Word: josephus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Physical remains of Herod's masterpiece are scarce. But they tend to support descriptions in the four surviving written sources from approximately the same period: the Gospels and the biblical book of Acts; the part of the Jewish Talmud called the Mishnah; and the histories of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest and commander turned Roman military aide who lived in the years A.D. 30 to A.D. 100. For instance, a stone found later near the Temple's likely site was inscribed with the words TO THE PLACE OF TRUMPETING, which corroborate Josephus' description of the signal for the beginning...
Tradition forbade the Temple's enlargement beyond Solomon's original dimensions. So Herod expressed his egomania by adding a 35-acre platform--"the greatest ever heard of," writes Josephus--on which the Temple could sit. The Western Wall where Jews pray today is a small slice of the platform's 16-ft.-thick western side. Some of the stones are 30 ft. long and weigh up to 50 tons. ("Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" exclaims a disciple in the Gospel of Mark.) As Herod built out over the adjacent valleys, the outline of the mountain...
...city also played host to groups like the Zealots, a militant nationalist group, and the Essenes. The Essenes detested the Temple priests, lived in monastic communities and may have been authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the treasure trove of texts uncovered in the Judean desert in 1947. Josephus assigns the Essenes a membership of 4,000, only 2,000 fewer than his count of Pharisees...
...disciple named Mary Magdalene, entered a synagogue at least once and met some Pharisees. As regards the Passion and Easter: all descriptions of Jesus' trial are deemed inauthentic, along with his Palm Sunday statement that he is the Messiah. On the authority of the Jewish historian Josephus, the Seminar records as historical the high priest Caiaphas' denunciation of Jesus to Pilate. When the next book comes out, the Resurrection, predictably enough, will appear in black print ("There's been some mistake...
...paintings by grasping its root: energy. Always in his best work there are the signs of overflowing vitality, constrained by form's superego, the mode -- tragic, idyllic, epic, sacred. The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, 1638, is such a painting. % Poussin based it on a classical source -- Flavius Josephus' account of the sack of Jerusalem by the Emperor Titus and his army. Its obvious formal prototype is the Roman battle sarcophagus, with figures arrayed in a frieze; its pictorial roots, expressed in the nobly articulated figures of enslaved Jews and conquering centurions, lie in Raphael. With its structure...