|
Reader Mail - New Additions
Josephus
on Audio
Archaeological
Correction: Galilee
The
Veil of the Temple
A
Rope on the High Priest?
Michal's
Idol
Translating
the Sodomites
Gaza
"And
some of the Gazaians, when they saw themselves deserted, burnt their own houses
that the enemy might get none of their spoils."
With
history being written in Gaza in recent days (August 2005), it is
enriching to review the political situation of that region during the last era
in which it felt the influence of a Jewish state: the era
recorded by Josephus.
Read
Josephus' history of
Gaza.
Recent Books
The next two volumes of
the
Brill Josephus Commentary are
out. Together these cover Josephus' retelling of the Bible from Joshua to the
Babylonian captivity.
Judean Antiquities Books 5-7 Translation
and Commentary
by Christopher T. Begg. Brill, 2004-5.
Judean
Antiquities Books 8-10 Translation and Commentary
by
Christopher T. Begg and Paul Spilsbury. Brill 2005.
The military aspects of the First Revolt:
THE ROMAN JUDAEO WAR, 66-74 AD: A Military
Analysis
by Jim
Bloom
Saga
Publications, Syracuse, NY (2002)
Click
here for a description of the book
In French -- a study of Josephus' account
of Abraham:
Abraham
d'après Josèphe Flavius, une étude comparative avec les traditions païnne,
juive et biblique.
by Rudi
Stumpf
Editions
Mis Buech, 2003.
Have you noticed? Two essential Josephus
studies are in updated and inexpensive editions:
Josephus and the New
Testament.
Steve Mason Hendrickson, 2nd Edition.
Josephus:
The Historian and His Society
Tessa Rajak
Paperback Edition,
Duckworth Publishing.
Do you like historical fiction? See a
Josephus-based Herodian adventure novel on-line at
http://bible.to/en/fic/pqs/,
by David Christensen.
New Category
Josephus' relation to the modern world
is addressed in a new category. The first entrants restore some links to
previously published articles.
Extracts from Josephus with
Commmentary:
Modern Aspects
The Campaign against Al Qaeda and the Jewish War: Some
Parallels
by Jim Bloom
(December 2001)
Remarks on Josephus in the Light of Current Events: 2001
by G. J. Goldberg
(December 30, 2001)
The Pool of Siloam
Recently, Jerusalem construction workers (eventually assisted by
archaeologists) uncovered the long-lost Pool of Siloam. Readers of the New
Testament know the pool as instrumental in restoring sight to a blind man:
"With
these words, Jesus spat on the ground and made a paste with the spittle; he
spread it on the man's eyes, and said to him, 'Go and wash in the Pool of
Siloam'...The man went off and washed, and came back able to see." (John 9:1)
It
is Josephus, however, who tells us the location of Siloam, which he calls
"that fountain of sweet and abundant water" (War 5.4.1 140). When
the Romans laid seige to Jerusalem, Josephus attempted to persuade his
countrymen to give up the city peacefully, and one of the omens he used to
justify his position involved the Pool of Siloam. It had been
failing, he reminds them, as had all the wells outside the city walls. But
now that the Romans have camped oustide the walls, the waters "flow so freely
for your enemies as to suffice not only for themselves and their beasts but
even for gardens. This miracle moreover, has been experienced before now on the
fall of the city..." The comparison to the Babylonian capture that then
follows does not appear in the Bible. (War 5.9.4 410). The archaeological
evidence that the pool began to fill during the war could be confirmation of
this account.
For
details of the recent archaelogical finds, see the on-line Biblical Archaeology
Review article on the
the Pool of Siloam.
New Link
A
nice collection of photographs and articles concerning the coins of ancient
Judea
Handbook
of Biblical Numismatics
http://www.amuseum.org/book
Recent
"What Jesus blatantly fails
to appreciate
is that it's the meek who
are the problem."
In honor of the
25th anniversary re-release of the
Life of Brian, it's...
Monty Python
and
the
Works of
JosephuS
The argumentative characters of
the film misapprehend Jesus' proclamation, "Blessed are the peacemakers," which
they hear as "Blessed are the cheesemakers." Why the cheesemakers? they wonder.
Fortunately their confusion is
dispelled by a nearby scholar, who speaks with the authority of a modern
Professor of Religious Studies: "Obviously it's not meant to be taken literally
-- it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products."
This explanation can be taken even further,
as Josephus tells us that the valley running through central Jerusalem was
called the Tyropoion Valley, which means "Valley of the Cheesemakers" (War
5.4.1 140) (the Greek Tyropoion is the genitive plural of tyropoios,
from tyros, "cheese", and poieo, "make"). With cheese makers --
or any manufacturers of dairy products -- at the heart of the holy city, they
must surely have been blessed, opening the possibility that this is the correct
reading of the Sermon on the Mount and that "peacemakers" is a later
corruption....
Read
Monty Python and the Works of Josephus
An
engraving of Josephus from the frontispiece of the
1736 edition of the works of Josephus translated by
Sir Roger L'Estrange. Image courtesy of
Morris & Heather Tushinski.
Letters!
Free in Text Format
from Project Gutenberg
The Complete Works of Josephus
translated by William Whiston
Project Gutenberg has made available text versions of the Works of
Josephus which the reader can download and use in any fashion; the format is
easy to search with standard text search tools. This differs from the Wheaton
site which is in HTML (web page) format and has use restrictions. The text
version comes in four zip files (1640 KB).
Click on the following to download the zip files. (Afterwards, click on the zip
file on your local disk to expand it into a text file.)
For other download sites, see the Project
Gutenberg web site.
The Jewish War (460 KB)
Antiquities of the Jews (1,030 KB)
The Life (60 KB)
Against Apion (90 KB)
|
