Home › Flavius Josephus

Flavius Josephus

This bust is that of Roman Flavius Josephus ( Latin : Titus Flavius Josephus, ancient Greek / is a Roman historian the ^first century ( Jerusalem , about 37 - Rome , about 100 ) of Jewish and Greek.

His work is a major source for events and conflicts of his time between Rome and Jerusalem.

/ / Biography

Josephus belongs to a priestly family from Judea , linked to the monarchy of the Hasmonean. In 64 , under Nero , he was sent to Rome to negotiate the release of priests imprisoned. In 67 , appointed governor of Galilee by the Sanhedrin , he took an active part in the First Jewish-Roman War. According to his accounts at the storming of the Jewish garrison of the fortress of Jotapata , current Yodfat , where hundreds of soldiers were killed and where most of the other committed suicide, he was trapped in a cave with forty of his companions. The Romans asked them to surrender, they refused. Yosef ben Matityahu then proposed a method of collective suicide: the forty were to kill each other after the draw. Yosef (and one of its soldiers) were the only survivors of this process and then surrendered to the Romans (July 67) that made them prisoners. Yosef was released in 69 and became an intermediary (interpreter / negotiator) between the Romans (Romans and service) and encircled the Jews in Jerusalem.

Roman armies were led by Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus , both of which were to become emperors. Convinced of the Roman military superiority, Yosef tried to play the middle, which earned him a reputation as a traitor in the Jewish world. He claims to have predicted Vespasian's accession to the throne. It is possible that he participated with Agrippa II and Berenice in the conspiracy leading the Flavian the imperial throne. Released in 69 he witnessed the siege and the taking of Jerusalem by Titus in 70.

His first wife died (his parents) during the siege of Jerusalem. To 70 , Josephus divorced his second wife (a Jewish woman captures a moment of the Romans) and married a Jewish woman from Alexandria, whom he had three boys with a single, Flavius Hyrcanus, reached adulthood.

By 71 , he moved to Rome where he acquired Roman citizenship. He took the name of Titus Flavius and name in honor of his protectors . He received a pension from the ruling dynasty. During this period, in Rome under the protection of the Flavian emperors, he wrote all his historical writings known, the main non-Christian source on the period of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. He reported including the siege and capture of Masada in 74.

Around 75 , he divorced again, and contracted a fourth marriage with a Jewish woman from Crete who gave him two more son, Flavius Flavius Justus and Simonides Agrippa.

In Hist. eccl. (3.9.2), Eusebius of Caesarea reports that a statue was erected in Rome, Josephus.

Main works of Flavius Josephus

Jdische Chronic, translation of early 1552, in German , Bellum Judaicum of "War of the Jews" by Flavius Josephus. Cover page with fanciful illustration.

The Jewish War against Rome (75-79): 7 pounds narrative of the last uprising in Judea (66) and the taking of Jerusalem by Titus (in 70). Originally written in Aramaic , then translated into Greek before publication in 75 - 79. Trad. A. Pelletier, Les Belles Lettres, 1975, 3 t., Repr. 2003.
Autobiography (Greek / Isephou Bios): a complement to The Jewish War, where he justifies his choice to have followed the Romans. Trad. A. Pelletier, Les Belles Lettres, 1959, 5th ed. 2003, XXI-155 p.
The Jewish Antiquities (93): story of twenty books, inspired by the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus , adapting the story of the Jewish people to the Roman mentality. If the first part is an adaptation of the Bible , the last ten books are a historical document of the highest order.
Josephus in art
- Christian Tmpel, The reception of "Jewish Antiquities" of Flavius Josephus in Dutch history painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rembrandt and the New Jerusalem. Jews and Christians in Amsterdam in the Golden Century, Paris 2007, 37-54.
Lion Feuchtwanger wrote a novel "War of Judea" (1932) - "The son" - "The day will come." Fayard, 1996-2000.
References
1. Plagnieux, P. 'Sculptures Romanes' Hot Archaeology (January 2001) pg 15
2. Or, formerly Joseph (until the mid- ^nineteenth century ), cf. Paris, 1840, Auguste Desrez, printing and publishing, translation of Arnauld Andilly , adapted texts in modern French by JAC Buchon.
3. verified by the theologian Origen in the third century (Comments Matt. 10.17)
See also

Related article
- Testimonium Flavianum : famous and controversial passage of the Antiquities of the Jews who constitute the largest non-Christian ancient testimony about Jesus of Nazareth.
- Josephus Problem
External Links
- Flavius Josephus and Jerusalem in the first century by Etienne Nodet, Dominican. Professor at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem.
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War French and Greek
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities French and Greek
- Flavius Josephus, Against Apion Book I French.
- Flavius Josephus Against Apion Book II French.
- (In) Josephus Flavius on JewishEncyclopedia.com
Bibliography
- H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus: the man and historian (1929), trans. fr. of E. Nodet , with annotation and appendix on the Slavonic Version of the War, ed. Cerf, 2000
- Monette Bohrmann, Flavius Josephus, the Zealots and Yavne, PeterLang, 1989
- Mireille Hadas-Lebel, Flavius Josephus. The Jew of Rome, Fayard, Paris, 1989;
- Lucien Poznanski, The Fall of the Jerusalem Temple, Complex, al. "History," ^No. 108, Brussels, 1997.
- Denis Lamoureux, Flavius Josephus, Les Belles Lettres, coll. "Figures of Knowledge", ^No. 21, Paris, 2000.
- Patrick Banon, Flavius Josephus, Editions de la Renaissance - Paris, April 2007