Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism: Louis H
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
60 chapter two Louis H. Feldman Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume edited by Shaye J.D. Cohen and Joshua J. Schwartz LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Studies in Josephus and the varieties of ancient Judaism : Louis H. Feldman jubilee volume / edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen and Joshua J. Schwartz. p. cm. — (Ancient Judaism and early Christianity, ISSN 1871-6636 ; v. 67) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15389-9 ISBN-10: 90-04-15389-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Josephus, Flavius. 2. Judaism—History—Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.–210 A.D. I. Feldman, Louis H. II. Cohen, Shaye J. D. III. Schwartz, Joshua. IV. Title. V. Series. DS115.9.J6S78 2006 933’.05—dc22 2006049127 ISSN 1871-6636 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15389 9 ISBN-10: 90 04 15389 6 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS In Appreciation of Louis H. Feldman ...................................... vii Josephus on Ancient Jewish Groups from a Social Scientific Perspective .............................................................................. 1 Albert I. Baumgarten Maccabees, Zealots and Josephus: The Impact of Zionism on Joseph Klausner’s History of the Second Temple ................ 15 David Berger ‘Your covenant that you have sealed in our flesh’: Women, Covenant, and Circumcision .................................. 29 Shaye J.D. Cohen Who are the Kings of East and West in Ber 7a?: Roman Religion, Syrian Gods and Zoroastriansim in the Babylonian Talmud ................................................................ 43 Yaakov Elman The Meaning of ‘Fisci Iudaici Calumnia Sublata’ on the Coinage of Nerva .................................................................. 81 Martin Goodman The Abuse and Misuse of Josephus in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Books 2 and 3 ...................................... 91 Gohei Hata Justus of Tiberias and the Synchronistic Chronology of Israel ........................................................................................ 103 Chaim Milikowsky ‘Women are (Not) Trustworthy’—Toward the Resolution of a Talmudic Crux .............................................................. 127 Leib Moscovitz vi contents Josephus and the Books of Samuel .......................................... 141 Etienne Nodet Lysias—An Outstanding Seleucid Politician ............................ 169 Uriel Rappaport Document and Rhetoric in Josephus: Revisiting the ‘Charter’ for the Jews ............................................................ 177 Tessa Rajak Adnotationes criticae ad Flavii Iosephi Contra Apionem ............ 191 Heinz Schreckenberg Josephus on His Jewish Forerunners (Contra Apionem 1.218) ...................................................................................... 195 Daniel R. Schwartz Are the ‘Halachic Temple Mount’ and the ‘Outer Court’ of Josephus One and the Same? .......................................... 207 Joshua Schwartz and Yehoshua Peleg Conversion to Judaism in the Second Temple Period: A Functional Approach .......................................................... 223 Seth Schwartz Jews and Gentiles from Judas Maccabaeus to John Hyrcanus according to Contemporary Jewish Sources ...... 237 Israel Shatzman The Ancient Lists of Contents of Josephus’ Antiquities ............ 271 Joseph Sievers Index of Sources ........................................................................ 293 Index of Scholars Cited ............................................................ 308 IN APPRECIATION OF LOUIS H. FELDMAN To know Louis Feldman is to love him. Has Louis (pronounced LOO-ey by all his admirers) ever had a student who did not sub- sequently become an acolyte, a devotee, a hasid? His affection for his students, his concern for their well-being and success, his delight in their accomplishments—all these were experienced by legions of students. Louis is devoted not only to his students but also to his subject. He has single-handedly kept alive the study of Greek and Latin at Yeshiva College for over fifty years. He routinely teaches five or six courses a semester, sometimes more, so that his students in Beginners’ Latin, Intermediate Latin, Advanced Latin, Beginners’ Greek, Intermediate Greek, and Advanced Greek would be able to take a course at the level appropriate to them. No class was too small for Louis; if even a single student showed up for a course, Louis offered it. When I was a student at Yeshiva College, I took a total of fourteen courses with Louis (eight in Latin, six in Greek). If memory serves, the enrollment in these courses ranged from two to five. And yet, everyone at Yeshiva College knew that these courses were among the best offered in the school and were second to none in seriousness and effectiveness. In 1981 Louis received an award from the American Philological Association for excellence in teach- ing the classics. This heavy teaching load did not impair Louis’ scholarship. On the contrary, from the 1950s to today a steady stream of articles and books has flowed from his active pen. Josephus, of course, has long remained his particular favorite; we may safely say that Louis is dean of Josephan studies in the United States. Louis has given us the immensely useful Loeb edition of books 18–20 of the Jewish Antiquities, and innumerable studies of Josephus’s paraphrase of the Bible. These studies have been collected in his Studies in Josephus’ Rewritten Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1998) and Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). The capstone of his work on Josephus no doubt is his translation of, and exten- sive commentary on, books 1–4 of the Antiquities for the new Josephus series published by Brill (2000). viii in appreciation of louis h. feldman But this is not all. Louis has long been interested in the place of the Jews in Greco-Roman society, especially in questions relating to conversion to Judaism (proselytism). An early article of his, ‘Jewish “Sympathizers” in Classical Literature and Inscriptions,’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 81 (1950) 200–208, is a classic. Louis has gone on to write many other classic studies of the social and religious interactions between Jews and gentiles in antiquity, notably Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Even those who do not fully accept Louis’ assumptions and inter- pretations will acknowledge that this is the work of a master scholar who knows all the relevant sources in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. And who knows how many essays Louis has written on Philo and pseudo-Philo, on the Greek and Latin authors who refer to Jews, on Midrash and Septuagint, and on related topics? Louis has spent virtually his entire career at Yeshiva University, an institution with a very modest PhD program in Jewish studies. The result is that Louis has not trained many PhD students. But nonetheless he has profoundly affected the field of Jewish studies through his numerous students who, inspired by his example and his teaching, went on to earn PhD’s elsewhere and to become schol- ars of note in Jewish studies. A fair number of these students appear as contributors to this book. Blessed by a deep and real piety, an unswerving dedication to what is right, and a wonderful sense of humor, Louis is a model Jew, teacher, and scholar. May he live until one hundred and twenty, full of good health, cheer, and enthusiasm. Shaye Cohen Joshua Schwartz JOSEPHUS ON ANCIENT JEWISH GROUPS FROM A SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE* Albert I. Baumgarten Introduction Josephus’ comments on the ‘philosophies’ prevalent among ancient Jews have been subject to much criticism. Can Josephus really be believed when he claimed that he spent a year studying the doc- trines and practices of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, or is this one example of a topos, according to which an intellectual claimed to have learned from all possible sources?1 Was Josephus a Pharisee, as he asserted, or was this a late in life commitment, undertaken when it was politically expedient, of which there are few if any indi- cations in his earlier works (his loyalty to priestly traditions seems much more important)?2 What were his sources for the two exten- sive excurses on the Jewish groups? Who was the audience for which these excurses were written and how might his sources and/or the audience have shaped the presentation of these movements?3 Since * This paper is a revised version of lectures presented to the Graduiertenkolleg ‘Religion und Normativität,’ Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany, in February 2000, and as part of my responsibilities as Altman Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, University