Judean Heroes and Diasporic Heroes: On Josephus’s Version of 1 Maccabees 1–2
Judean Heroes and Diasporic Heroes: On Josephus’s Version of 1 Maccabees 1–2

Summary/Abstract: Although Josephus’s narrative of the Maccabean Revolt in Antiquities 12–13 follows 1 Maccabees’ closely, it deviates from it often in accordance with Josephus’s own circumstances and preferences, writing in Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem rather than in Jerusalem when it was the capital of the Hasmonean state. This study focuses on Ant. 12.255–277 and points to Josephus’s changes in wording and structure that allow him to transform Jewish martyrs from foils whose deaths show that the Hasmoneans’ militant response to persecution is preferable to theirs and created the Jewish state, as they are in 1 Macc 1–2, into noble heroes of the Jewish religion. This corresponds to Josephus’s growing tendency to underscore devotion to Jewish law rather than the values relevant to Jewish statehood.

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