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I From Jerusalem to Rome: Situating Josephus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2025
Extract
The Roman world of the first century ce was a world of tremendous cultural complexity. Rome's empire was an intricate mosaic of languages, religious practices, customs, and ethnic identities, bound together in a common political structure and, particularly among provincial elites, by common intellectual and cultural trajectories, which were always, nonetheless, inflected and transformed by manifestations of localism. Amid all this diversity, the subject peoples of the Roman Empire, whether western or eastern, came to be subjected to ethnographic curiosity, sometimes by Roman authors and sometimes by Greek scholars whose culture was prized and promoted by Roman power. However, not all of the ‘barbarian’ subjects of empire were content passively to be scrutinized. Some of them tried to tell their own, and their own people's, stories in their own words, in Greek-language texts addressed to the wider world, and to make a place for their subaltern perspectives in the dominant scholarly and literary culture of the age. In other words, some of them wrote back.
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References
1 For the minimalist view, see Geva 2014: 144–8; for a population of 100,000, see Reinhardt 1995: 243–5.
2 Plin. HN 5.70; Tac. Hist. 5.2.
3 On Jerusalem in the first century, see Magness 2012: 133–69; Josephus’ lengthy description of the city and Temple is at BJ 5.136–247.
4 On the Herodian Quarter houses, see Avigad 1983: 120–39; Magness 2012: 143–6.
5 The sects are discussed at pp. 97–8 below.
6 Mason 2005b: 99–101.
7 This (and other discrepancies between BJ and V) will be discussed in Chapter 5 below.
8 BJ 5 and 6 chronicle the siege of Jerusalem: Josephus was present throughout.
9 Hata 1975–6; Davies 2023: 51.
10 Hollander 2014 is a valuable, if (by its own admission) sometimes speculative, reconstruction of Josephus’ Roman life. Cotton and Eck 2005 also attempts a reconstruction.
11 See BJ 2.81; AJ 14.188; BJ 7.121–62.
12 See V 429 (cf. BJ 7.447–50); V 416; V 336–68; C.Ap 1.53–6.
13 Cotton and Eck 2005 (with discussion of the identity of Epaphroditus at 49–52); Price 2005; Hollander 2014, esp. 242–304. For more optimistic readings, see Goodman 1994; Curran 2011. For more on the identity of Epaphroditus, see Barclay 2006: xxvi–xxviii.
14 Josephus provides information on his family at V 426–7.
15 For the Idumaeans, see Kasher 1988; for their presentation in Josephus, see Applebaum 2009.
16 For the Samaritans, see Mor and Reiterer 2010; for their presentation in Josephus, see Pummer 2009; Chalmers 2020.
17 On Galilee and Antipas’ impact on it, see Jensen 2010.
18 The scholarly understanding of Galilee's cultural profile is changeable. While some works (e.g. Freyne 1980; Batey 1991) have painted a picture of a heavily Gentile-dominated Galilee, other scholars, beginning with Chancey 2002, have argued that this picture mostly derives from later evidence, and that there is very little evidence of Gentile presence in Galilee in the age of Josephus.
19 See above, pp. 3–4.
20 On Caesarea, see BJ 1.408–15; AJ 15.331–41. For overviews of modern excavations, see Roller 1998: 133–44; Magness 2012: 170–82; Meyers and Chancey 2012: 62–8.
21 Philo records the existence of certain people who treated the Hebrew Bible as pure allegory (Migr. 89–94), and who may not, consequently, have felt it important to hold to the literal truth of biblical narrative.
22 See 1 Sam 8:6–21 for this negative portrayal of the establishment of the monarchy.
23 The notion of the Deuteronomistic History was first proposed by the biblical scholar Martin Noth (1943). It was subsequently expanded, and disputed, extensively. For an edited volume covering later refinements of and engagement with Noth's model, see Knoppers and McConville 2000. Römer 2020 has argued for the rejection of the unified authorship model, suggesting that, instead of a ‘Deuteronomistic History’, we should think in terms of a ‘Deuteronomistic Library’.
24 On messianism, see Fabry and Scholtissek 2002, esp. 11–56; J. Collins 2010, esp. 13–15.
25 On human sacrifice, see 2 Kgs 16:3, 21:6, 23:20.
26 This ‘hopeful’ reading of the Deuteronomistic History departs from Noth's pessimistic interpretation, and is associated above all with Rad 1966.
27 The purported text of the proclamation can be read at 2 Chr 36:23 and Ezra 1:2.
28 In a speech attributed to Herod, Josephus draws attention to the unimpressive nature of the Second Temple and its inferiority to the First Temple (AJ 15.385–7).
29 For Persian administration in Judaea, see Lipschits and Oeming 2006, especially the contributions by Lipschits (19–52), Kessler (91–122), and Dandamayev (373–98).
30 The fullest account of the Temple's operations remains Sanders 1992: 129–310.
31 For the fearsome list of taboos governing the life of the flamen Dialis, see Gell. NA 10.15.3–25.
32 Not necessarily all. Czajkowski 2015 argues, on the basis of some papyri, that some Roman-period Jews were willing to engage with aspects of imperial cult when swearing oaths for legal purposes.
33 Dan 11:1–35.
34 On language use in Judaea, see S. Schwartz 1995; Macfarlane 1997; Rajak 2002: 46–65; Smelik 2013: 100–22.
35 The precise status of the Jews of Alexandria in the Hellenistic and Roman periods is complex and disputed. See Blouin 2005: 36–43; Gambetti 2009: 23–76; Gruen 2015: 70–7, with references to earlier scholarship there.
36 See Rajak 2009, esp. 24–63, 125–75.
37 On the emergence and development of the diaspora, see Gruen 2015; Rajak 2018. Bloch 2022 is a stimulating collection of essays on Jewish diaspora experience in antiquity.
38 1 Macc 1.11–15; 2 Macc 4.7–22.
39 1 Macc 1.41–64; 2 Macc 6.1–11; Dan 12:11.
40 The bibliography on what actually happened in the 160s bce is too large to cite here. Important contributions include Tcherikover 1959: 152–74; F. Millar 1978; Bickerman 1979; Honigman 2014.
41 Gruen 1998: 1–140; Regev 2017. On mausoleums, see 1 Macc 13.27–9; Meyers and Chancey 2012: 39–42.
42 This complex period is chronicled in detail at AJ 14.119–326, and more concisely at BJ 1.180–247.
43 The Parthian incursion and rise of Herod are narrated at BJ 1.248–346; AJ 14:330–491.
44 On the reign of Herod, see Kasher with Witztum 2008; Richardson and Fisher 2017 (the former with caution). On Herod in Josephus, see Landau 2006; Czajkowski and Eckhardt 2021.
45 Josephus gives a thematic survey of Herod's construction projects at BJ 1.401–30. For surveys of the literary and archaeological evidence, see Roller 1998; Richardson and Fisher 2017: 235–89.
46 On surveillance and oppression, see AJ 15.365–9. On Herod's domestic trouble and the intrigues against him as presented by Josephus, see Bond 2012; Czajkowski 2016.
47 On the dynasty beyond Herod himself, see Kokkinos 1998; Wilker 2007.
48 Eck 2007: 1–52 is the best current discussion of the status of Judaea between 6 and 66 ce.
49 See, for example, AJ 18.85–8; AJ 20.182; BJ 2.333–41.
50 Goodman 1987 remains an indispensable study of the elite priestly class in this period.
51 M. Stern's collection of Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism (1974–80) remains the most valuable resource for those exploring this topic. Important general discussions of these questions are provided by Schäfer 1997; Isaac 2004: 440–91; Bar Kokhva 2010; Gruen 2016: 313–32. On specific important authors, Bloch 2002 and Feldherr 2009a are helpful on Tacitus’ Jewish excursus, and the introduction to Barclay 2006 is indispensable for the numerous Gentile authors quoted or paraphrased by Josephus in Against Apion.
52 The quotation is from Tac. Hist. 5.5: Iudaeorum mos absurdus sordidusque.
53 On the ‘philosophical Jews’ trope, see Gruen 2016: 133–52.
54 C.Ap 1.177–81.
55 Des Places 1973, fr. 8.
56 Strabo 16.2.35–7.
57 [Longinus] Subl. 9.9.
58 See, most recently, Hejduk 2018.
59 Lydus, Mens. 4.53; Philo, Legat. 353.
60 Alexander 2021.
61 This term, once a staple in considerations of Second Temple Judaism, has recently been contested. See Kraemer 2014 and Fredriksen 2015 for an overview of evidence and arguments.
62 Tac. Hist. 5.5.
63 Hdt. 2.35–6.
64 All of these features receive comment from Tacitus at the beginning of Hist. 5. On pork abstinence, see Caligula, at Philo, Legat. 361–2; Juv. 6.155–60; and the mildly Judeophobic joke attributed to Augustus by Macrobius at Sat. 2.4.11. On sabbath observance, see Plut. De Superst. 169C; Agatharchides, quoted at C.Ap 1.209–11. On abortion and infanticide, see Hecataeus, at Diod. Sic. 40.3.8. On circumcision, see Petron. Sat. F50; Strabo 16.2.37.
65 Plut. Quaest. conv. 670D-E; Apion quoted at C.Ap 2.80; Mnaseas, quoted at C.Ap 2.112–14.
66 On this charge, see Mason 2019.
67 Cic. Prov. cons. 10; Tac. Hist. 5.5. Tacitus’ phrasing suggests that this accusation is targeted solely at Jewish men; however, Ovid (Ars am. 1.75) identifies the sabbath, ‘sacred to the Syrian Jew’, as an auspicious time to go looking for a female partner, perhaps indicating that the stereotype could extend to Jewish women too.
68 E.g. Philo, Legat. 355, Flacc. 41–50; C.Ap 2.65–78; Tac. Hist. 5.5.