Digital Logos Edition
Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, is unquestionably among the most important writers from classical antiquity. The significance of the works of Josephus as sources for our understanding of biblical history and of the political history of Palestine under Roman rule can scarcely be overestimated. This is the first volume published in this commentary series, which is the first comprehensive literary-historical commentary on the works of Flavius Josephus in English.
“Seeking the genre of the Antiquities, Sterling proposes that native Oriental responses to Greek ethnography produced a new kind of writing: apologetic historiography. Written by priestly members of an ethnic subgroup in the Hellenistic world, such as the Egyptian Manetho, the Babylonian Berossus, and Josephus, its purpose was ‘to establish the identity of the group within the setting of the larger world’ (17).” (Page xvi)
“even their poets20 ventured to refer to it the births of the gods, let alone the deeds or the laws of men.” (Page 7)
“For not even he anticipated me in obtaining the entire scripture” (Page 6)
Louis H. Feldman (b.1926) received his BA and MA from Trinity College, Hartford, and his PhD from Harvard. He currently teaches at Yeshiva University. He is the author of Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, Josephus's Interpretation of the Bible, and Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1937-1980).