The Jewish War: Second half of Book 2

[cahn]

Last week: Lots of discussion of various contemporary Roman emperors and their families: Claudius, Agrippina, Nero, Britannicus. Quinctilius Varus and Arminius make an appearance as well. Also Josephus wants to tell you ALL about the Essenes, and none of us knows why but maybe we will find out sometime in the future?? (ugh, I haven't finished replying to comments yet on this either, sorry! -- hopefully will get to that tomorrow)

This week: The Jewish war starts! It's a mess. We do finally meet our hero Josephus, who is just the most heroic, clever, and brave guy. (Probably devilishly handsome too, although this is admittedly not in the text.)

Next week: where shall we read to in Book 3? ETA: All of book 3 for this week!

Comments

[cahn]

And dissing other leaders like Joannes of Gischala, whom you might recall is a wily old fox in Feuchtwanger's trilogy who'll bring Josef repeatedly down to earth once they've both survived the war.

Yes! I was going to mention John of Gischala (but forgot), I did remember the name from Feuchtwanger and was wondering if I'd got something mixed up because the way he's portrayed in this chapter is not exactly how I remembered him in Feuchtwanger...

This is extra noteworthy for Josephus among the other cruelties because crucifixion is not only a punishment reserved for the worst but explicitly forbidden to take against Roman citizens. (Hence St. Paul, who is a Roman citizen, being decapitated while St. Peter, who is not, being crucified.) We take crucifixion as a punishment Romans use for granted for obvious reasons, so it's always good to be reminded what it meant for contemporaries.

Ah right -- I think I might have known that at one point but clearly forgot, so it's good to be reminded!

Berenike is a princess - a Queen, in fact, due to her previous marriage - , and the sister of a monarch classified as an ally of the Roman people. So her being treated disrespectfully and even attacked is another shocking breach of conduct. Given Josephus' Roman and Greek readers would of course know Berenike in a different context (i.e due to her later relationship with Titus) and would distrust her for this reason, her being written as sympathetic might also be related.

Ohhhhh okay yeah I did not clue into that.

Basically a way for Josephus to signal "see! This is a noble woman, readers! Not like Cleopatra at all!

LOL. Poor Cleopatra!

The Jews did not have that kind of geographical safety to withdraw to, no gigantic woods, either, and thus in the long term they were always doomed to be crushed. This said, this very section of Josephus' work also demonstrates that the non-violent way - i.e. petitions, pleas and so forth - doesn't get them justice, either, if there are a bunch of abusive guys in charge, so while the text doesn't say so directly, I would argue it makes it clear why Agrippa wasn't listened to.

Yeah... I didn't really have the awareness to analyze it like that, but I definitely felt like Agrippa was asking too much to ask them to KEEP knuckling down under the abusive guy until Rome got around to sending another guy.

Which reminds me that Feuchtwanger developed this into a basically its own subplot in the form of Josephus' second marriage to Dorion, with her, her father and the teacher being the main proponents of said hostility.

OH -- I didn't make that connection at all!

Because if you think you can manage, I'd suggest we do it as an entirety.

I think I can. I'll put it in the post :)