Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I've heard the word used a lot in reference to Josephus (including on the forum), and I suppose the point of the thread is the same as Peskowitz's (linked to in the OP): If you haven't embodied notions of hybridity and the multicultural, if you tend to lean toward singular communities and away from ...

Josephus was also like Daniel, who served a pagan ruler and changed his name "while remaining true to the God of Israel": According to the Hebrew Bible, Daniel was a noble Jewish youth of Jerusalem taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, serving the king and his successors wi...

I don't see how Josephus is any different than Joseph. They both worked for and received favors from pagan rulers and were concerned with saving lives and having a family and lived to an old age and lived in (or were buried in) the Land of Israel. ... his jealous brothers sell him into slavery in Eg...

I prefer what Josephus did over what Jesus and (other) Fourth Philosophers did, which amounted to dying (on crosses, on Masada, etc., and some Fourth Philosophers killed other Jews who sought peaceful co-existence with Rome). I also received from Vespasian no small quantity of land, as a free gift, ...

I don't think Josephus was a turncoat to his nation (which is how I mean it) anymore than ben Zakkai. Each did what they had to do to save Judaism by disavowing Jewish messianism and proclaiming Vespasian king or governor of the habitable earth, and each benefited from it (Josephus got adopted, an a...

And while he was given an apartment in Rome, Josephus was also given land in Judea and lived there and had a family, like the OT tells Jews to do. That sounds like a better way of life than fighting against Rome or seeking to die like Jesus over the "Messiah" idea.

No way. I don't know if I've ever exactly thought of Josephus as a "turncoat," but I've always been aware that he is commonly viewed that way. But what makes his version of Judaism any less authentic than the Fourth Philosophy he abandoned? I think he had a better grasp of geopolitical rea...

Was Josephus a Christian? My guess, probably not. But how genuine, either, was his Pharisee-belonging (in Vita) claim? I suggest that the possibility that he mentioned Christians, whatever he thought about them--he probably knew some by Antiquities-time--he did not not think it risky to mention the...

So Rabbi Yoḥanan knew the verse he applied to Vespasian was interpreted as messianic by other Jews, but that does not mean that he himself acknowledged Vespasian as the Messiah? I think he (and Josephus) did what they had to do, by tweaking verses they knew were "messianic" and applying t...

I think what the rabbis did was tone down the meaning of something they knew was being interpreted messianically by anti-Roman Jews ("mighty one"), in order to save Judaism in the face of reality. But "mighty one" still can have that sense, as the rabbis surely knew (as per Jer....