Josephus in Modern Jewish Culture
- Submitting institution
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King's College London
- Unit of assessment
- 31 - Theology and Religious Studies
- Output identifier
- 111297351
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Brill
- ISBN
- 9789004393080
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This volume is an outcome of the AHRC-funded research project “The Reception of Josephus in Jewish Culture, 1750 to the present”, led by Martin Goodman (Oxford, Principal Investigator), Tessa Rajak (Oxford, Co-Investigator) and me (Co-Investigator). The volume offers the first incisive and wide-ranging analysis of the modern Jewish reception of Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian whose Greek works were considered classics in the Christian world. The book traces continuities, shifts and radical turns in approaches to Josephus as they took shape within wider scholarly, religious, literary and political contexts in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, Vilna, New York and Tel Aviv. Collectively, the contributions focus on three themes: rediscovering Josephus and making his texts readable; translating and re-writing his work to make it usable; using his work to make readable an auspicious or dangerous modern world. As editor, I wrote the CfPs for the four workshops, where contributors presented their research, and I also wrote the book proposal that secured a contract. Next, I entered into an intense dialogue with all contributors about their submitted chapters concerning focus, structure, connections with other chapters and fact-checking. As a result, all submissions were thoroughly revised and sometimes entirely re-written. My own chapter 'A Tradition in the Plural', on the reception of the medieval Sefer Yosippon in the eighteenth century, shows for the first time systematically why this Hebrew work remained highly relevant to modern Jewish readers and how it shaped the transmission of Josephus's work as a 'tradition in the plural'. My introduction to the volume is a pioneering attempt to link insights from Reception Studies (in particular in Classics) to Jewish Studies, highlighting questions of proximity, distance and cultural mediation, and pointing to new directions in the study of Josephus, the history of historiography, modern Jewish religion and culture, and Jewish-Christian relations.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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