The Jewish War: First half of Book 1

[cahn]

I am super not promising to always have this on Saturday, but yay long weekend!

Last week: I know some of you reading this study Talmud -- Josephus asserts at the very beginning that the "sufferings of the Jews" (presumably, in context of Josephus' writing, Titus destroying the temple, etc. though we won't get there for a while) are their own fault: "no foreign power is to blame." It was pointed out that the Talmud may (?) have its own opinion(s) as to whether the destruction of the Temple and the resulting diaspora was divine punishment? And regardless of the former, may also blame Titus? (I also don't know yet, because we haven't gotten there yet and won't for a while, whether Josephus himself thinks it's divine punishment or just plain old temporal consequences. My vague recollection of Feuchtwanger's Josephus is that he was thinking more of the latter, which is also very much borne out by this week's reading.)

This week: First half of Book 1 (Ch 22 / Par 444):

Okay, I must say the first part of this was a slog for me -- flitting between a lot of people I didn't know. Good thing we have this reading group or I might not have got through it. As it was, I had to take copious notes to even make a stab at writing up a summary (I won't promise I'll do this every week, but I had a little extra time and quite frankly I knew I wouldn't remember who any of these people were next week if I didn't), and I'm going to put them in comments so this post doesn't get super long. At least Josephus felt it was "inappropriate to go into the early history of the Jews," which would have made it really long. Anyway, it got substantially more interesting once Herod showed up!

Next week: Finish book 1.

Comments

[cenozoicsynapsid]

The book finally arrived this evening, so I have not managed to get through all of the prescribed reading, although I have done the translator's preface and introduction and some of the (as you say very complicated) history of the Hasmoneans and will try to finish the rest this week.

One thing that surprised me a bit was the degree to which Josephus writes about a large and sophisticated diaspora, envisioning his Aramaic work being read all over the Middle East, discussing the number of Greek translations of Jewish works by Greek-speaking Jews that his readers will already be familiar with, and even writing about a mini-temple that someone built in Egypt. (I had not heard of this and am curious to find out more, but am prioritizing actually posting at least something on this thread!)

On the other hand, there are a lot of places within modern-day Israel that are not ethnically Jewish: Samaria and the Greek colonies in the north were not a surprise, but I had not realized that this was also true of the coastal cities of the Gaza Strip and north to modern Caesariya (my grandparents lived not too far from there; it is possible to tour the Roman port facilities, but I had assumed the cities were Romanized after the war).

Alexander's mercenary troops are from the southern part of modern Turkey (Cilicia and Pisidia), which I think would have been Seleucid territory at the time (selenak will presumably correct me if I am wrong?). It's curious that they are supplying mercenary troops to sometime enemies of the Seleucids. My understanding is that ancient mercenaries are often in a long-term relationship with their sponsor (Carthage's Iberian mercenaries) and/or come from a tribal society that has excess fighting men (Caesar's Germans)--- I'm not sure what the situation is with these guys.

Finally, it's interesting to learn that the High Priest is clearly the main political leader in Josephus's understanding of the early Hasmonean kingdom. The High Priest certainly doesn't have this role in the Torah (there's a separate king), and seems to lose it fairly soon into the Hasmonean era as well. Why put him in charge, then? Or is this just based on I Maccabees and perhaps not actually true?

[cahn]

Yay! It gets easier once you get to Herod :)

Ah, yeah, I am geographically challenged enough that the scale of the diaspora didn't stand out to me the way it did to you (I was mostly frustrated by how much geography/peoples I couldn't keep track of, ha), so I'm glad you mentioned that. (I am not going to be able to correct you about anything, but hopefully selenak will if needed!)

About the High Priest: yeah, I went back and looked at the footnotes and they seemed a little confused about this too: the note to 1.70 says "On their coins, Hasmonaean rulers frequently used the Greek term basileus ('king'). In Hebrew, melekh ('king') is sometimes used, but so too is hokohen hagadol ('high priest')."

[cenozoicsynapsid]

Ok, so, today I learned:

The Egyptian temple was built by a guy named Onias. Wikipedia says it is really not well documented outside Josephus, but seems to have really existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Onias

The Talmud (Megillah 10a, https://www.sefaria.org/Megillah.10a.4?lang=bi) says:
GEMARA: Rabbi Yitzḥak said: I heard that one sacrifices offerings in the temple of Onias in Egypt at the present time. The Gemara cites the basis for the statement of Rabbi Yitzḥak. He maintains that the temple of Onias is not a house of idol worship but rather a temple devoted to the service of God, and he maintains that the initial consecration sanctified Jerusalem for its time and did not sanctify Jerusalem forever.
...
The other Sages said to Rabbi Yitzḥak: Did you say this halakha with regard to the temple of Onias? He said to them: No, I did not say that. Rava said, reinforcing his assertion with an oath: By God! Rabbi Yitzḥak did in fact say this, and I myself learned it from him, but he later retracted this ruling.
The Gemara asks: And what is the reason he retracted his ruling? The Gemara explains: It is due to the difficulty raised by Rav Mari, as Rav Mari raised an objection from the mishna: With regard to the sanctity of Shiloh, after the Tabernacle was destroyed there is permission to sacrifice offerings on improvised altars. But with regard to the sanctity of Jerusalem, after the Temple was destroyed there is no permission to sacrifice offerings on improvised altars. And furthermore, we learned in a mishna (Zevaḥim 112b): Once they came to Jerusalem, improvised altars were prohibited, and they did not again have permission to do so, and Jerusalem became the everlasting inheritance.

Apparently archaeologists have put forward a few modern Egyptian sites as potential locations of the temple of Onias, but none of them seems to be universally accepted.

[cahn]

Gosh, I glossed right over the whole mention of the Egyptian temple but... that is neat!