Hellenistic Motifs in the 'Jewish Antiquities' of Flavius Josephus [Russian]
| Lada Semenchenko Abstract:The study is devoted to the analysis of Josephus' main conceptions as expressed in the "Antiquities". Proceeding from the inner logic of his work I have singled out and assumed as a basis for my investigation 4 themes and motifs that seem to be especially important for Josephus and hold together this complex treatise, diverse in style and dependent upon the sources of different cultural provenance. These themes are the conception of divine providence, the moral and theological aspect in Josephus' military descriptions, the conception of piety, and the opposition between a virtuous way of life and living for pleasure as well as that between a good ruler and a tyrant. Each of them I considered in a rather wide context of Jewish Hellenistic works (such as Philo, The Letter of Aristeas, 2 and 3 books of Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon) from the one hand and Classical literature of Josephus' time and earlier time, mostly Greek (Epictetus, Plutarch, Pythagorean texts, Dionysius of Halicarnassus Diodorus Siculus, Cassius Dio, Appian, Isocrates, Dio of Prusa, Aelius Theon) but also Latin (Cicero, Seneca, Livy) from the other. The task of the study was not only to draw within the frame of the chosen themes a picture of interaction of Hellenistic and Jewish views in the "Antiquities", but also to to specify Josephus' place inside the Greco-Roman tradition by distinguishing those of Hellenistic motifs (or their aspects) present in the "Antiquities" that reflect specific interests of his epoch. |