The Reception of Josephus in Jewish Culture from the 18th Century to the Present

约瑟夫斯是一位来自耶路撒冷的犹太牧师，他在公元66年参加了对罗马的战争，直到他被俘虏，并在神的指引下(他说是这样)改变了对罗马的看法，并在罗马退休后致力于撰写关于犹太人的历史和习俗。他最著名的作品《犹太战争》是在公元81年完成的，当时战争本身刚刚结束十年，但他还写了三本书：《犹太古物》，一本20卷的书，讲述了从创世到公元66年的犹太历史；《生活》，一本道歉的自传，旨在支持这样一种说法，即尽管他在66-67年作为一名叛军将领，但他从未真正反罗马；以及《反对阿皮恩》，在两本书中为犹太人和犹太教辩护，反对在各种非犹太人作家的作品中发现的诽谤。该项目将调查从18世纪到现在犹太人对这些著作的态度以及对约瑟夫斯作为一个个体的态度。约瑟夫斯的著作在犹太传统中没有得到承认，由拉比在希伯来语和阿拉姆语保存在晚期，他的作品的幸存完全归因于早期基督徒赋予它们的价值。犹太战争的重新进入犹太文化环境是只有通过一个希伯来语的拉丁文本希伯来语的重新解释，从罗马和犹太历史的补充，由南意大利犹太人(‘Josippon’)在公元10世纪，只有在16世纪，当再次在意大利，当Azariah de‘Rossi重新介绍犹太人到古代的希腊犹太教的著作，他们重新熟悉约瑟夫斯的原始文本。这种多学科研究的重点将是犹太人在过去250年里建立在更早的犹太人和基督教使用约瑟夫斯著作的各种非常不同的目的。它将考察马斯基利姆人对约瑟夫斯的使用，马斯基利姆人是18世纪末和19世纪的知识分子，他们试图打开犹太人同胞的眼睛，接触外部世界，打造一种新的犹太人意识，并最终重新定义身份。它将考察德国智慧正义运动创始人对约瑟夫斯的态度，他们倾向于认为约瑟夫斯版本的犹太历史比拉比文本中的故事更可靠，尽管他们对约瑟夫斯的政治立场的态度是矛盾的。它将调查约瑟夫斯的使用在十九世纪由拉比圈，因为他们开始受到哈斯卡拉赫的影响，并由欧洲犹太人作为更广泛的犹太人身份修辞的一部分，特别是在关于同化在十九世纪和二十世纪整个欧洲的论点。它将追溯犹太复国主义者从19世纪末到以色列国建立到今天--如犹太复国主义政治演讲、戏剧、小说以及对以色列建国期间土地的考古和地理的解释--以及作为他们重新评估以色列国基础和意识形态的一部分，最后是后犹太复国主义历史学家、社会学家和公关人员对约瑟夫斯的使用。在所有这些背景下需要调查的问题将是犹太人对约瑟夫的一些著作的依恋程度高于其他人，以及犹太人对这些著作的态度是如何受到作为一个人的历史学家的态度、非犹太人的观点以及对约瑟夫斯古迹与经文关系的担忧的影响。鉴于相关数据数量巨大，该项目的目的并不是详尽分析犹太人在这一时期对约瑟夫斯的所有用途，而是一系列有代表性的充分记录和分析的案例研究，以阐明这些复杂和多样的问题。由此产生的专著、编辑后的卷、研讨会论文和网站将面向不同的受众。

Josephus was a Jewish priest from Jerusalem who took part in the war against Rome in 66 CE until he was captured and, inspired (so he said) by divine guidance, changed to the Roman side and devoted his retirement in Rome to writing about the history and customs of the Jews. His best known work, the Jewish War, was completed by 81 CE, just ten years after the end of the war itself, but he also wrote three further works: the Jewish Antiquities, a twenty-book account of Jewish history from the creation of the world to 66 CE; the Life, an apologetic autobiography designed to uphold a claim never to have been genuinely anti-Roman despite his career in 66-67 as a rebel general; and Against Apion, a defence of Jews and Judaism in two books against calumnies found in the writings of a variety of gentile authors. The project will investigate the attitudes to these writings and to Josephus as an individual to be found among Jews from the 18th century to the present. Josephus' writings were not acknowledged in the Jewish tradition preserved by the rabbis in Hebrew and Aramaic in late antiquity, and the survival of his works is due entirely to the value ascribed to them by early Christians. The re-entry of the Jewish War into the Jewish cultural milieu came about only through a paraphrase of the Latin text of Hegesippus into Hebrew, with additions from Roman and Jewish history, produced by a South Italian Jew ('Josippon') in the tenth century CE, and it was only in the sixteenth century, when, again in Italy, Azariah de'Rossi reintroduced Jews to the writings of Greek Judaism in antiquity, that they became reacquainted with Josephus' original text.The focus of this multidisciplinary research will be on the way Jews in the last 250 years have built on earlier Jewish and Christian uses of the writings of Josephus for a variety of very different purposes. It will look at the use of Josephus by the Maskilim, intellectuals from the late 18th and 19th centuries who sought to open the eyes of their fellow Jews to the world outside, forging a new Jewish consciousness and ultimately a redefined identity. It will examine the attitudes to Josephus of the founders of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement in Germany, who were inclined to see Josephus's version of Jewish history as more reliable than stories in rabbinic texts, even though their attitude to his political stance was ambivalent. It will investigate the uses of Josephus by Rabbinic circles in the nineteenth century, as they came to be influenced by the Haskalah, and by European Jews more generally as part of the wider rhetoric of Jewish identity, especially within the arguments about assimilation throughout Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And it will trace the uses of Josephus both by Zionists from the late nineteenth century through the foundation of the State of Israel to the present day - as expressed in Zionist political speeches, dramas, novels, and by the interpretation of the archaeology and geography of the land during the formation of the Israeli state - and, finally, by 'post-Zionist' historians, sociologists and publicists as part of their re-assessment of the foundation and ideologies of the State of Israel.Among issues for investigation in all these contexts will be the attachment of Jewish interest to some of Josephus' writings more than others, and how Jewish attitudes to those writings were affected by attitudes to the historian as a person, by non-Jewish opinion and by concerns about the relationship of Josephus' Antiquities to the text of scripture. In view of the huge amount of relevant data, the project does not aim to produce an exhaustive analysis of all uses of Josephus by Jews during this period, but rather a representative series of fully documented and analysed case studies to illuminate these complex and diverse issues. The resulting monographs, edited volume, workshop papers and website will address a varied audience.