Ancient World Seminar: Silvia Castelli (Leiden University), "Anchoring Moses’ laws in classical Greek discourse: Josephus on the Judean cultic laws and constitution"

Abstract

How does Flavius Josephus organize his discourse on the Mosaic laws in the Judean Antiquities? Do pervasive and frequent linguistic features occur? What major differences are found between the way Josephus crafts the biblical cultic laws and the politeia, and how can they be explained? By combining narratological considerations with linguistic variation analysis, this paper argues that in crafting the Judean cultic laws (Ant. 3.224–286) and politeia (Ant. 4.199–301) in the way he does, Josephus aims at anchoring his discourse in classical Greek ethnographic and legal discourse. The picture that emerges is of an author who does not only have genre awareness, as recent scholarship has rightly contended, but is also aware of the language required by a specific sub-genre.

About the speaker

Silvia Castelli is a Researcher at Leiden University (LUCAS) as part of the project ‘Anchoring Innovation’. Her interdisciplinary research includes Jewish-Greek literature of the Greco-Roman age, notably Flavius Josephus and his reception, and New Testament textual criticism.