Edwards explores how Josephus in Antiquities adapts the scriptural stories of Joseph and Esther in unexpected ways as models for accounts of more recent Jewish figures. Terming this practice “subversive adaptation,” Edwards contextualizes it within Greco-Roman literary culture and employs the concept of “discourses of exemplarity” to show how Josephus used narratives about past figures to engage Roman elites in moral reflection and pragmatic decision-making. This book supplies analysis of frequently overlooked accounts as well as Josephus’ broader literary strategies, and shows how ancient Jews appropriated imperial historiographical conventions and forms of discourse while countering Greco-Roman claims of cultural superiority.

Edwards integrates ancient Judaism with classical studies in a new analysis of Josephus' Antiquities which contextualizes the first-century CE Jewish historian's creative adaptation of scriptural figures and stories as an outgrowth of elite Greco-Roman literary culture that prized exemplary learning.

Josephus Flavius’s life was defined by the Jewish war against Rome, about which he wrote his first book as a friend of the imperial family, enjoying the benefits of an end to the conflict. But this dichotomy between war and peace defined not only the life of our author but also the history of all peoples in Late Antiquity, so it is not surprising that war and peace also play a central role in his second book. A broader theme could hardly have been chosen for this volume, which naturally brought with it the diversity of the studies it contains. At a conference in May 2022 at Selye János University in Komárom – "Peace and War in Josephus" – a distinguished, international group of scholars took up this theme, including Tal Ilan (Israel), Steve Mason (Canada), Jiří Hoblík (Czech Republic), and five Hungarian colleagues: Tibor Grüll, Ádám Vér, József Zsengellér, István Karasszon, and Viktor Kókai-Nagy. Their papers in English or German are complemented by three additional papers from Carson Bay (Switzerland), Marin Meiser (Germany), and David R. Edwards (USA). Together, their work ranges from the historical and literary context to the political and philosophical thought of the author.

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.

The Jewish War describes the history of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-70 CE). This study deals with one of this work's most intriguing features: why and how Flavius Josephus, its author, describes his own actions in the context of this conflict in such detail. Glas traces the thematic and rhetorical aspects of autobiographical discourse in War and uses contextual evidence to situate Josephus’ self-characterisation in a Flavian Roman setting. In doing so, he sheds new light on this Jewish writer’s historiographical methods and his deep knowledge and creative use of Graeco-Roman culture.

In Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus, Andrew Krause examines the historiographical tendenz and spatial rhetoric of Flavius Josephus, in order to clarify how his writings may be used responsibly in the reconstruction of first-century synagogues.

This book discusses the Herod narratives of Josephus in the light of narratology and rhetoric. It offers an innovative interpretation of the rhetorical and dramatic makeup of the parallel accounts of Herod's history and suggests new ways of understanding Josephus' complexity as a historian between two cultures.