Flavius Josephus And Flavian Rome

Flavian Rome has most often been studied without serious attention to its most prolific extant author, Titus Flavius Josephus. Josephus, in turn, has usually been studied for what he is writing about (mainly, events in Judaea) rather than for the context in which he wrote: Flavian Rome. For the first time, this book brings these two phenomena into critical engagement, so that Josephus may illuminate Flavian Rome, and Flavian Rome, Josephus. Who were his likely audiences or patronsin Rome? How did the context in which he wrote affect his writing? What do his narratives say or imply about that context? This book brings together contributions from leading international scholars of Josephus and Flavian-Roman history and literature.

Introduction : Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome /Jonathan Edmondson --Josephus' Roman audience : Josephus and the Roman elites /Hannah M. Cotton and Werner Eck --Foreign elites at Rome /G.W. Bowersock --Herodians and Ioudaioi in Flavian Rome /Daniel R. Schwartz --Josephus in the diaspora /Tessa Rajak --Last year in Jerusalem : monuments of the Jewish war in Rome /Fergus Millar --The sack of the Temple in Josephus and Tacitus /T.D. Barnes --Flavian religious policy and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple /James Rives --The Fiscus Iudaicus and gentile attitudes to Judaism in Flavian Rome /Martin Goodman --From exempla to exemplar? : writing history around the emperor in imperial Rome /Christina Shuttleworth Kraus --Josephus and Greek literature in Flavian Rome /Christopher P. Jones --Parallel lives of two lawgivers : Josephus' Moses and Plutarch's Lycurgus /Louis H. Feldman --Figured speech and irony in T. Flavius Josephus /Steve Mason --Spectacle in Josephus' Jewish war /Honora Howell Chapman --The empire writes back : Josephan rhetoric in Flavian Rome /John M.G. Barclay.

This volume focuses on the interplay between Josephus' Judean identity and his Roman context. After treating historiographical and literary issues, it addresses Josephus' presentation of Judaism and of historical "facts." A final section deals with the transmission of his works.

Representing the Dynasty in Flavian Rome investigates the problem of contemporary historiography and regime representation in Flavian Rome through a close study of a text not usually read for such purposes but which has obvious promise for a study of this theme, the Jewish War of Flavius Josephus. Having surveyed the evolution of our conception of Josephus' relationship to Flavian power, taken a broad account of issues of political expression and regime representation in Flavian Rome outside Josephus and examined questions relating to the structure and date of the work, Davies provides a series of thematically-focused readings of the three senior members of the Flavian family, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, as represented by their contemporary and client Josephus. Key topics explored include the level of independence of Josephus' vision, his work's relationship to how the regime is depicted in other contemporary sources, how Josephus makes the Flavians serve his own agenda (which is distinct from the heavy focus of much previous scholarship on how Josephus served their agenda), and the viability and usefulness of certain types of reading practices relating to figured critique which have recently become influential in Josephan scholarship. The book offers a new approach to Josephus' relationship to the Flavian Dynasty and sheds new light on contemporary historiography and political expression in the Early Principate.

In Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome William den Hollander places under the microscope the Judaean historian's own account of the latter part of his life, following his first encounters with the Romans. Episodes of Josephus' life, such as his embassy to Rome prior to the outbreak of the 1st Judaean Revolt, his prophetic pronouncement of Vespasian's imminent rise to the imperial throne, and his time in the Roman prisoner-of-war camp, are subjected to rigorous analysis and evaluated against the broader ancient evidence by the application of a vivid historical imagination. Den Hollander also explores at great length the relationships formed by Josephus with the Flavian emperors and other individuals of note within the Roman army camp and, later, in the city of Rome. He builds solidly on recent trends in Josephan research that emphasize Josephus' distance from the corridors of power.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote about history, bible, and serves as a source for a wide-range of related disciplines is the subject of twenty four articles which grew out of an international colloquium.

The Jewish War describes the history of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-70 CE). This study deals with one of this work's most intriguing features: why and how Flavius Josephus, its author, describes his own actions in the context of this conflict in such detail. Glas traces the thematic and rhetorical aspects of autobiographical discourse in War and uses contextual evidence to situate Josephus’ self-characterisation in a Flavian Roman setting. In doing so, he sheds new light on this Jewish writer’s historiographical methods and his deep knowledge and creative use of Graeco-Roman culture.