Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism

Klawans, Jonathan

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928613.001.0001

Cited by 38 publications

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“…As Bellum Judaicum proved fascinating to early Christian readers, it spawned a diversity of Latin Christian translations ranging from the fairly literal to the theologically transformative (Bay, 2022b). Josephus depicts the Siege and the entire Roman occupation as divinely ordered but not, in Jonathan Klawans's terms, “ruptur[ing]” the “special relationship between God and Israel” (Klawans, 2012, p. 190), an interpretation that caters to Josephus's Roman masters without discarding Jewish theodicy or futurity. Most early Christian translators of Josephus, however, take a contrasting supersessionary view: the Jews of the Second Temple destruction are post‐covenantal, since they have refused to accept Christ.…”

Section: “[T]enderhearted [W]omen Have Cooked Their Children”: the So...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New approaches

Pareles

2023

Religion Compass

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This essay traces the far‐reaching legend of Maria/Miriam of Bethezuba, sometimes called Mary, Marie, or Marion, a starving Jewish woman who (according to Flavius Josephus's The Jewish War) ate her own baby during the 70 CE Roman Siege of Jerusalem. This episode of maternal infanticide and cannibalism under occupation is the culmination of Biblical curses and prophecies, a complicated reference to the Eucharist, and an emblem of Jewish (women's) suffering and culpability across time. It is also a key to Jewish‐Christian arguments about futurity and the writing of history. Scholarly developments in the past decade prompt a new look at this episode. These include research on Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and other translations of Josephus that demonstrate complex relationships among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readerships and modern English translations of key Hebrew, Arabic, Ge'ez (Ethiopic), and Middle English versions of the story. This essay provides a brief literary and theological history of Maria's story informed by the new scholarship, with particular attention to medieval Jewish‐Christian relations, and suggests additional directions for research.

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Section: “[T]enderhearted [W]omen Have Cooked Their Children”: the So...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New approaches

Pareles

2023

Religion Compass

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“…Yet Kaplan's impact on American Jewish life has been so pervasive that few involved contemporary Jewish writers could credibly claim to be free of Kaplanian influence . Indeed, I myself argued elsewhere that other modern views—such as Moses Mendelssohn's understanding of Judaism as a “religion of laws”—may have had a detrimental effect on the field of ancient Judaism (Klawans, , pp. 1–2, 14–17, 212–214).…”

Section: A Kaplanian Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, scholars of ancient Judaism understand their analytic tasks to be, well, Kaplanian—including within the scope all who claimed to have been Jews or appear to express themselves Jewishly. This is why a conscious, acknowledged nod to Kaplan may be beneficial—even while, by contrast, the equally anachronistic (and usually unacknowledged) Mendelssohnian appeal to a “religion of laws” remains detrimental (Klawans, , pp. 1–2, 14–17).…”

Section: Jewish Peoplehood Then As Nowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judaism was a civilization: Toward a reconstruction of ancient Jewish peoplehood

Klawans

2018

Religion Compass

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Contemporary scholars of ancient Judaism struggle to describe Jewishness, recognizing that ancient Jewish concepts of social collectivity do not fully correspond with modern understandings of ethnicity, nationality, race, or even religion. But despite current efforts, categorical anachronism may be inherently inescapable. Scholars should therefore evaluate modern descriptive terms based on their analytic utility. By this standard, scholars would do well to consider embracing an obviously anachronistic—but nevertheless utilitarian—term to understand ancient Jewishness: “peoplehood.” Mordecai Kaplan's conceptions of “civilization” and “peoplehood” were developed as conscious rejections of more limited (and Protestant) understandings of religion. Kaplan proposed a more nuanced understanding of Jewishness, straddling the same divides (between ethnicity, nationality, and religion) that confound scholars of ancient Judaism today. Kaplan's understanding of the Jewish civilization—land, language, folkways, sanctions, institutions, and arts—presents a striking (if inexact) articulation of the way scholars of ancient Judaism discern Jewishness in our ancient evidence. This in turn justifies utilizing “peoplehood” as an analytic category for the understanding of ancient Jewishness.

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“…Judaism of the Second Temple was characterised by sectarianism and a common national cause (cf Klawans 2012;. Meissner 2000:67).…”

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confidence: 99%

Africanism, Apocalypticism, Jihad and Jesuitism: Prelude to Ethiopianism

Rukuni

Oliver

2019

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

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Ethiopianism conceptually shaped modern Africa. Perceivably, this has been deduced from distinguished events in Ethiopian history. This investigation explored Ethiopianism as a derivate of the multifaceted narrative of Ethiopian religious political dynamics. Ethiopianism has arguably been detached from the entirety of the Ethiopian Christian political establishment, being deduced separately from definitive events such as the Battle of Adwa 1896. This research reconnected Ethiopianism to a wholistic religious–political matrix of Ethiopia. Therefore, it offers an alternative interpretation of Ethiopianism, as a derivate of Africanism and Apocalypticism, also correspondingly as a factor of Islamic Jihad and Jesuit Catholicism. The research was accomplished mainly through document analysis and compositely with cultural historiography. This study was a revisionist approach to Ethiopianism as a concept, deriving it from the chronological narrative of Ethiopian Christianity’s religious and political self-definition. Consequently, this realigned Ethiopianism as a derivate of multiple influences. Ethiopianism was possibly a convolution of the Donatist biblical appeal to the nativity, Judaic apocalypticism, Islamic attacks and Jesuit missionary diplomacy. Throughout the narrative of the Ethiopian Christian establishment, autonomy and independence are traceable; in addition, there is an entrenched enculturation of native Christianity and synergy with the political establishment. This formulates a basis for Ethiopianism as an ideology of African magnanimity. Parallel comparisons of Ethiopianism against Donatism and Zionism decode the nationalistic matrix of Ethiopia. Dually encultured native religious practice coupled with theocratic symbiosis of politics and religion fostered resistance from Islamisation and Jesuit Catholicisation. Further enquiry of Ethiopian Christianity as an index of the Ethiopian political establishment, from which Ethiopianism is derived, is qualified.

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Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New approaches

Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New approaches

Judaism was a civilization: Toward a reconstruction of ancient Jewish peoplehood

Africanism, Apocalypticism, Jihad and Jesuitism: Prelude to Ethiopianism

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