Best regards, Andrew Stewart
Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <[email protected]> > Date: February 18, 2021 at 8:25:34 AM EST > To: [email protected] > Cc: H-Net Staff <[email protected]> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Timmermann on Goodman, 'Josephus's The Jewish > War: A Biography' > Reply-To: [email protected] > > Martin Goodman. Josephus's The Jewish War: A Biography. Lives of > Great Religious Books Series. Princeton Princeton University Press, > 2019. Illustrations. 200 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-13739-1. > > Reviewed by Josh Timmermann (University of British Columbia) > Published on H-War (February, 2021) > Commissioned by Margaret Sankey > > All of the two dozen (and counting) entries in Princeton University > Press's Lives of Great Religious Books series feature the subtitle _A > Biography_ after the title of the religious text under consideration > in a given volume. But the question of what exactly it means to > narrate the "biography" of a book--to tell the story of its > "life"--allows, in practice, for a high degree of interpretative > latitude. To this ambiguous end, different scholars have adopted > different approaches. For instance, Gary Willis, in his contribution > on Augustine's _Confessions_, focuses most of his attention on the > formative periods of Augustine's life that are recounted in his work > and on Augustine's purposeful, aesthetic reshaping of those earlier > experiences in composing the _Confessions_. By contrast, Timothy > Beal's study of Revelation is mainly concerned with that biblical > book's later permutations, not so much on the New Testament text > itself but, rather more loosely, on how certain ideas or scenes from > Revelation have osmosed into various cultural forms, particularly in > American art and popular culture. Bruce B. Lawrence delimits the > scope of his volume right from the outset, titling it _The Koran in > English: A Biography_. These short studies--each engaging and > eminently readable--are products of personal selection, distinctly > revealing of what one scholar finds to be the most important, or most > interesting, or most representative moments in the gestation or > (after)life of their "great religious book." Given that most of the > books that have merited entries in this series are ancient or > medieval texts, there are a staggering number of such moments to > choose among, often with no obvious, predetermined path to follow. > > Martin Goodman's biography of Josephus's nearly two-thousand-year-old > _Jewish War_ is certainly no exception to any of the above. > Inevitably, there is much in Josephus's text and in its long "life" > that is passed over in silence, or with only a terse, allusive > sentence or two. In a mere 140 pages (excluding its appendix), > Goodman's biography covers a lot of ground, moving steadily forward > from the first century AD to the twentieth and back and forth between > Jewish and Christian cultural contexts. After an initial chapter on > Josephus himself and his direct involvement in the fateful conflict > that he later famously recounted, Goodman devotes a chapter to _The > Jewish War_'s early years--considered as 100-1450! In just twenty-six > pages (broken up with three images), Goodman navigates between the > Latin West and the transmission of the late antique > "Pseudo-Hegesippus" "paraphrase" of _The Jewish War_, sometimes > attributed to Jerome, Ambrose of Milan, or Rufinus of Aquileia; the > post-Second Temple Jewish reception of Josephus, in conjunction with > the rise of Rabbinic Judaism; and the place of the Greek text, as > well as Syriac and Slavonic versions, in Byzantine and other eastern > Christian contexts. This is a truly dizzying amount of complex, > important, and often contested information condensed into a single, > fairly short chapter. To Goodman's credit, he manages to carve out a > mostly cogent through line, while gesturing toward the scholarly > debates that still surround many of the topics he sketches out here. > > The next chapter traverses three centuries (circa 1450-1750) of > Christian and Jewish engagement with Josephus's work. During this > period, coinciding with early printed editions of the Greek text and > new vernacular translations, Josephus's authority as a historian, the > reliability of his narrative, its literary style (or lack thereof), > and the problem of Josephus's "temporizing" and possible betrayal of > his people and creed in "favor of his Roman masters" emerged as > points of contention among humanist readers (p. 61). Notably, the > last point was not raised initially by Jewish critics of Josephus > but, in Goodman's narrative, by the English evangelical Christian > poet and hymn writer William Cowper. More serious criticisms, > particularly among Jewish readers of Josephus, are the subject of the > fourth and final chapter, titled "Controversy," by far the book's > longest (at sixty-three pages, nearly half its total length) despite > covering only the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Goodman follows > chapter 4 with a brief epilogue on the recent study and creative > adaptations of Josephus's work and an appendix providing English > translations of several key scenes from _The Jewish War_ ("Passages > with a Life of Their Own"). > > As I have suggested above, composing a biography for an ancient text > is always necessarily a matter of personal selection and > discrimination. Goodman has opted to foreground the last two hundred > years of _The Jewish War_'s "life," after a hyperspeed survey of its > "early" and formative years. All considered, Goodman's story is a > decidedly fascinating one, and well told throughout, but it is > heavily back-loaded and thus, perhaps, of greater interest to > scholars of modern intellectual history than to readers concerned > with the ancient and medieval transmission and reception of _The > Jewish War_. > > Citation: Josh Timmermann. Review of Goodman, Martin, _Josephus's The > Jewish War: A Biography_. H-War, H-Net Reviews. February, 2021. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55214 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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