Bibliography
| Title: A grammar of Josephus' Vita Type: Thesis Year: 1988 Abstract: "The writings of the Jewish historian and apologist Josephus are crucially important for understanding the history of the Jews between 200 BCE and 100 CE. He wrote in Greek, the lingua franca of his day, but the Greek of the last quarter of the first century CE was by no means monochrome. There were classical purists and Atticizers, there was the vulgar koine and, no doubt, many shades in between. But the nature of Josephus' Greek has seldom been seriously investigated. This study is a comprehensive description of the grammar and syntax of the Vita of Josephus. It is a manual for students who wish to read Josephus in Greek and explains the less familiar and more difficult aspects of Josephus' prose. Discussion of some of the textual problems in Vita is included. In addition, the language of Vita is compared with classical, Hellenistic, New Testament and vernacular Greek in an attempt to identify Josephus' place in the history of the Greek language. Vita, an unpolished apologetic appendix to the Jewish Antiquities, was chosen for the study because it contains the ispissima verba of Josephus, without the complication of underlying sources. From Vita can be gleaned indications of both his written and spoken language, and hints about the date and manner of the publication of the Antiquities. Josephus is competent in idiomatic Greek and rarely deviates from the canons of classical Greek, or even from the customary practices of his own day. Nevertheless, he shows both Atticistic and koine influence but sometimes goes his own way, under the influence of neither. The stylistic fluctuations and linguistic defects in the Antiquities and Vita are probably due to the pressure under which Josephus completed and published these works. There is good reason to think that they were both published together, either late in 93 CE or very early in 94". Keywords: Vita |