Josephus' Portrait of David

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iskander
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by iskander »

arnoldo wrote:
arnoldo wrote:There was probably other reasons why Josephus wanted to minimize David if the gospel stories were written contemporaneously.
Abstract
In the portrayal of David in his paraphrase of the Bible in the Antiquities, Josephus was confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, as the beneficiary of so many gifts from the Romans, he could hardly praise David, who was the ancestor of the Messiah, and who ipso facto would lead a revolt against Rome and establish an independent state. On the other hand, David was a great folk hero, and his qualities of character could be used in answering the calumniators of the Jews. Josephus' solution was to adopt a compromise: thus he gives David a distinguished ancestry without stressing it unduly. He uses the figure of David to answer the denigrators of the Jews; he notes David's wealth to refute the canard that the Jews are beggars; he ascribes to him the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, and piety to counteract the charges that the Jews were not original, that they were cowards, that they were immoderate, that they lacked humanity (a corollary of justice), and that they were impious. When David is elevated, it is not so much for his own sake as it is to increase the drama of the situation.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507841?se ... b_contents

I think footnote #4 is germane in context of other threads.
. . . Messiah concept is insignificant in most early rabbinic works; yet this may be due to the general eagerness of the rabbis not to provoke the Romans into abrogating the special privileges of the Jews. If so, Josephus would be in accord with this rabbinic trend: and this would be explained by his desires not to offend his Roman beneficiaries, since a Messiah, ispo facto, implies revolt against Rome. . .

I would add that any writings/discussion of a Messiah of the lineage of David would essentially be seen as sedition against the Hasmonean/Herodian archon(s) ruling Israel. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Josephus is a rotten witness of his time.

Arnaldo Momigliano writes :
“It is our task to elucidate more precisely the meaning of Josephus’s twofold blindness about the synagogue and the widespread Jewish and Christian apocalyptic trends of his time...!


Arnaldo Momigliano
On Pagans, Jews and Christians
Chapter 7. What Josephus did not see
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut, 1987
ISBN 0819562181
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/03/obitu ... -dies.html
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arnoldo
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by arnoldo »

QFT
Secret Alias wrote:
You're obviously too stupid to be at this forum 1. Forget everything you think you know. 2. Actually read an ancient author. 3. Go back to 1:

https://books.google.com/books?id=UbJfE ... us&f=false
Last edited by arnoldo on Sun Mar 05, 2017 10:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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arnoldo
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by arnoldo »

iskander wrote:
arnoldo wrote:
arnoldo wrote:There was probably other reasons why Josephus wanted to minimize David if the gospel stories were written contemporaneously.
Abstract
In the portrayal of David in his paraphrase of the Bible in the Antiquities, Josephus was confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, as the beneficiary of so many gifts from the Romans, he could hardly praise David, who was the ancestor of the Messiah, and who ipso facto would lead a revolt against Rome and establish an independent state. On the other hand, David was a great folk hero, and his qualities of character could be used in answering the calumniators of the Jews. Josephus' solution was to adopt a compromise: thus he gives David a distinguished ancestry without stressing it unduly. He uses the figure of David to answer the denigrators of the Jews; he notes David's wealth to refute the canard that the Jews are beggars; he ascribes to him the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, and piety to counteract the charges that the Jews were not original, that they were cowards, that they were immoderate, that they lacked humanity (a corollary of justice), and that they were impious. When David is elevated, it is not so much for his own sake as it is to increase the drama of the situation.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507841?se ... b_contents

I think footnote #4 is germane in context of other threads.
. . . Messiah concept is insignificant in most early rabbinic works; yet this may be due to the general eagerness of the rabbis not to provoke the Romans into abrogating the special privileges of the Jews. If so, Josephus would be in accord with this rabbinic trend: and this would be explained by his desires not to offend his Roman beneficiaries, since a Messiah, ispo facto, implies revolt against Rome. . .

I would add that any writings/discussion of a Messiah of the lineage of David would essentially be seen as sedition against the Hasmonean/Herodian archon(s) ruling Israel. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Josephus is a rotten witness of his time.

Arnaldo Momigliano writes :
“It is our task to elucidate more precisely the meaning of Josephus’s twofold blindness about the synagogue and the widespread Jewish and Christian apocalyptic trends of his time...!


Arnaldo Momigliano
On Pagans, Jews and Christians
Chapter 7. What Josephus did not see
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut, 1987
ISBN 0819562181
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/03/obitu ... -dies.html
Arnaldo writes this in the paragraph before your quote;
By the times of Marcus Auerlius, the Jews had become enervated by three messianic uprisings, and abandoned, or at least suppressed, their messianic and eschatological hopes which had sustained them in their armed struggle against Rome. On the whole, the rabbis discouraged messianic speculation, especially if it meant revolutionary activity.

*Edit*
Note how Arnaldo's quote in bolding supports Feldman's note also in bolding.
Last edited by arnoldo on Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by neilgodfrey »

arnoldo wrote:QFT
Secret Alias wrote:
You're obviously too stupid to be at this forum 1. Forget everything you think you know. 2. Actually read an ancient author. 3. Go back to 1:

https://books.google.com/books?id=UbJfE ... us&f=false
Dontcha just love these cerebral discussions among Christians, would-be Jews/Samaritans, and anyone who challenges their assumptions.
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arnoldo
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by arnoldo »

DCHindley wrote:
neilgodfrey wrote:
Spoken like a true Taliban.
I don't think Iskander is advocating putting people to death in present days, only that David, who in many ways is still revered by many Jews, is in Rabbinic Judaism seen as a "bad boy" if judged by the standards of Torah. David (whether a historical one or the one depicted in Judean holy writings), who is depicted as, for the most part, doing what he did for the sake of his people, is also portrayed in the Psalms as remorseful for his faults, seeking forgiveness from God. If I am not mistaken, rabbinic Judaism sets aside the severe punishments called for in the Torah to be replaced by, where possible, more lenient ones, by applying technicalities developed in rabbinic literature.

It is difficult for me to identify Iskander's religious orientation. He is heavily influenced by rabbinic thought (at least he knows it rather well) but in other ways he seems to be a Christian or possibly a former "Jewish-Christian". This is baseless speculation on my part, and Iskander, who I think I know under another name on another board, is OK in my book. He has a sense of humor, and I think his response above was made in the spirit of ironic humor. Personally, I would love to see more humor on this board, where by "humor" I mean "funny humor," without apologetical "blame-sarcasm" or "blame-irony," and yes, even atheists and agnostics engage in this at times.

DCH
Some people seem incapable of understanding humour. . it requires reading between the lines sometimes and not having everything spelled out in black and white. :cheers:
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arnoldo
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by arnoldo »

neilgodfrey wrote:
Secret Alias wrote: You're obviously too stupid to be at this forum 1. Forget everything you think you know. 2. Actually read an ancient author. 3. Go back to 1:
https://books.google.com/books?id=UbJfE ... us&f=false
Dontcha just love these cerebral discussions <snip> . . .
Like when you accuse Iskander of speaking "like a true Taliban?" :shock:
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arnoldo
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by arnoldo »

neilgodfrey wrote: What do we do when we find that the evidence from the relevant era (and not opinions retrospectively imputed into the evidence from centuries later) actually indicates that many of those ideas were held without any messianic connotations at all. For example, many actually believed that God would directly restore Israel and rule -- without any messiah as an intermediary. And some, as I have recently learned, believed that the Davidic promises were transferred to Israel as a nation. And there are a range of other views. I have covered some of these in other discussions, including an analysis of PsSol 17.
McLaren makes an interesting point that Josephus minimizes the motivation to create an independent state of Israel as a cause for the Jewish war against Rome in his writings . Does this parallel Feldman’s claim that Josephus minimizes Davidic messianic expectations?
As to the numismatic evidence, McLaren emphasizes that the people who minted the revolt coins must have been supporters of the war. Moreover, if more people were responsible for different issues of revolt coins, then the greater the number of Jews in Jerusalem who were openly committed to the revolt . . McLaren notes the coherence regarding the purpose of the war: once again, to be free of foreign rule. However, there are also important differences. In Josephus, “[t]here is little sense of an independent state being established and certainly no mention of its name, ‘Israel,’ let alone reference to ‘Zion.’ ” As such, the documents from Murabbaʿat and the revolt coins constitute independent evidence that sheds important light on the motivation of the Jews who revolted against Rome and the message that they wished to convey.
‘Going to war against Rome: the motivation of the Jewish rebels’. In The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Mladen Popović, 129-53. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series 154. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by neilgodfrey »

arnoldo wrote:Does this parallel Feldman’s claim that Josephus minimizes Davidic messianic expectations?
What evidence does Feldman cite in support of his claim?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by neilgodfrey »

arnoldo wrote: Like when you accuse Iskander of speaking "like a true Taliban?" :shock:
Well the Hebrew Scriptures are certainly a Taliban-like text -- ordering stoning and death for all sorts of acts and mass slaughter of various select groups of unbelievers.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Josephus' Portrait of David

Post by neilgodfrey »

neilgodfrey wrote:
arnoldo wrote:Does this parallel Feldman’s claim that Josephus minimizes Davidic messianic expectations?
What evidence does Feldman cite in support of his claim?
As far as I am aware Feldman at all times asserts the idea of "Davidic messianic expectations" as a given. Do you know of any exceptions?

That is, he introduces the idea as a given assumption.

It is not wrong, unscholarly, idiosyncratic, oddball, etc to raise questions about that assumption -- as a number of scholars have been doing. I think it is quite reasonable to address their questions and problems with the assumption. One scholar, William Scott Green, has even identified the assumption as being grounded in traditional Christian beliefs, and subsequently by way of response, even in Jewish beliefs responding to Christianity's claims.

Those who question the assumption point out, rightly I believe, that it is far simpler and more valid to read the texts "as they are" and to find explanations for any absence of the term "messiah" within the texts themselves -- as opposed to assuming the texts are delicately avoiding something, and that the writers were motivated by a need to avoid writing what is not there, all without any evidence.

Those who question the assumption also point out that the concept of messiah (davidic, conquering, etc) that scholarship has traditionally brought into their reading of the texts that don't mention messiah is actually one that was developed late, after 70 CE, and that there is no evidence that such a concept was at all a dominant or widespread view in the Second Temple era. What has happened is that many have assumed such a concept of messiah was prevalent very early and they read this concept into passages where it is not expressed.

But if new challenges to ideas are seen as threats, as idiosyncratic, as oddball.... then I guess we can be sure we have strong defences against any new understanding and ongoing learning.
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