Bibliography
| Title: Josephus in Galilee and Rome. His Vita and Development as a Historian Secondary Title: Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition (CSCT) 8 Pages: XVI, 277 Type: Book Year: 1979 Abstract: "The revision of a doctoral dissertation directed by M. Smith and accepted in 1975 by Columbia University in New York, this volume investigates the problem posed by the disagreements between Josephus' Life and his Jewish War not only on the substance but also on the order of his activities in the Galilean war of A.D. 66-67. After delineating the specific contradictions between the two accounts and surveying scholarship on the topic, the study discusses how Josephus treated his sources by examining the relationship of the first one and a half books of Jewish War to books 13-20 of Antiquities. The results of this discussion are applied to the parallels between Life and Jewish War. Analysis of the content of Jewish War and Life then sets the stage for the historical reconstruction of Josephus' activities in Galilee. Cohen observes that the shifts in the motives behind Josephus' writings allow us to trace his development from Roman apologist to religious nationalist. One appendix collects and analyzes all the external data relevant to the early history of the Jewish War, and the other provides a synoptic outline of Life and Jewish War".
"This is the first book for many years to confront directly fundamental questions about Josephus, as politician and historian: whether or not he wanted to fight the Romans in A.D. 6-67; what motivated him to write his various works (except the last); and whether his thinking underwent any significant development. Naturally, there is still room for disagreement as to the answers. That minefield, the inconsistencies between the Bellum and Vita accounts of the author's own period of command in Galilee, is given a going over which provides the point d'appui of the study. Cohen shows, successfully, that the earlier work is highly formalised and rhetorical in organisation and presentation, and that it follows that, for chronology, and for the general portrayal of the Galilean confusion of those years, the later one is the more reliable. Paradoxically, the Bellum is none the less held to be nearer the truth in depicting a war-mongering Josephus; this is essentially because the later Josephus is claimed to have had a need to revise his past, towards what was acceptable in the Judaism of the nineties A.D. This double onslaught results in a perhaps excessive scepticism about Josephus' usefulness as an historian; but not before a good number of interesting insights have been offered along the way. A convenient appendix shows that we must be even more sceptical about the possibility of learning anything at all from apparent Rabbinic allusions to the Jewish revolt".
"After acting as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee during the revolt against the Romans in 66-67 CE, Josephus was brought to Rome where he wrote four works which ware our major sources for the political history of the Jews from the Maccabees until 70 CE. How did Josephus the author and apologist living in Rome explain the actions of Josephus the anti-Roman general of Galilee? A proper answer to this question is essential if Josephus' apologetic aims and historiographical techniques are to be understood, and yet the most important part of the Josephan corpus bearing on this subject, the Vita or autobiography, has been relatively neglected by modern scholars. By comparing the Vita with the Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities, and by placing Josephan historiography in its Greco-Roman setting, Dr. Shaye Cohen has produced a new picture of Josephus the man and the historian. Josephus in Galilee and Rome studies in detail the following topics: Josephus and his sources; the literary relationship between the Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities, and between the Vita and the Jewish War; the aims and methods of the Jewish War, the Vita, and the Jewish Antiquities; the events of 66-67 CE. The book makes an important contribution both to the study of ancient historiography and to the history of first-century Palestine". Keywords: Palestinian Judaism, Galilee |