Bibliography
| Title: Understanding Josephus. Seven Perspectives Secondary Title: JSPE.S 32 Pages: 260 Type: Edited Book Year: 1998 Abstract: Feldman, Louis Harry in: OTA 22.1 (1999), 176: "This collection contains two essays dealing with general issues concerning Josephus (by Joseph Sievers and Per Bilde), three concerning the Antiquities and the Life (by Steve Mason, Gregory Sterling, and Paul Spilsbury) and two concerning Against Apion (by John Barclay and Tessa Rajak). The introduction, by M., briefly summarizes the seven essays. M. insists that attention be paid to Josephus as an author. He argues that effort must be made to understand the textual evidence in some plausible and comprehensive way (while admitting disagreement among interpreters), so as to hypothesize about the underlying reality in which the historian was interested, and to explain how the extant evidence came into being if hypothesis X is valid. He takes Josephus' description of the Essenes as an example in this regard".
in: NTAb 43.2 (1999), 426: "After Mason's eight-page introduction, this volume presents essays by J. Sievers on Josephus and the afterlife, P. Bilde on Josephus and Jewish apocalypticism, Mason on the aim and audience of Josephus Antiquities/Life ("should any wish to enquire further", ant. 1:25), G.E. Sterling on Josephus' retelling of Ruth (the invisible presence), P. Spilsbury on God and Israel in Josephus (a patron-client relationship), J.M.G. Barclay on Josephus versus Apion (analysis of an argument), and T. Rajak on Against Apion and the continuities in Josephus' political thought".
Paget, James Carleton in: BJGS 25 (1999/2000), 20-21: "Josephus is a source of incomparable value for our study of ancient Jewish history. But if we wish to use his extant works responsibly we must have some idea about the man who wrote them, his background, and his prejudices, theological and political. Fort too long, notes Steve Mason, in his introduction to this collection of seven essays scholars have not busied themselves enough with these questions, and the importance of their labours have, by this omission, in some sense been diminished. The volume, therefore, calls people's attention to the aims of Josephus as author and thinker, and in so doing pleads for responsible historical reconstruction. "One cannot "read between the lines", as historical investigation requires, if one does not first establish where the lines are or trouble to explain how they came to be there" (p. 14). The book divides itself into seven chapters, each written by an acknowledged expert in Josephan studies. Mason state that there is a logic to the arrangement of these essays, arguing that they proceed from general issues in Josephus' outlook to specific texts in sequence. There is no specific essay devoted to The Jewish War or to Life, although, as Mason notes, some of the essay do contain substantial discussions of these works. All of them are, in their different ways, contentious, but rather than dealing with individual points of detail, I would prefer to conclude with two general observations. First, what we see going on here, namely an emphasis on the person and mental constitution of Josephus, is something that has a long history in Josephan studies stretching back as far as Laqueur's monograph of 1920 and probably beyond that; and recent work on Josephus abounds in what one might term redactionally orientated studies. This does not mean that the book is worthless. It is simply to say that it reflects a trend rather than setting one. Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, while it is quite right to assert that we cannot use Josephus as a historical source unless we have a sound knowledge of his own tendencies, such an assertion raises methodological problems with witch only one of the essays noted above deals. Once we have established Josephus' tendencies, tendencies which we war only in a position to know by looking at his extant works (we have almost no independent references to Josephus), how then are we to use his works in relation to questions of historicity? This is a problem that has raised its head in redactional studies of the Gospels and has reached no clear resolution there. The problem needs
to be addressed at greater length, not least in the wake of Manes S. McLaren's study of 1998 (Turbulent Times, Sheffield). His thesis, that all scholarly accounts of the causes of the first Jewish revolt are in one way or another dependent upon Josephus' understanding of this subject and that we must, therefore, seek to construct a methodology which frees us from his distorting pen, is perhaps exaggerated but most definitely provocative and in need of discussion. We rely upon Josephus for so much and yet to what extent can we ever gain a fair picture of the significant events and personalities he describes? 'Reading between the lines', however approached, is a strangely difficult task". Keywords: Specific Examinations of Josephus, collections of Josephus |