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

[selenak]

Well, I think LF did kind of imply our Joseph(us) is not the most objective of writers. ;)

Jewish-Greek hostility: I was darkly amused that Josephus traces the origin of the Jewish community in Alexandria - which was, I think, the largest outside of Judea, kind of like New York City today - back to everyone's hero Alexander instead of, more realistically, the Ptolemies. (Jo Graham in her largely Alexandria set novel "Hand of Isis" also features a prominent Jewish character.) (Next largest is the Jewish community in Rome itself in ancient times, I think, and centuries later we get Constantinople. As Feuchtwanger's novel says, the Jewish community in Rome predates the destruction of Jerusalem and the "import" of many Jewish captives and was at this point already very well established and old; you might recall I mentioned Suetonius says they mourned for (Gaius Julius) Caesar after his death because they saw him as a great protector and patron, which Suetonius doesn't mean as a compliment to Caesar.) Alexandria, of course, was famous for its bloody riots from the mid-Ptolemies period onwards, in which usually most ethnicities residing there were involved, but 3000 dead is extraordinary even fore those standards.

[cahn]

Well, I think LF did kind of imply our Joseph(us) is not the most objective of writers. ;)

Heeee!

I was darkly amused that Josephus traces the origin of the Jewish community in Alexandria - which was, I think, the largest outside of Judea, kind of like New York City today - back to everyone's hero Alexander instead of, more realistically, the Ptolemies.

Ah, I'm glad you mentioned that, that's interesting.