A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus

by Frederic Raphael

From the acclaimed biographer, screenwriter, and novelist Frederic Raphael, here is an audacious history of Josephus (37–c.100), the Jewish general turned Roman historian, whose emblematic betrayal is a touchstone for the Jew alone in the Gentile world. Joseph ben Mattathias’s transformation into Titus Flavius Josephus, historian to the Roman emperor Vespasian, is a gripping and dramatic story. His life, in the hands of Frederic Raphael, becomes a point of departure for an appraisal of Diasporan Jews seeking a place in the dominant cultures they inhabit. Raphael brings a scholar’s rigor, a historian’s perspective, and a novelist’s imagination to this project. He goes beyond the fascinating details of Josephus’s life and his singular literary achievements to examine how Josephus has been viewed by posterity, finding in him the prototype for the un-Jewish Jew, the assimilated intellectual, and the abiding the recurrent figures in the long centuries of the Diaspora. Raphael’s insightful portraits of  Yehuda Halevi, Baruch Spinoza, Karl Kraus, Benjamin Disraeli, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Hannah Arendt extend and illuminate the Josephean worldview Raphael so eloquently lays out.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Research, Roman History, Ancient History, Judaism

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Writer, critic and broadcaster, Frederic Raphael was educated at Charterhouse School and at St John's College, Cambridge. He has written several screenplays and fifteen novels. His The Glittering Prizes was one of the major British and American television successes of the 1970s.

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing -
Some 40 years ago I bought a copy of Josephus' The Jewish War published in the late 1800's.
When I saw Raphael's 'A Jew Among the Romans- the Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus' I thought this would be a welcomed companion to that older book.
The author goes into great detail about the life of Josephus- very good. That's the first half of the book.
But then for the second half he deals with the 'legacy' - and goes into even greater detail regarding subsequent Jewish authors. This would have been perfect for a course in Jewish Literature but I found it down right boring. Plus the fact that the author has a nasty habit including Latin and French quotes without translating into English.
Page after page of comparing this author with that author and then inserting a sentence saying his similar Josephus was to this author or that author.
Finished it but really should have stopped ager 200 pages.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the positive side, this book does make Josephus and his world come to life with imaginative reconstruction; for example, Raphael speculates that Joseph might have preferred the Pharisees (the precursors to post-Temple rabbinic Judaism) to the literalist Sadducee because the Pharisee's tangled interpretations of the law were more appealing to a "intellectually ambitious young man [who might wish to] flaunt his ingenuity." By contrast, the Sadducees "advocated the dry study of thed Torah without any ingenious interpretations... [and thus] were unlikely to provide the kind of company a clever boy would be keen to keep." Another example: when Josephus is captured by the Romans, Raphael speculates that Josephus did not merely say hello, but, using a quiet yet theatrical voice, bustled in, and said to Vespasian: "You imagine that by capturing me, you have merely secured a prisoner... No, sir. No, I come as a messenger of the greatness that awaits you."

However, this book is more useful if you haven't already read Josephus's own work (especially The Jewish War) since it doesn't cover much new factual ground, and in fact is sometimes sloppy with the facts (for example, confusing the Jewish King Hezekiah with Zedekiah who ruled over 100 years later). Also, the last 50-100 pages of the book has very little to do with Josephus, commenting on a wide range of Jewish intellectuals over the last few centuries.

[Adam Hummel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not wait to finish this book because it would mean that it was done. As a history-buff, I was pretty pumped to read this book, however the author's pretentious writing just did not do it for me. I could not wait to get to the last page so that I could turn my mind to something else.

Looking for different books to read about Josephus...

[Jim Leffert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph ben Mattityahu, from an aristocratic family in Jerusalem, served as a military leader and the governor of an area in the Galilee during the Jewish revolt against the Romans (66-73 CE). Convinced all along that this revolt, fomented by the Zealots in the capital, was foolhardy and ill-fated, he defected to the enemy and ended up living in Rome, under Flavian patronage. There he wrote books about Jewish history and customs for Greek-reading audiences. His prolific work includes perhaps the earliest example of an autobiography.

Josephus’s books are a major source of history for the period. For example, we only know about the Essenes via Josephus and his mention of Jesus (possibly a later interpolation) has endeared him to Christians. Josephus’s reputation among Jews has long been tarnished. Not only did he defect to the Roman side but he survived by making a suicide pact with his comrades and when he was the last to survive, he went back on it. To quote the legendary Israeli archeologist and military leader, Yigal Yadin, “Josephus was a good historian and a bad Jew.”

Why would Frederic Raphael, Oxford-educated in Classics but better known as a novelist and screenwriter, write a book about Josephus? Clearly, Raphael identifies with Josephus and sees this ancient Hebrew historian’s life as a template for exploring Raphael’s own concerns about Jewish identity. Raphael is a proud secular Jew who admires the Western intellectual tradition, with its classical roots. Raphael is more at home in London than in Tel-Aviv, but he is nonetheless a proud supporter of Israel as the 20th century’s necessary answer to anti-Semitism. He decries anti-Israel, pro-Arab tropes in western intellectual and political discourse, but is nonetheless concerned that the overly chauvinistic and militaristic attitude that characterizes Israeli policies may harm the Jewish State.

Raphael sees Josephus as a man who shares his attitudes. Josephus saw that the Zealots’ war was hopeless and foolhardy. They avidly read the Book of Maccabees and figured that since with God’s help, the Maccabees improbably defeated a mighty empire, God would do the same here. Consequently, they dragged the rest of the population into a fruitless war, intimidating the Jewish elite into going along with them. Josephus’s account makes it clear that the cruel and corrupt practices of the Roman occupiers helped fan the flames of rebellion, but he suggests that if not for the Zealots, a diplomatic resolution might have been possible. Raphael implies that nowadays, the West Bank settlers and their right wing allies are making a similar error, believing that their mission is God’s mission.

Raphael does a good job of retelling Josephus’s wartime exploits, which are so entertaining that one can’t help but wonder if they are historically accurate. He argues (with more intensity than evidence sometimes) that Josephus was not a traitor, since he never took up arms with the Romans against the Jews, but rather was trying to maneuver between the Empire and the Zealots. Josephus never renounced the Jewish religion; rather he wrote sympathetically about Jewish history and customs. So what, Raphael asks, if Josephus was canny, crafty, and not above being deceitful, aren’t these the same qualities that are celebrated in a hero such as Odysseus?

A Jew Among Romans was difficult, albeit rewarding, to read because Raphael repeatedly interrupts the narrative with argumentation on behalf of his factual conclusions and because he uses Josephus’s history as a jumping off point for frequent riffs on Jewish identity, some in the text and others in lengthy footnotes that are hard to gloss over. On practically every page, Raphael notes parallels between the conflict Josephus faced of inward-looking national allegiance vs. allegiance to the Roman Empire and the issues of identity and allegiance—and persecution--that Jews have faced in subsequent eras.

In this vein, in the final few chapters devoted to Josephus’ legacy, Raphael uses Josephus’s life story as a prism and as a litmus test for evaluating the lives and choices of countless others across the centuries in relation to Jewish identity, ranging from St. Teresa of Avila to Walter Benjamin. Name-checking historical figures by the bucketful—Spinoza, thumbs up; Benjamin, Trotsky, thumbs down, Raphael--could he have been under the influence of stimulant medication at the time?--strides at a gallop across decades and centuries, his analysis breathtakingly wide but barely an inch deep.

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Its hard to even describe this book, its part biography, part a dissection of Josephus' writing, and mostly an examination of Judaism through the lens of the time period and after. The biography and the dissection of Josephus' writing is very good, but its just too interrupted with pages and pages on random Jewish theories and facts (Even addressing parts of the Holocaust). It just sadly doesnt seem to come together and comes across rather convoluted as if the author attempted to cover too many topics at once.

If its a biography of Josephus, thats what I want to read about, not all the other stuff about the religion outside of what he wouldve been dealing with in his day. I understand that to understand Josephus one has to look at the religious aspects of the time and those parts of the book are good, but all the extra stuff about the Middle Ages, Crusades, Inquisition, and Holocaust really serve to confuse rather than explain.

[David Goldman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covers two of my favorite topics - jewish history of the late second temple and roman History. This book has some real strengths but some very glaring weaknesses that severely limit it's usefulness. On the positive side, the book is a readable review of the life of Joseph. It does a good job of adding some context to the history, particularly adding information about the politics of Rome. You really get a feel for how jewish Zealots created a schism within the Jewish people and lead a fight with Rome that had disastrous consequences. Basically leading to Jews being outcasts for 2000 years.

yet, the book has some big problems. When fleshing out historical characters, there is fine line between intelligent speculation on the character's motives and simply guessing. Too often Raphael engages in the latter, speculation about who Josephus knew or how he felt. Further, the last 100 pages take a very odd turn. In each chapter Raphael summarizing huge swaths of history on a particular subject (anti-semitism, jewish intellectuals) relating them certain "themes" about Josephus. It's hard to know the point of these chapters. They are so general and cover so much ground that they do little to explain the subject. I can't quite see the point. Is it to show that Josephus' was so influential? Unlikely as he remained very little known. More likely the chapters are to show that Josephus exemplified a "type" that continues on. This is very thin and these chapters are basically useless.

[Janet Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult read. I nearly didn't finish it.

I enjoy historical fiction, and thought I would learn about the historian who wrote contemporaneous to the gospels.

I did. But I also got awesome insomnia cures too.

The first two thirds of the book is pretty good - known history mixed in with clearly stated speculation. If it had stopped there, the rating would have run around 3.5 stars.

But the last third of the book is supposed to be how Josephus influenced people into the 20th century. It jumps all over; there is just no cohesion. And it's so difficult to read! Two quotes as examples:

"In his scrupulous biography, Ray Monk takes this opinion to endorse the image of Wittgenstein as a 'self-hating' quasi-Nazi who had, as if by psychic osmosis, internalized the Wagnerian notion of the essentially uncreative and parasitic Jew." (p. 258)

"Gentiles have often found it difficult to deny the contributions and even the genius, in the common sense, of some Jews. Not infrequently, even when enlightened, they remain conscious that they are being tolerant, if not condescending." (p. 271)

What are the points the author is trying to make? OK, I get it, he's much smarter than I am. But I prefer the authors who lift me up rather than talk me down.

[Michael Elkon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting content in the initial stages when Raphael describes Josephus's efforts to stay alive by ingratiating himself to the Romans (and the numerous divisions within Jewish society at the time), but there are all sorts of asides, some of which are more interesting than others. There is very much a stream of consciousness element to this book. I was interested in Raphael's interpretation of Josephus's history, namely in what he could and could not say for fear of angering his Roman patrons, as well as some implied criticisms that one can find in his content.

Then, the last hundred pages are a general discussion on Jewish figures who find themselves as minorities and having to kowtow to dominant cultures and leaders. The Maimonides section was especially interesting, but there wasn't enough of an effort to tie that part of the story to Josephus.

This book needed a coherent outline and structure.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book as much about Jewish identity as Josephus

Although this book purports to be about Titus Flavius Josephus and his life among the Romans after he went over to them (when Vespasian and his son Titus, both future emperors of Rome, were leading the Roman efforts to put down rebellion in Judaea and besiege Jerusalem), it turns into an extended analysis of the nature of Jewish identity in the era after the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but as a Classicist, my interest in this book was primarily focused on Josephus and his Roman captors, and not on the nature of Jewish-ness.

[David Dinaburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite like antiquities. I consider myself relatively familiar with the Greco-Roman world. So it came as a bit of a surprise when twice out of the near-dozen times that someone asked me what I was reading during my month with A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus, the response to the title was, “Oh, that must be about Josephus.” Before A Jew Among Romans, I had never heard of Joseph Ben Mattathias, better known as Titus Flavius Josephus. Apparently not as obscure as I believed, not in the least because he seems to have been the sole Jewish historian of note borne from the time of Roman Imperial dominion.

Even through my initial ignorance, I noticed the obfuscated tenor of the book; subtle disagreement with what the author treats as the prevailing wisdom:

The comfortable social position of Joseph ben Mattathias’s family may have made him complacent; it hardly made him a premeditated traitor. The assistance he rendered the Romans, after his surrender, was offered in order to continue to save his skin; but it was never at the direct expense of other Jews…[n]o great principle was at stake in first-century Judaea, certainly not the physical survival of the Jews. All-out war with the imperial power was not the only course available.

By emphasizing how Joseph might not be a traitor and turncoat, his standing reputation is pretty obvious—even to someone who has never heard of him before. Having no prior exposure to the Judaean ex-General myself, it meant my image of Josephus-as-traitor was wrought exclusively from the negative space formed by the refutations of that caricature.

Which makes talking about this book a bit tricky: the relentless battle against a sentiment I have never held makes me wary: for me, A Jew Among Romans is the formative text on Josephus and it produces an exciting, modern character of no uncertain brilliance:

Joseph found an ingenious way of resupplying the town by night. He sent couriers out via the western side of the valley, down a defile so steep that the Roman’s felt no need to keep close watch on it. When in sight of the guard posts, the runners were instructed to cover their backs with sheepskins and crawl. In that way they could be mistaken for slinking dogs. This Odyssean ruse enabled Joseph to stay in cursory contact with Jews outside the city [of Jotapata] and to bring weapons and fresh food, if very little water, back into it.

After he was captured or surrendered or defected, depending on your perspective, Joseph was an outcast from both Roman and Jewish circles; the perpetual limbo of necessity kept him alone with his papers and his ink. His burden became our benefit, and his prodigious writings are still available right now, if you’ve got some time on your hands.

My contrarian sense of wariness—that I was seeing the very best of a bad guy, polished to a shine—made me regret not knowing more about Josephus going in. The sanguine tone has certainly influenced my opinion of the man and his actions. Try as I might to tamp down the Odyssean mythologizing and idealizing and recall that I have only glimpsed the traditional narrative—traitor, turncoat—as pale shadows cast by the light of this work, it is hard not to embrace the sympathies engendered by the book. I lack factual citations to object when the book posits “Judaism might make absolute demands, but religion had no territorial boundaries. Jewish nationalism was an exaggerated defense of religious exclusivity. Judaea was not a Jewish state; it was a state with many Jews in it.” I’ve not read Josephus’ writings, so I cannot make an informed critique of the interpretation proffered by A Jew Among Romans. That does not mean that those without a strong grounding in the historical landscape won’t find contemplative theories nor provocative thoughts within the pages:

Ever since the triumph of Christianity, the allegation that all Jews are innately devious has justified the severity of those who have conspired to degrade or murder them. The bad conscience of the Christian sees in every new Jew the same old Jew, whose vengeance he dreads. In this light, Josephus typifies the Jew who got away: a traitor in the eyes of his own people and for Gentiles, as for Hannah Arendt, a typically “oily, adroit” customer who makes his deal with the enemy for his own private salvation. Arendt’s phrase proved infectious: her close friend Mary McCarthy described the playwright George S. Kaufman and his New York friends as “oily.” Prejudice is as much memetic as “psychological.” The poverty of language in almost all anti-Semitic literature is a symptom of the superficiality of the “ideas” which inform it.

This is a comprehensive look at not just a figure, but all of the context which he embodies.

No matter your opinion on Joseph himself, the text contains much fascinating history—both of Rome and Judaea in the centuries enveloping the birth of Christianity—that ignoring every reference to Joseph will still net you a positive experience. Its segments are presented as contiguous in concept, not temporality. Time may flow two hundred years when discussing the Flavian Dynasty’s stance on Jews within the Roman Empire, then jump to a period a half-century prior to discuss Seneca’s influence on Nero:

Joseph ben Mattathias knew that the “Jewish War” might never have taken place without the delusive precedent of the Maccabees’ triumph over the Seleucid monarchy in 167 B.C.E. Their rebellion was triggered by a demand by King Antiochus IV Ephiphanes (his full, typically overblown title declared him “God Manifest, Bearer of Victory”) that a pig by sacrificed, on an altar dedicated to Zeus, within the Temple precinct of Jerusalem. The order, from a king whose name alone was blasphemous to Jewish ears, was an expression not of orthodox Hellenic theology (there was none) but of exasperation with Jewish subjects who failed to give him the respect and—if there was any difference—the revenues he required.

When the High Priest refused, as Antiochus knew he would, to defile the Temple’s altar with porcine blood, the king signed an edict banning the practice of Judaism altogether. He also proposed to defile the name of Jerusalem by attaching “Antioch” to it, in his own honor. His domineering actions had nothing to do with racial hatred. Cities were often renamed of hyphenated to emblazon a ruler’s fame. Why else is the world badged with Alexandrias? Jews might be feared or disliked, their solitary god despised or ridiculed; but conceit and covetousness required no ideological license. Juvenal and Tacitus are often cited as evidence of ancient antipathy to Jews because they wrote scornfully about them; but the list of people or peoples whom the sour patrician and the déclassé misogynist depicted with admiration is not a long one. It is true that, in his Germania, Tacitus seemed to find merit in the German tribes who, in 9 C.E., had pushed the Romans back across the Rhine, but his eulogy of the brawling northerners was intended more to highlight the effete decadence of contemporary Rome than to recommend the savage practices of the barbarians.

But some of the digressions seem to repeat—or maybe the repetition stems from the fact that similar things kept happening:

In 39 C.E., Herod’s grandson Agrippa landed in Alexandria on his way to assume the throne in Antioch. He was met and jostled by hostile demonstrators. A local clown called Carabas dressed up as “the king of the Jews” and parodied Agrippa’s strut. The mob called on Governor Flaccus to put images of the new emperor in the local synagogues, a provocative demand that he himself may well have scripted, knowing that it was bound to meet with doctrinaire Jewish opposition, which the Greeks could interpret, loudly, as disloyalty to Rome. Flaccus took the opportunity to rescind the Jews’ citizenship. They could then be pillaged and murdered with impunity.

With some courage, Agrippa returned to Alexandria after the pogrom. Having investigated the source and conduct, he denounced Flaccus to Caligula. The governor’s connivance must have been flagrant: the prefect was sent to the island of Andros and later executed. Philo interpreted this outcome as “indubitable proof that the help which God can give was not withdrawn from the nation of the Jews.”

Most interesting here is that Flaccus was punished—executed—for stirring the pot. The unspoken suggestion is that the machinery of the Roman Empire wasn’t necessarily anti-Semitic, just opportunistic. What is omitted is whether or not Jewish citizenship in Alexandria was restored after the Caligula intervened. There are equal parts supposition and citation throughout A Jew Among Romans; facts mingle freely with unsupported but narratively conducive intimations. As the above excerpt shows, the scheme “may well” have been spun from Flaccus to riled up the Jews. Also unspoken was the implication that his subsequent execution was causally related to those actions. Flaccus may have been exiled and killed for any number of reasons, not just his cruel treatment of Alexandria’s Jews—he was subject to the whims of Caligula, after all.

It is a good thing, then, that the writing is so strong and the footnotes so lively that they can easily carry you through the frequent repetition of fact and form throughout the text. Fun asides are sprinkled throughout:

In 38 C.E., soon after Caligula succeeded Claudius as emperor, Vespasian was elected aedile, but only just: he ranked at the bottom of the list of successful candidates. As the man now responsible for keeping the Roman streets clean of refuse and slops, he had the bad luck to meet the new emperor on a particularly filthy stretch of road. Fortunately, on this occasion, Caligula was more playful than—as he soon became—murderous: he had his bodyguard shovel the shit into the folds of the aedile’s toga and passed on by.

While Joseph is the main subject of the text, the world he inhabits receives attention enough to fill in the gaps surrounding his actions and choices. Occasionally, the verisimilitude is spread a bit too thin:

The fall of Jerusalem had no theological deposit for the Romans, simply because they had no theology; the crushing of the Judaeans had only administrative consequences. It is, however, true that in Domitian’s reign, the fiscus Judaicus was extended to tax all those who adopted “the Jewish way of life.” This was less a dogmatic sanction against Jews than a way of raising revenue. If Domitian had been an ideological anti-Semite, he would have been capable of decreeing that had had “forbidden them to exist,” as—according to Cassius Dio—he did with the tiresome Nasamones in Libya.

Some historians argue that Judaism has to have been very unpopular after the Jewish War; but if the tax (first imposed by Titus) was worth levying, a large number of people must have been liable to it. Conversion to Judaism is also said to have become a “plague”—in other words, fashionable.

I’ve rarely elided “plague” and “fashionable”; it feels like a forced reconciliation of the author’s thesis and the documentation. That’s the main concern I have with A Jew Among Romans: everything fits too neatly. Maybe things really did work out so smoothly, but the unspoken contrarianism in the book—the goal to usurp the canon of Josephus as Jewish turncoat and Roman lackey and replace it with Joseph as rationalist and survivor—simply demands a more thorough understanding of the subject material than I could bring to bear.

It was a fantastic read and a great place to start parsing the history of a complex and singular historian; like hearing a cover before knowing the original, this particular face of Joseph—cunning, adaptable—will be the song of Titus Flavius Josephus that feels most real to me.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explores Jewish identity within a hostile world. And the perils of Zealotry.

[Terry Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good biography of a very interesting figure of history

[James Goff]

Kind of tedious

[Sophia · Rating 1 out of 5]

currently taking recommendations for actual biographies/analyses of Josephus

[Jordan Herling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really about Josephus' life at all, and more than a tangible legacy most of the book is just about other quasi-assimilationist Jews who had similar roles in their history as Josephus did.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[R]edemptive hope looks back and forward to symmetrical Edens." (31)

"Genius is the trump that wins the trick. Judaism always reserved a fast track for the clever boy." (34)

"Vido meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" ("I see the better way and approve it, I follow the worse", Ovid, 37)

"Every word he wrote or spoke had to be guarded. He was committed to a form of self-consciousness, and repression, that individualized him, as a Jew and and outsider, to an unprecedented degree." (124)

"Josephus denies that the Romans were superior in anything but military efficiency and resources. He had seen their machine in action; he witnessed the pillage, rape, killing, the auction of captives. His memories were the reward and the cost of being a witness." (142)

"[W]hen pissotiers were invented, in 1834 by the prefect of Paris, Comte Rambuteau, they became known as vespasiennes." (174)

"With an exemplary use of parenthesis, Edward Gibbon said, in a footnote, 'Apollonius of Tyrana was born about the same time as Jesus Christ. His life (that of the former) is related in so fabulous a manner by his disciples, that we are at a loss to discover whether he was a sage, an impostor, or a fanatic.'" (197-8)

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frederic Raphael, does a lovely job with this history. An interesting and thought provoking book. I found it to be fascinating. Using the life of Flavius Josephus as the lens through which to view that very chaotic period in Jewish and Roman history makes this an insightful look at some what (biblical/Christian history/Roamn Empire) familiar events. And Flavius Josephus is a truly amazing individual in a time that was turbulent, dangerous and ground breaking. The writing style is easy to read and flows, and the history presented in these pages flesh out the thin version we all know. I highly recommend this book.

[Margaret Heller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reviewed this for Library Journal. It was fascinating to me for reasons that had nothing to do with the subject matter and while I can't recommend it to anyone else, I still liked it.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent, insightful and well researched. Interesting take on Josephus, the history of the Jews and anti-semitism.

[Tom Clawser · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Raphael's book—specifically the research and notes. Read cautiously, however; his conclusions reflect his bias more than what can be drawn from the research. A good read!