maryhelena

Thanks, Toto, for the update re Rachel Elior. It's a pity her response to the review of her book is in Hebrew...

Anyway, it looks to be that she is sticking to her guns on the Essenes in Philio and Josephus. If her position does eventually hold the day - that would be a great day for the mythicist position on Jesus of Nazareth. If Josephus has taken the liberty of giving a historical veneer to Philo's philosophical, Utopian, Essenes, by dating them - i.e. Simon the Essene to the time of Archelaus around 6 CE - then other character's within Josephus are also up for a re-think - like John the Baptist and Jesus and James.....

bacht

If Josephus was trying to convince Romans that all Jews weren't crazy rebels then he almost had to invent someone like the Essenes to counterbalance the Zealots, who must've been known to imperial authorities.

kcdad

Because the Romans, who were stationed in Palestine amongst all those Jews couldn't see the VAST majority of Jews that were common folk going about their lives ...

bacht

I was thinking of the population of the empire as a whole. Obviously Roman soldiers and administrators stationed in Judea and Galilee could see for themselves who did what. I'm assuming that Josephus was aiming at literate people who took an interest in imperial politics. Maybe it's like an Irish writer in the 20th C trying to convince outsiders that radicals in Ulster really were just a minority.

maryhelena

Big question re what was Josephus up to????

Its perhaps good to keep in mind that he had other interests that were apart from that of just being a historian. Maybe he sometimes got carried away and mixed the historical with the non-historical...

bacht

Well it seems safe to say that in Wars Josephus is presenting an apologia to imperial residents to explain the catastrophic revolt of the 60s and his own public behaviour during the hostilities. He may have felt misunderstood and discredited by both his own people and the gentiles, a man "without a country". In that sense the historical background he presents is secondary to the main purpose of clearing his name and the reputation of his people.

Maybe he felt a bit like the last survivor, the only remaining witness of disaster, like Moby Dick's narrator.

kcdad

Which of course is a rather easy task, considering they (the radicals) were referred to as "radicals" and not "the people". My point, is that the designation of "zealot" automatically separated them from the norm of society. No Essenes were necessary to distinguish the Zealots from the masses.

kcdad

Call me ISHMAEL??? Is this a fundamentalist Muslim extremist reference? Are you calling Josephus a terrorist?

Sorry... couldn't resist.:huh:

bacht

no slur intended

I think Josephus was a man of his times, educated but not scientific in the modern sense. I think he was anxious to put a good face on a bad situation, and counter negative rumours and factoids about his career and his nation. Memoirs were common enough in his time, though I don't know that he was particularly skilful in rhetoric or sophistry.

DCHindley

From what I understand, Josephus' War was written in relatively good Attic style Greek, which implies a certain feel for style of presentation. Of course, this may have been due to the assistants provided by Vespasian, which Josephus freely admits he employed to polish his modest Greek.

What always struck me was the way Josephus repeatedly points out that poor governance and insults to the populace had been the norm for many decades of Roman governors, which had practically goaded the Jews into revolt. The fact that the emperor Vespasian had commissioned the work is a strong indication that he was tacitly admitting that injustices had been dispensed by the Roman governors. Josephus does not shy away from admitting that extremes had also been committed by some of his fellow Jews.

Sure he casts himself as a moderate, but then again he may have been what passed for a moderate in those days. It is not without reason that the party to which Josephus attached himself has many affinities to the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Alexander Kerensky in Russia immediately after the 1917 Russian revolution. This PRG, which sought out and received help from a rogues gallery of generals, social revolutionaries and social democrats, was then opposed by and eventually overthrown by the radical Bolsheviks.

Or does anyone here even remember the resulting Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

DCH