Josephus and the Politics of Historiography

Brill

2000

x, 172 p.

Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava ; 205

Includes bibliographical references (p. [159]-166) and indexes

9789004114463

Ch. 1. Means and Ends Ch. 2. Manufactured Motives: A 'Rationalist' Model of Cause and Effect Ch. 3. The Semantics of Stasis: Some Thucydidean Strands in BJ 4.121-282 Ch. 4. Message and Medium: Further Lines of Cohesion Ch. 5. Model and Mirror: Impression Management by Intertextual Strategy

"Although Josephus' debt to the traditions of Greco-Roman historiography is widely recognized, the classical elements in his Bellum Judaicum are still often dismissed as just formal ornatus. This study reconsiders Josephus' intellectual affiliation to his predecessors in the genre and argues that the work's classical complexion, and in particular its distinctive color Thucydideus, are integral to the intellectual and ideological design of BJ. Deployed typically at crucial points where Josephus deals with the motives of the Jewish insurgents, the classical elements directly subserve the work's apologetic and polemical tendencies, subtly predisposing the reader to a particular interpretation by applying the rationalist and psychological categories of 'scientific' Greek historiography. In this sense the classical form of BJ is interpreted in light of the historian's partisan political agenda."

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