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Flavius Josephus, the priest from Jerusalem who was affiliated with
the Pharisees, is our most important source for Jewish life in the
first century. His notice about the death of James the brother of
Jesus suggests that Josephus knew about the followers of Jesus in
Jerusalem and in Judaea. In Rome, where he lived for the remainder
of his life after the Jewish War, a group of Christians appear to
have flourished, if 1 Clement is any indication. Josephus, however,
says extremely little about the Christians in Judaea and nothing
about those in Rome. He also does not reference Paul the apostle, a
former Pharisee, who was a contemporary of Josephus's father in
Jerusalem, even though, according to Acts, Paul and his activities
were known to two successive Roman governors (procurators) of
Judaea, Marcus Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, and to King Herod
Agrippa II and his sisters Berenice and Drusilla. The knowledge of
the Herodians, in particular, puts Josephus's silence about Paul in
an interesting light, suggesting that it may have been deliberate.
In addition, Josephus's writings bear very little witness to other
contemporaries in Rome, so much so that if we were dependent on
Josephus alone we might conclude that many of those historical
characters either did not exist or had little or no impact in the
first century. Asiedu comments on the state of life in Rome during
the reign of the Emperor Domitian and how both Josephus and the
Christians who produced 1 Clement coped with the regime as other
contemporaries, among whom he considers Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the
Younger, and others, did. He argues that most of Josephus's
contemporaries practiced different kinds of silences in bearing
witness to the world around them. Consequently, the absence of
references to Jews or Christians in Roman writers of the last three
decades of the first century, including Josephus, should not be
taken as proof of their non-existence in Flavian Rome.
Flavius Josephus, the priest from Jerusalem who was affiliated with
the Pharisees, is our most important source for Jewish life in the
first century. His notice about the death of James the brother of
Jesus suggests that Josephus knew about the followers of Jesus in
Jerusalem and in Judaea. In Rome, where he lived for the remainder
of his life after the Jewish War, a group of Christians appear to
have flourished, if 1 Clement is any indication. Josephus, however,
says extremely little about the Christians in Judaea and nothing
about those in Rome. He also does not reference Paul the apostle, a
former Pharisee, who was a contemporary of Josephus's father in
Jerusalem, even though, according to Acts, Paul and his activities
were known to two successive Roman governors (procurators) of
Judaea, Marcus Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, and to King Herod
Agrippa II and his sisters Berenice and Drusilla. The knowledge of
the Herodians, in particular, puts Josephus's silence about Paul in
an interesting light, suggesting that it may have been deliberate.
In addition, Josephus's writings bear very little witness to other
contemporaries in Rome, so much so that if we were dependent on
Josephus alone we might conclude that many of those historical
characters either did not exist or had little or no impact in the
first century. Asiedu comments on the state of life in Rome during
the reign of the Emperor Domitian and how both Josephus and the
Christians who produced 1 Clement coped with the regime as other
contemporaries, among whom he considers Martial, Tacitus, Pliny the
Younger, and others, did. He argues that most of Josephus's
contemporaries practiced different kinds of silences in bearing
witness to the world around them. Consequently, the absence of
references to Jews or Christians in Roman writers of the last three
decades of the first century, including Josephus, should not be
taken as proof of their non-existence in Flavian Rome.
Paul the apostle and the historian Flavius Josephus spent
considerable parts of their careers away from Jerusalem. They
cultivated Roman audiences under very different circumstances:
Paul, with his Letter to the Romans; and Josephus, with the
writings he produced in Rome after the Jewish War. Curiously,
Paul's last visit to Jerusalem coincided with Josephus's entry into
public life, a period about which Josephus is deliberately silent.
In this book, F. B. A. Asiedu selects themes from Josephus's life
to explore Paul's letters and his biography that contribute to his
uniqueness in Jewish history. He highlights, for example, the need
to read Romans 9-11 as aporetic discourse to appreciate Paul as an
existential thinker. Asiedu considers, among other things, the
authenticity of Paul's letters and offers an alternative to the
prevailing scholarly consensus. He maintains, as well, that the
Pauline collection in the New Testament first took shape in Corinth
in the house of Gaius, where Paul composed Romans. Asiedu also
suggests that the traditional view that Luke the Physician wrote
the Acts of the Apostles is probably a mistake. He argues that
Titus the Greek, the co-worker and friend of Barnabas and Paul, was
the most likely person to have authored Acts.
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