Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery : The Poetics of Embedded Letters in Josephus

by Olson, Ryan S.

• ISBN13: 9780674053373
• ISBN10: 0674053370
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

To prove his sonsrs" treachery, Herod embellished a letter. To certify his history of Vespasianrs"s Judaean campaign, Josephus marshaled epistolary testimony. To alleviate a domestic problem, the Israelite king David sent a missive with a man it marks for death. Arguing for the importance of the first-century historian Josephus to the study of classical and Hellenistic literature, Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery investigates letters in Josephusrs" texts. The author breaks new ground by analyzing classical, Hellenistic, and Jewish textsrs" use of letters, comparing those texts to Josephusrs" narratives, a virtual archive containing hundreds of letters. An external voice similar to speeches, embedded letters raise questions of authority, drive and color dramatic scenes, and function at textual and meta-textual levels to deceive their readers. Josephus, contextualized in a complex intellectual and cultural milieu, sustains and develops epistolarity in important ways that will be of interest to classicists, historians, theologians, and comparatists.

Author Biography

Ryan S. Olson earned his doctorate in classical languages and literatures from Oxford University and is an independent scholar working in philanthropy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery: A Greeting	p. 1
Epistolary History	p. 9
Letters in the ancient world	p. 11
Embedding in papyrus letters	p. 17
History of Research on Embedded Letters	p. 19
Josephus	p. 21
Jewish literature	p. 26
Other Greek authors	p. 28
Summary	p. 30
Methodology	p. 31
Josephus' audience?	p. 40
Toward a Poetics of Embedded Letters	p. 51
Introduction	p. 51
Boundaries	p. 54
Embedded letters and speeches	p. 57
Intratextual presentation of letters	p. 63
Archive	p. 68
Overview of Letters in Each Work	p. 72
Bellum Judaicum	p. 72
Antiquitates Judaicae	p. 74
Vita	p. 77
Contra Apionem	p. 79
Embedded Letters as Documents	p. 80
To enhance drama	p. 80
To highlight situations deviating from normal communication	p. 83
To foreground the messenger	p. 91
Basic Epistolary Functions	p. 99
Letters as Plot Movers: Epistolary Masters	p. 100
Letters as Plot Movers: Altering and Continuing Relationships	p. 106
Conventional relationship building	p. 110
Epistolary misfiring	p. 113
Augustus and Herod	p. 118
Claudius and Agrippa	p. 119
Cambyses and the Jews	p. 129
Closing Distance and Time Gaps	p. 140
Gaius' Temple installation	p. 147
Iphigenia in Tauris	p. 155
Epistolary Reliability	p. 163
Forgery	p. 169
Episodic Embedded Letters	p. 175
Extra-episodic Embedded Letters	p. 183
Trials at Herod's court	p. 184
Acta pro Judaeis as embedded letters	p. 200
Conclusion	p. 204
Conclusion	p. 207
Epistolary Refracting and Signaling	p. 207
Josephus as Source for Epistolary Culture	p. 210
Implications for Josephus	p. 215
References	p. 221
Index Locorum	p. 243
Subject Index	p. 249
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