, but significantly different emphasis, characterization, and perspective through variations in terminology, imagery, and tone. Though problematic, Josephus has preserved a unique look into Roman-Nabataean relations in the two centuries prior to the incorporation of Nabataea into the Empire. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza los presupuestos de la política nacionalista e imperialista de la circuncisión forzosa en el reino de Judea, tal como fue desarrollada en el tiempo de los Asmoneos, y propone tomar en consideración esa política al estudiar el asunto de la circuncisión en los escritos de Pablo (especialmente en la Carta a los Gálatas) y en los de Josefo. Estos dos judíos del siglo I rechazaron la circuncisiónforzada de los gentiles al crear sus propias comunidades, y así considero (...) esencial comprender su actitud como reacción ante el recuerdo de aquella política de Judea. La investigación precedente acerca de este asunto se ha dirigido sobre todo a la cuestión de la conversión y no ha establecido la relación directa entre Pablo, Josefo y dicha política de circuncisión forzasa. (shrink)

Few commentators seem willing to recognize Josephus’ indebtedness to 1 Maccabees in Jewish War 1.31–56 where he gives a succinct account of the Hasmonean revolt and its aftermath. Noting the many disagreements here with 1 Maccabees, they conclude that Josephus had been entirely dependent on other sources, usually Nicolaus of Damascus. The present article seeks to challenge this apparent consensus. The many agreements between Jewish War 1.31–56 and 1 Maccabees—especially with respect to the events which Josephus chooses (...) to record and the order in which he arranges them—constitute strong positive evidence that Josephus was using 1 Maccabees as his primary source. Most disagreements can be seen as his redactions of 1 Maccabees, even if some are a bit puzzling and others do, in fact, suggest that he used other sources in addition. His use of other sources seems minimal, in any case, being limited to the beginning and end of his narrative. His use of Nicolaus cannot be ruled out completely but seems a priori unlikely. (shrink)

The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 was an unquestionably traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people. By all accounts it was a social, political, and theological disaster. As such, contemporary Jewish figures wrestled with the meaning of the event. This article analyses the efforts by two figures in this internal Jewish dialogue to provide this meaning, namely, the historian Josephus and Jesus of Nazareth. We will see that in both cases (...) the meaning of the destruction was rooted in the firm conviction of the God of Israel’s existence and his self-revelation in Scripture. The temple was destroyed not apart from God or in spite of God, but in full accordance with his will. This will, moreover, was judged to be accessible through Scripture, both in terms of its prophetic value and its establishment of a metanarrative – redemptive history – that provided a framework for historical events. In addition, the reason for the destruction was judged by both to be the sins of (certain) people. The major difference between them lay rather in the question of which sins exactly were judged to be responsible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Flavius Josephus and Flavian RomeErich S. GruenJonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives, eds. Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvi + 400 pp. 8 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $135.Josephus is now coming into his own. Previously scorned as tendentious time-server and panderer to the powerful, he has received increasingly serious attention in recent years. Indeed, a veritable Josephus industry has (...) emerged, with regular international colloquia, a burgeoning number of publications, and major commentaries on individual works (and parts of works) in the course of publication though collaborative projects in both German and English. And properly so. Josephus for too long remained the province primarily of scholars in Jewish studies. Classicists, for the most part, marginalized or ignored him. That neglect seems quite myopic in view of the unusually large corpus and the importance of Josephus not only for Jewish history but also for classical literature and historiography, for the perceptions of imperial power by subordinate peoples, and for the place of "alien wisdom" in the intellectual and cultural world of the Roman empire. The shift toward fuller and closer scrutiny of Josephus' work by classical scholars is now well underway—and most welcome.The essays in this volume laudably promote that enterprise. They grow out of a stimulating conference held at York University in Toronto in 2001. The editors deserve credit for focusing on a critical but largely overlooked subject: the relationship of Josephus' work to the social, political, and cultural setting in which he wrote, namely that of Rome in the Flavian era. Unlike most conference volumes, the quality of the papers is uniformly high, and the collection as a whole unusually coherent. The volume is a model example of its genre.The Jewish war culminated in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 c.e. The consequences for Jewish history, of course, were momentous, a familiar and frequently explored topic. Much less studied but indispensable for an understanding of Josephus' work are the reverberations in Rome. The Flavian emperors exploited their victory to publicize, justify, and entrench a new imperial dynasty. Fergus Millar valuably surveys the monuments of Rome instituted to commemorate the conquest of Judaea: the arches erected for Titus, the Colosseum built with the spoils of the Jewish war (as Alföldy stunningly demonstrated a few years ago), and the Temple of Peace where the most celebrated objects [End Page 615] captured in Jerusalem were deposited. The Flavian public-relations spin not only celebrated military prowess but also made a pointed contrast with the age of Nero and underscored the arrival of a pax Flaviana. Advertisement of triumph over Judaea could hardly make the Jews of Rome comfortable, as Martin Goodman argues. He adds that imposition of the fiscus Iudaicus under Vespasian and malicious accusations under Domitian against those who lived like Jews but did not acknowledge their Judaism must have produced an oppressive atmosphere in the Flavian years. James Rives goes beyond this, arguing that the destruction of the Temple and the depositing of sacred objects represented a genuine effort to stamp out the Temple cult which, in Roman eyes, constituted a civic cult and a threat to imperial stability. Daniel Schwartz's paper, with different objectives, extends this theme still further. He points to the ostensibly anomalous decision to resume the administration of the Jewish state as a Roman province instead of bestowing it upon the Roman supporter Agrippa II as an enlarged kingdom. For Schwartz, this amounted to a decision to eliminate Judaea as a territorial entity, a decision reflected in the fact that the term Ioudaioi tended to lose its geographical connotation thereafter and became a designation for "Jews" rather than "Judaeans." The scene after 70, in short, was grim indeed. One might question some of the more speculative ideas expressed in these essays, such as Goodman's suggestion that "Judaizing" indicated opposition to the Flavian regime or Rives' notion that Rome regarded Jerusalem as a rival focus of loyalty in the empire. Nonetheless, the climate in Rome for a Jewish intellectual like Josephus, after the fall of Jerusalem, would not seem to have been the most hospitable and... (shrink)

This contribution aims at deconstructing a Christian master narrative that interprets Josephus as crucial support for the New Testament message that the Temple had to become a ruin, in line with the will of God. It argues for an alternative interpretation, namely that both Jesus of Nazareth and Josephus considered the Temple to be still relevant, albeit in different ways. For Jesus the Temple was the self-evident cultic centre of Judaism and a special place to experience his relationship (...) with God. None of Jesus’ statements about the Temple in their original context necessarily implies that Jesus assumed that the institution of the Temple would stop functioning in the near future or at the end of time. Josephus’s perspective on the Temple changes in his works. The elaborate description of Jerusalem and the Temple in War 5 reads as a written monument of the past, but several passages in Josephus’s Antiquities and Against Apion imply that the Temple was still important after 70 CE. Josephus may have reckoned with the possibility that the Temple was going to be rebuilt if the Romans allowed for it.This contribution is dedicated to Pieter G.R. de Villiers, a modest but sophisticated scholar and a good friend. (shrink)

This article argues against the long-enduring practice of Josephan scholarship to treat the termsτύραννος(‘tyrant’) andλῃστής(‘brigand’) as a collocation, or as undistinguished terms of invective employed by Josephus against various Jewish antagonists in hisBellum Judaicum(=BJ). Towards this aim, the article first examines the frequency in which these two terms appear together throughout the text of theBJ, before turning to a critical examination of particular passages that feature the terms, in order to prove that they are, in fact, not used as (...) undistinguished terms of invective but as terms pertaining to two distinct classes of people: renegade aristocrats vying with their peers for absolute power (the ‘tyrants’) and their gangs of foot soldiers comprising men from the lower classes (the ‘brigands’). The article concludes that Josephus used these terms in this manner in order to convey to his readership, which largely consisted of Roman aristocrats, that the ringleaders of the Judaean revolt which raged betweena.d.66–73 were akin to renegades who periodically wreaked havoc on Rome's own aristocracy, often with devastating consequences for class and country alike. (shrink)

‘Epaphroditus’ is perhaps the commonest of Roman slave names apart from ‘Felix’, which it sometimes renders as a Greek equivalent. It is also used very extensively under the early empire by those with tria nomina, whether freedmen or freeborn, whether descendants of freedmen or not, whether citizens or Junian Latins. It is also found among decurions and even equestrians, but not senators. It thus has a non-elite resonance in the western half of the empire, but, like almost all personal cognomina, (...) not exclusively so. (shrink)

In Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus Erkki Koskenniemi investigates how two Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, quoted, mentioned and referred to Greek writers and philosophers.

Josephus' pamphlet commonly known under the title Contra Apionem makes rather interesting reading, not only because it represents a more mature stage in the author's stylistic evolution, which shows so many points worth considering, but also and chiefly because it gives us a direct insight into a vehement polemic in which the writer played a leading role.

After the Jewish War Josephus was taken to Rome by Titus and then enjoyed the favour of Vespasian . The first task set him was to write a history of it in Aramaic for the ‘upper barbarians’, by which he means Parthians, Babylonians, Jews beyond Euphrates and Adiabenians . For his work he doubtless had access to the ‘commentarii’ of the emperor. This task may not have taken him long, but the translation into Greek which we possess took longer, (...) and was finished before the emperor's death, but after the dedication of the Forum Pacis . In its leisurely composition he tells us later that he had ‘certain assistants’ in the Greek language. As the work is quite uniform and smooth in style, we can only assume that J. turned his Aramaic into Greek himself to start with, and then placed the MS in the hands of assistants who systematically revised it, rewriting where necessary. No other hypothesis is possible; for no assistant could have been found sufficiently familiar with both Aramaic and literary Greek—at least it is highly improbable—and we have no reason to disbelieve J. when he says he translated his original treatise. (shrink)

The Against Apion of Josephus is not only a defense of Judaism and Jewish history, but also an essay in historiography and historical criticism, as an outline of the work reveals. Josephus explains how history should and should not be written, and attempts to prove that certain versions of the past are truer than others. The Against Apion may attack the reliability and integrity of Greek historiography as being divisive and instable, but it is from the Greeks that (...) Josephus learned the idea and techniques of historical criticism. He develops his argument by appeal to the superiority of Jewish history, canon, and community, but all these pro-Jewish and anti-Greek arguments have Greek origins. The Greek argument from consensus shaped the historical and theological argumentation of the Against Apion, and Greek precedents provided the basis for the ahistorical or antihistorical view of Judaism that Josephus proposes. Josephus' polemic proves weakest in his argument from canon, and in his contrasting Jewish stability with Greek restiveness. (shrink)

The strained relation between Samaritans and Jews as a fruit of long-term process from the division of the United Kingdom of Israel (ca. 931 B.C.E) became a dominant issue since the post-exilic period and became more pronounced in the first century C.E. Beside the Old Testament, the story of their relation which was full of conflict can be traced to extra-biblical sources. One of them is Flavius Josephus’ works (ca. 70 to 100 C.E), i.e., Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. (...) The root of the conflict is related to the presence of the Second Jerusalem Temple. The peak of the conflict is the construction of the Mount Gerizim temple in which some Jews regarded the adherents of the Samaritan cult as schismatic. The founding of this rival temple of Jerusalem aggravated the bad relations between Samaritans and Jews. The destruction of the Mount Gerizim temple by John Hyrcanus was a crucial incident for their relations. The conflict between Samaritans and Jews still continued in the Roman period. By historical approach, this study would setforth the examination of some Josephus’ accounts regarding the historical process of the estrangement and rivalry between Samaritans and Jews which resulted in the final split in second century B.C.E. Keywords: Samaritans, Jews, Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Temple, Jerusalem, Mount Gerizim. Abstrak: Relasi tegang antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi merupakan buah dari proses yang panjang sejak pecahnya Kerajaan Israel Raya (sekitar 931 B.C.E). Relasi mereka ini menjadi masalah dominan sejak periode setelah pembuangan dan semakin jelas pada abad pertama masehi. Di samping Perjanjian Lama, kisah tentang relasi mereka yang penuh konflik dapat dilacak dalam sumber-sumber di luar Alkitab. Salah satunya adalah karya dari Flavius Josephus (sekitar 70 sampai 100 M), yaitu Perang Yahudi dan Sejarah Yahudi. Akar dari konflik itu adalah kehadiran Bait Allah Yerusalem Kedua. Puncak dari konflik itu adalah pembangunan Bait Allah di Gunung Gerizim di mana sejumlah orang Yahudi kemudian menganggap pengikut ibadah orang Samaria sebagai skismatis. Pendirian tandingan Bait Allah Yerusalem ini memperparah relasi buruk antara Samaria dan Yahudi. Penghancuran Bait Allah di Gunung Gerizim oleh Yohanes Hyrcanus menjadi insiden krusial bagi relasi mereka. Konflik antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi masih terus berlangsung pada periode Romawi. Dengan pendekatan historis, studi ini akan memaparkan penelitian kisah-kisah dari karya Josephus berkaitan dengan proses perpecahan dan persaingan antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi memuncak pada perpecahannya pada abad II SM. Kata-kata Kunci: Samaria, Yahudi, Flavius Josephus, Sejarah Yahudi, Bait Allah, Yerusalem, Gunung Gerizim. (shrink)