The Jewish War: First half of Book 2

[cahn]

Last week: Discussion on how Herod stacked up against various Roman emperors in terms of body count of his nearest and dearest; how Friedrich Wilhelm might hear the Josephus text; Herod throwing money around; Cleopatra!

This week: ...uhhhh there was a lot going on and I haven't actually finished the reading yet *ducks* -- I am doing that right now and I should most likely be able to comment tomorrow. (I don't anticipate this being a problem again for at least two more months, and most likely not then either; this was a confluence of various time sinks that doesn't usually happen all at the same time.) But I wanted to go ahead and get the post up because I know you guys have read it... (ETA: have finished the reading now :P :) )

Next week: finishing up Book 2!

Comments

Re: There are three kinds of Jew...

[selenak]

Thirding the bizarreness of the authorial choice of giving his Roman/Greek audience a detailed description of the Essenes at this particular point of the story. Honestly, the sole two things I remember from school (i.e. many decades ago) about the Essenes is a) John the Baptist was supposed to be one, and b) Dead Sea Scrolls?

Though your guess that he might be building them up to explain at least parts of the coming war would make sense. What it does highlight is that at this point in Judaism history, evidently the time was ripe for new branches/movements. I can also see why medieval monks found all of this absolutely fascinating and worth transcribing, never mind the few inserted sentences later.

Whether Josephus himself was a Phariseen or Sadducean, I don’t recall, would have to look it up.