MASON, S. Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009, 464 p. – ISBN 9781598562545.
The book comprises eleven chapters in three parts:
- Part I: Josephus, Interpretation and Historical Method
- Part II: Josephus and Judaean Society
- Part III: Josephus and Christian Origins
Da Introdução, que pode ser lida na página da Hendrickson, destaco:
The only reason to produce a new academic book is to contribute something coherent for scholarly reflection. In the past year I began to think that a number of my published and unpublished papers, on Josephus, Judean society, and Christian origins, had such a unifying theme and so could usefully be brought together in one volume. Driving my research for a number of years has been a set of questions related to historical and literary-interpretative methods, and the relationship between these two. What is history? What does it mean to read Josephus (or any other ancient narrative)? What is the relationship between reading the narrative and reconstructing the past —whether the past behind the story or the past represented by the text’s own existence as an artifact itself? (…) On the historical side of the ledger, one of my primary concerns has been with the appropriateness of our standard categories (…) The more that I have worked on the Eastern Mediterranean under Roman rule, the more I have become convinced that some of our most basic analytical categories, such as “religion,” “Judaism,” and even “gospel,” do not map onto ancient conceptions or language. And if they do not, what are the implications of that disparity for our analysis? What categories should we use instead? And so, I seemed to have in hand the promise of a coherent contribution: “methods and categories” in the study of Josephus, Judea, and Christian origins.
Steve Mason is Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Greco-Roman Cultural Interaction at York University, Toronto. He is the author of Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study (2001) and general editor of the twelve-volume series Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary.
