The Jewish War: First half of Book 6

[cahn]

Last week: Sieges are awful. Josephus tells us that Titus really totally felt bad about all the awfulness (even though he didn't stop them) and there is a theory that maybe by "us" he meant "Berenice." Titus had dancing boys?? (Josephus does not mention any, sadly.) Does Samuel the Lamanite in the Book of Mormon owe anything to Josephus speaking truth to the wicked? Unclear. Talmud on the Sages vs. the Zealots as an interesting correlated story to Josephus. Poppea's complexity including both an interest in (conversion to?) Judaism as well as being ruthless; comparison to Constantine's much better press.

This week: The temple is destroyed.

Next week: End of Book 6.

Comments

Re: Recap

[cahn]

Given that these names are irrelevant to his Roman and Greek readership, I think they're there both for the Jewish readers and to give testimony; chances are few of any of these men he lists survived, and he wouldn't be wrong to suspect once their own families are gone nobody would remember them anymore if he doesn't do this.

Oh gosh. Yeah, that makes sense. :/

(Unless we're talking about Suetonius' gossipy biographies of the Caesars; he does mention everyone's skin tone down to the last pimble.)

cenozoicsynapsid mentioned our translation, so I'm just going to laugh at this :)

And Josephus does draw on precedence; googling tells me there is maternal cannibalism mentioned as the ultimate horror in Deuteronomy 28, Lamentations 2 and 4, and 2 Kings 6. However, none of this means I think Josephus point blank invented it and that there was no Mary/Mirjam who ate her child in the siege of Jerusalem. He's publishing only a few years after the event, and if he had made it up, there would have been a lot of survivors on both sides able to say so, because they would have heard about it when it happened. So my guess is that it did happen, but everyone from the mother to Titus making speeches did not, and also it probably didn't happen directly before the Roman assault on the Temple.

Yeah -- the Deut and Lamentations references are not concrete events so much as they seem to be instantiations of the ultimate horror, though 2 Kings 6 does purport to be a story that happened (though differently than in Josephus). But yeah, that makes sense :/

So basically, if once "The Jewish War" is published there are veterans from Titus' staff who want to say "what rubbish is this, Titus gave us point blank instructions to torch the Temple", it's not in Titus' interest to stop them saying this.

Ohhh okay!

so he does give the order to spare the Temple, but he does it in a way that betrays a part of him also wants the Temple to burn, and that's what the Roman officer he gives the order to latches on to and who unambiguously hates the Jews latches on to, and that's what Titus can never admit to himself afterwards, hence him horrifying Josephus years later when dying via the final question "Why was the Temple destroyed?"

:/

So basically: torching a Temple = REALLY BAD LUCK FOR WHOEVER DOES IT, mythologically speaking, in the ancient world.

Ohhhh. That's really interesting, especially what you say about the readers noticing that the Flavian dynasty didn't last too long. Though none of our Talmud readers (I think?) have told us (yet) that there's anything in the Talmud about it, which if this is common knowledge might end up there? But then again maybe the Talmudic writers weren't paying too much attention to that kind of thing.