(Ebook) Reading the First Century: On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century by Daniel R. Schwartz ISBN 9783161521874, 9783161522864, 3161521870, 3161522869

(Ebook) Reading the First Century: On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century by Daniel R. Schwartz ISBN 9783161521874, 9783161522864, 3161521870, 3161522869

The writings of Flavius Josephus provide much of what we know about the first century CE - which witnessed the birth of Christianity, the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and the concomitant rise of rabbinic Judaism. However, Josephus was an author, not a video camera, and what he wrote often reflects much apart from what actually happened in the first century: Josephus' works were affected both by his literary models and by current events, and they functioned in various ways for Josephus as an individual and also as a Jew and a Roman, writing in a time of tumult and radical change. Daniel R. Schwartz argues that by building from the bottom up - first establishing the text and its meaning, then moving on to issues of Josephus' models, sources, and purposes - we may nevertheless reconstruct, with some confidence, the events and processes of this crucial era.