stephan huller

Yitzhak Baer (“The Hebrew Book of Yosippon,” in Mehkarim umassot betoldot am Israel [Studies and Essays in Jewish History] (Jerusalem: The Israeli Historical Society, 1986), vol. 2: 101–27 [117]; first published in Sefer Dinaburg, 1949) had pointed to Yosippon as the first Hebrew text to sanctify human corpses as sacrifices, both in the conflagration of the Temple, and in the mass slaughter at Masada. Flusser sees this text as being influenced by the Christian cult of the martyr in the 10th century, but not necessarily.