Josephus, the bible, and history

Edited by Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata

LEIDEN • E. J. BRILL • 1989

Copyright © 1988 by Yamamoto Shoten Publishing House, Tokyo. Published by E. J. Brill, Leiden. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.

Distributed in the United States and Canada by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan. Distributed in other countries of the world by E.J. Brill, Leiden.

ISBN 90-04-08931-4

To the memory of the parents of my wife, Miriam,

Moshe Yaakov and Rivkah Blum, Z′′L, martrys in the Holocaust,

whose devotion to the Jewish tradition is their greatest legacy.

Louis H. Feldman

Contents

CONTRIBUTORS

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION, by Louis H. Feldman

1. Josephus and the Canon of the Bible, by Sid Z. Leiman

2. Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, by Louis H. Feldman

3. Josephus’ Biblical Text for the Books of Samuel, by Eugene Ulrich

4. Josephus, the Letter of Aristeas, and the Septuagint, by André Pelletier

5. Josephus and I Maccabees, by Isaiah M. Gafni

6. The Role of Women in the Hasmonean Dynasty, by Joseph Sievers

7. Josephus and Nicolaus of Damascus, by Ben Zion Wacholder

8. The Sadducees in Josephus, by Günther Baumbach

9. The High Priesthood in the Judgment of Josephus, by Clemens Thoma

10. Josephus and the Revolutionary Parties, by Valentin Nikiprowetzky

11. Josephus and the Economic Causes of the Jewish War, by Shimon Applebaum

12. A Marxist View of Josephus’ Account of the Jewish War, by Heinz Kreissig

13. The Forms and Historical Value of Josephus’ Suicide Accounts, by Raymond R. Newell

14. The Description of the Land of Israel in Josephus’ Works, by Zeev Safrai

15. Josephus Flavius and the Archaeological Excavations in Jerusalem, by Benjamin Mazar

A SELECTIVE CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPHUS, by Louis H. Feldman

INDEX OF REFERENCES TO JOSEPHUS

INDEX

Contributors

Shimon Applebaum, who received his doctorate from Oxford in 1952, is professor emeritus of classical archaeology and Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is the author of Agrarian History of England and Wales—Roman Britain (1972) and Jews and Greeks in Ancient Cyrene (1979).

Günther Baumbach, professor of New Testament in the Department of Theology of the Humboldt University in East Berlin, has written Das Verständnis des Bösen in den synoptischen Evangelien (1963), Jesus von Nazareth im Lichte der jüdischen Gruppenbildung (1971), and (with K. M. Fischer) Das Neue Testament mit Erklärungen (1986).

Louis H. Feldman, professor of classics at Yeshiva University, New York, is the editor of Books XVIII to XX of Josephus’ Antiquities in the Loeb Classical Library (1965) and is the author of an extensive Prolegomenon to the reissue of M. R. James’ version of Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities (1971), of Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1984), and of Josephus: A Supplementary Bibliography (1986). He is the coeditor (with Gohei Hata) of Josephus, Judaism, ...