Bay, Carson (2021). On the Multivocality of the Latin Josephus Tradition : A Comparison between the Latin War, Latin Antiquities, Pseudo-Hegesippus, and Rufinus Based on the Egyptian Pseudo-Prophet Episode (War 2.261–263, Antiquities 20.169–172a). Medaevalia et Humanistica, 46, pp. 1-36. Rowman & Littlefield
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Scholars have noted the ubiquity and significance of the Latin Josephus tradition in the medieval era and thereafter. Turned into Latin in Late Antiquity, Josephus’s originally Greek Bellum Judaicum, Antiquitates Judaicae, and Contra Apionem became standard, widespread reading material for myriad medieval readers. Yet, all of Josephus’s readership in the medieval era and Middle Ages was not reading the same thing. Some had access to one or more versions of the Latin translation tradition; some were reading the late fourth-century Christian work De excidio Hierosolymitano; and still others would apprehend Josephus via Rufinus of Aquileia’s Latin translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Historia Ecclesiastica, which frequently quotes sections of Josephus’s Greek text verbatim. Many knew and cited more than one of these works. Text critical work on each of these traditions is ongoing and currently imperfect; however, just as important as the foundational manuscript work is interpretive work that critically compares these traditions as a means of providing qualitative analysis regarding how Josephus’s oeuvre could have been apprehended and understood by postancient Latin readers. To that end, the present study compares these traditions in a case study to illustrate their relative propinquity and respective idiosyncrasies. Such a study demonstrates the diversity of the Latin Josephus tradition beginning in the fourth century and provides a fuller basis for understanding and further studying the dynamics of that tradition among readers in the Middle Ages and beyond.
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