A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ nations in the Near East add up to a long list, which includes the peoples that were neighbors of the Israelites (e.g. Ammanites, Amoraites, Gabalites, Midianites, and Moabites; see the Appendix to this chapter). He mentions the Parthians (see Chapters 2 and 27) more than 130 times, especially in War 1 and Antiquities 14. Josephus confirms that the Parthians were the most powerful enemy of the Romans, who sometimes even dared to take action within the Roman sphere of influence. He describes how the Parthians interfered in the power struggle between the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great after they managed to capture Syria in 40 BCE (Cassius Dio 48.24; Buchheim 1960: 11, 74–79; Schürer I 1973–87: 278–279). The Parthians supported the Hasmonean Antigonus, who opposed Herod’s appointment by the Senate. They managed to get hold of Jerusalem and delivered the city to Antigonus. They took Herod’s brother Phasael and Hyrcanus II prisoner and transferred the latter to Babylon (BJ 1.269, 273; AJ 14.330–369).

Josephus is the most extensive external source about the Nabataeans (Hackl et al. 2003), the nation of nomadic merchants living in a territory running from the Southern Hauran (east of the Decapolis) to the mountainous region of the Northern Hedjaz (east of the Red Sea) as well as in the Northern Negev Desert and the Sinai Desert (Chapter 23). The famous city of Petra in the fertile plains of Moab was its capital. Josephus recalls that the Nabataeans descend from Ishmael, whose 12 sons dwelt in the territory extending from the Euphrates to the Erythrean Sea, which was called Nabatene (AJ 1.220–221). He sometimes calls them Nabataioi (“Nabataeans,” e.g. BJ 1.178; AJ 12.335), but mostly uses the name Arabes (“Arabs”) when he refers to the Nabataeans (Millar 1993a), perhaps because this name original meant “nomads” (cf. Chapter 34). Josephus does not offer a coherent history of the Nabataeans, but he mentions them frequently as a neighboring nation of the Jews in connection with actions by the Maccabean and Herodian Jewish leaders, especially in book 1 of The Jewish War and books 12–18 of The Jewish Antiquities. The Nabataean royal family was intertwined with the Herodians through the marriage of Herod’s father Antipater with Cypros/Cypris, who probably was a Nabataean princess, although Josephus does not say so explicitly (BJ 1.181; AJ 14.121–122; cf. also the Nabataean Syllaeus’s attempt to marry Herod’s sister Salome, BJ 1.566; AJ 16.220–225; 17.10; the daughter of the Nabataean king Aretas IV was married to Herod Antipas, AJ 18.109; Kokkinos 1998: 95, 183–184, 229–232, 268). During internal Jewish power conflicts prominent Jews sometimes fled to the Nabataeans or attempted to do that (e.g. Herod in 40 BCE, BJ 1.266–267, 274–279; AJ 14.361–362, 370–376), which once again suggests that the ruling families of both nations were connected. Nevertheless, the Nabataeans were also competitors of the Jews: they sometimes decided to support Jewish rulers in their conflicts, but more than once they fought them if they thought they could benefit from that. Herod the Great fought several battles against the Nabataeans after they refused to refund him (BJ 1.364–371, 380–385; AJ 15.106–160; 16.271–299). A passage from Herod the Great’s commander speech before a decisive battle against the Nabataeans offers a negative characterization of them, which is given in by their – in Herod’s view as presented by Josephus – treacherous behavior before the battle: “for I suppose you [i.e. Herod’s soldiers] know of the lawlessness of the Arabs [i.e. the Nabataeans], and how treacherously they deal with everyone else, as is the custom of a barbarous people that also lacks any notion of God. Of course, the main reason that they were hostile to us was greed and jealousy; they were waiting to make a sudden attack in our confused state” (AJ 15.130). The Nabataeans had murdered Herod’s envoys, but interestingly, Herod explains their misdeeds (besides treachery and unreliability, 15.110, 130, 132, 134, 140, also lawlessness, 15.130, 136, 140, 156, and greed, 15.134) by arguing that they were a barbarous nation that lacked any notion of God. The knowledge of God is apparently the principle difference between the Jews and the Nabataeans, and Herod implies that the Jews have the support of the God of Israel and the Nabataeans do not (AJ 15.144–146). This brings us ultimately back to Josephus’s basic message that the God of the Jews determines what happens in human history.

      Appendix: List of Groups of non-Jews in the Near East

      For the Hellenistic and Roman periods Josephus’s references to nations or inhabitants of a region or city include the Adiabenes (BJ 1.6, 4.567, 5.147, etc.), the Albani in the Caucasus (AJ 18.97), the Arabs (BJ 1.6, 90, etc.), the Antiochenes (AJ 14.323; also above), inhabitants of Arad (Phoenicia, AJ 14.323), Armenians (BJ 1.116; AJ 1.92, etc.), Auranites (inhabitants of the Hauran; BJ 2.421), the Babylonians (BJ 1.6 2.520, etc.), the Bataneans (BJ 2.421; AJ 18.106), the Beruthians (BJ 2.67, 506, etc.), the inhabitants of Borsippa (in Babylonia; Ap 1.152), the inhabitants of the Bosporus (BJ 2.366), the Cappadocians (BJ 1.446, 2.114, etc.), the Cilicians (BJ 1.88, 2.368; AJ 13.374), the Colchi (east/southeast of the Black Sea; BJ 2.366; Ap 1.168–170); the Commagenes (AJ 18.140; see also Chapter 19), the Cordyeans (Armenia; AJ 1.93), the Damascenes (BJ 1.103, 398, 2.559, etc.), the Dahae (Iranian people; AJ 18.100, 20.91), the Elamites (AJ 1.143), the Gadarenes (east of the Sea of Galilee; BJ 1.116, 2.478, etc.), the Heniochi (east of the Black Sea; BJ 2.366), the Ituraeans (AJ 13.318, 319; 15.185; see also Chapter 21), the Medes (BJ 1.13, 50, 62, etc.), the Nabataeans (BJ 1.178; AJ 12.335, etc.), the Parthians (BJ 1.6; 175, etc.), the Phoenicians (BJ 2.380; AJ 8.142, etc.; see also Chapter 20), the Sacae (Iranian people; AJ 18.100, 20.91), the Sarmates (Scythian tribe; BJ 7.90, 92), the Scythians (BJ 7.90, 244, etc.), the Sidonians (BJ 1.249, 539, etc.), the Syrians (BJ 1.88, 205, etc.), the Tauri (BJ 2.366), the Trachonites (BJ 2.58, 421, etc.), the Trallians (AJ 14.242), the inhabitants of Tripolis (Syria; AJ 14.39), and the Tyrians (BJ 1.231, 238, etc.).

      FURTHER READING

      Bilde 1988 and Rajak 2002 offer excellent and readable introductions to Josephus and his four works and Chapman and Rodgers 2016 includes detailed discussions of many topics connected with Josephus and the content and reception of his works. For the history of the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66–73/74 CE), which is the main topic of Josephus’s War, see especially the articles in Popovic 2011 and the excellent fresh interpretation of the events in Mason 2016a. Goodman 1994, Mason 2003b, 2005, Price 2005, Tuval 2013, and Den Hollander 2014 discuss the importance of Josephus’s Roman context for his audience, and his aims. For Josephus’s handling of geographic information, see especially Shahar 2004 and Van Henten and Huitink 2012. An overall study of Diaspora Judaism as presented by Josephus is still missing; see for Babylonia and the Parthian Empire Neusner 1969 and Goodblatt 2012 and for the legal position of the Jews in the eastern part of the Roman Empire Pucci Ben Zeev 1998. Hackl et al. 2003 offer useful translations of and brief comments on Josephus’s passages about the Nabataeans.

CHAPTER 8 Syriac Sources

       Alberto Rigolio

      The present chapter offers an overview of the Syriac sources available for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. The criterion for inclusion is, quite simply, the use of the Syriac language; the material is therefore arranged by type and is organized into “inscriptions and mosaics,” “coins,” “parchments and papyri,” “historiography,” and “other literature.”

      Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic originally spoken in Edessa (modern Urfa, in Turkey) and its surrounding region, Osrhoene, which is enclosed by the СКАЧАТЬ