Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities in Competition with Nicolaus of Damascus’s Universal History
In Jewish Antiquities 14–17, Josephus draws extensively on Nicolaus of Damascus’s Universal History. Josephus and his immediate audience in Rome at the end of the first century would have seen Nicolaus’s work as a direct competitor for telling the history of the Jewish people in the Herodian period....
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2022
|
| In: |
Journal of ancient Judaism
Year: 2022, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 52-76 |
| Further subjects: | B
Nicolaus of Damascus
B Universal History B Jewish Antiquities B Flavius Josephus B motivations and reliability in historiography B competitive historiography |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In Jewish Antiquities 14–17, Josephus draws extensively on Nicolaus of Damascus’s Universal History. Josephus and his immediate audience in Rome at the end of the first century would have seen Nicolaus’s work as a direct competitor for telling the history of the Jewish people in the Herodian period. This essay looks at Josephus’s use of conventional historiographical polemic to impugn the motivations of his predecessor and rival. By casting Nicolaus the historical actor as biased, Josephus casts doubt on the reliability of the Universal History. Ultimately, this opens up a new perspective on the Antiquities’s more censorious posture vis-à-vis Herod (relative to the more generous posture in his earlier work, the Jewish War): in a virtual competition with Nicolaus, Josephus seeks to win admiration for his own work as frank and impartial in its assessment of Herod while simultaneously fostering suspicion of Nicolaus’s work as obsequious and partisan. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2196-7954 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of ancient Judaism
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.30965/21967954-bja10017 |