Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

196 страница из 236

Josephus’s Life is consistently written as a first-person report and it begins with the author’s distinguished ancestry (genos), descending not only from a priestly family but also from the Hasmonean dynasty (Vita 1–2). This beginning (1–12) also highlights Josephus’s education and anticipates in this way a self-portrait of him as a public figure in the short period that he was active as a Jewish leader and military commander (December 66–May 67 CE; Vita 12–413; Bilde 1988: 104–113; Mason 2001: xxvii–xxxiv). It ends with a report about domestic affairs in Alexandria, the area of Jerusalem, and Rome (Mason 2001: xxi–xxiii; other self-introductions: BJ 1.3 and Apion 1.54–55). The short epilogue (Vita 430) confirms that it concerns the autobiography of Josephus (Bilde 1988: 104–105; Mason 1998, 2001: 173, 2016b; Schwartz 2007: 3–4). It highlights Josephus’s character (ēthos) as the main body of the work has done several times. A phrase in this epilogue (“the entire record of the Antiquities up to the present …”) may indicate that The Life was intended to function as an appendix to the Antiquities (cf. AJ 20.259, 267; Barish 1978; Bilde 1988: 104–105; Mason 1998, 2001: xiv–xv, 173; Siegert et al. 2001: 1, 23 n.1; Schwartz 2007: 3–4).