The Jewish War: Preface
Feb. 8th, 2026 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThis week: All right! As a preface to Josephus Book Club, I am just reading the preface this week and we will do a bigger chunk starting this next week (see below). The preface is just a few pages long (I'm reading up until what in Oxford is paragraph 30, "All of these contents are set forth in seven books... I shall now begin my narrative as indicated at the start of my summary.")
I'm sure you all will have deeper things to say than I do about this, but wow I am just amused by how Josephus just starts out pulling no punches about how annoying and inferior he thinks the other historians are. (The footnote to The historians of this war fall into two categories... hearsay... or distort the facts namechecks Justus, who featured prominently as a frenemy in Feuchtwanger's Josephus trilogy.) I do like his logic in saying, hey, if you want to make the Romans look good, why make the Jewish side look feeble? Also his logic in saying, hey, actually, it makes more sense to be writing contemporary accounts for which one has eyewitnesses, as opposed to writing about ancient history "as if the ancient historians had failed to give their own accounts sufficient finesse," lol. (Although I guess that is what academic historians do!)
Titus Caesar is also namechecked, lookin' good.
The footnotes also say that historiographical writers generally claimed impartiality, so Josephus talking about his personal feelings of sorrow here is atypical, which I thought was interesting.
In fact, looking over the whole sweep of history, I would say that the sufferings of the Jews have been greater than those of any other nation -- and no foreign power is to blame. Oooooof. I guess that's a good tagline to pique interest in the book, though...
(I'm really glad I read Feuchtwanger's Josephus books first to orient myself, though!)
Next week: We'll start Book 1!selenak advised that we read up to Herod the Great's killing his favorite wife. My Oxford edition has "verse"/paragraph numbers but not chapter numbers as selenak's has, but I think (selenak, please let me know if this is incorrect) in my edition the idea is to read up to paragraph 443/444: Maddened by unbridled jealousy, Herod ordered the immediate execution of them both. Remorse quickly followed rage: his anger subsided, and his love was rekindled. The heat of his desire for her was so intense that he could not believe she was dead...
WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. I can see we have lots of sensationalistic gossip ahead of us!
I'm sure you all will have deeper things to say than I do about this, but wow I am just amused by how Josephus just starts out pulling no punches about how annoying and inferior he thinks the other historians are. (The footnote to The historians of this war fall into two categories... hearsay... or distort the facts namechecks Justus, who featured prominently as a frenemy in Feuchtwanger's Josephus trilogy.) I do like his logic in saying, hey, if you want to make the Romans look good, why make the Jewish side look feeble? Also his logic in saying, hey, actually, it makes more sense to be writing contemporary accounts for which one has eyewitnesses, as opposed to writing about ancient history "as if the ancient historians had failed to give their own accounts sufficient finesse," lol. (Although I guess that is what academic historians do!)
Titus Caesar is also namechecked, lookin' good.
The footnotes also say that historiographical writers generally claimed impartiality, so Josephus talking about his personal feelings of sorrow here is atypical, which I thought was interesting.
In fact, looking over the whole sweep of history, I would say that the sufferings of the Jews have been greater than those of any other nation -- and no foreign power is to blame. Oooooof. I guess that's a good tagline to pique interest in the book, though...
(I'm really glad I read Feuchtwanger's Josephus books first to orient myself, though!)
Next week: We'll start Book 1!
selenak advised that we read up to Herod the Great's killing his favorite wife. My Oxford edition has "verse"/paragraph numbers but not chapter numbers as selenak's has, but I think (selenak, please let me know if this is incorrect) in my edition the idea is to read up to paragraph 443/444: Maddened by unbridled jealousy, Herod ordered the immediate execution of them both. Remorse quickly followed rage: his anger subsided, and his love was rekindled. The heat of his desire for her was so intense that he could not believe she was dead...WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. I can see we have lots of sensationalistic gossip ahead of us!
no subject
Date: 2026-02-13 06:30 am (UTC)Would it be disrespectful to ask (as the original question was, and what I intended to ask in the next post) what the Talmud has to say (if anything) about who was to blame for the destruction of the Temple? I really didn't expect Josephus to say right up front that it was totally his own people's fault... although... judging on the context I have about him, this is NOT going to be the last time Josephus is going to say something where I'm all WTF?! so there's that.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-13 02:24 pm (UTC)A few rambling comments from me, Not an Expert, not representing all Jews, "Two Jews, three opinions," yadda yadda.
There's a long tradition in Judaism of saying that calamities are because God is punishing us for our sins. And the Temple's destruction isn't only losing one building, it's tied in with the Exile and the complete destruction of how Judaism was practiced at the time. So if the rabbis are talking about who was to blame for the destruction of the Temple, they're probably approaching it as a theological issue (why do bad things happen?) rather than "who physically set the building on fire." If that makes sense? I don't know enough about Josephus to comment on him.
I recall reading a Talmudic passage that the Temple's fall was because of the sin of sinat chinam, "baseless/senseless hatred," so that might be one concept to look into. (And as usual, there are going to be at least ten different explanations of what that means and how it should be applied in real life.)
Okay, going back to lurking now . . .