From Josephus to Yosippon and Beyond

Two millennia ago, the Jewish priest-turned-general Flavius Josephus, captured by the emperor Vespasian in the middle of the Roman-Jewish War (66–70 CE), spent the last decades of his life in Rome writing several historiographical works in Greek. Josephus was eagerly read and used by Christian thinkers, but eventually his writings became the basis for the early-10th century Hebrew text called Sefer Yosippon, reintegrating Josephus into the Jewish tradition. This volume marks the first edited collection to be dedicated to the study of Josephus, Yosippon, and their reception histories. Consisting of critical inquiries into one or both of these texts and their afterlives, the essays in this volume pave the way for future research on the Josephan tradition in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and beyond.

Carson Bay, PhD (2018), Florida State University, is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Bern. He has published on Josephus, his Latin reception and Pseudo-Hegesippus, and the Hebrew Sefer Yosippon. His book Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus (Cambridge University Press, 2023), won a 2023 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award.

Michael Avioz, PhD (2002), Bar-Ilan University, is Full Professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on biblical historiography and early biblical interpretation. He is author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including Josephus’ Interpretation of the Books of Samuel and, most recently, Legal Exegesis of Scripture in the Works of Josephus (T&T Clark, 2020).

Jan Willem van Henten, PhD (1986), Leiden University, is Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of Amsterdam, and Extra-Ordinary Professor of Biblical Studies at Stellenbosch University. He is editor of The Books of the Maccabees: Literary, Historical, and Religious Perspectives (Peeters, 2022) and co-author of Jewish Martyrdom in Antiquity: From the Books of Maccabees to the Babylonian Talmud (Brill, 2023, with Friedrich Avemarie and Yair Furstenberg).