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111-476: Seleucia ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Σελεύκεια , Seleúkeia ) is named for Seleucus I Nicator , who enlarged an earlier settlement and made it the capital of his empire around 305 BC. It was the largest and most important of the many cities to bear its name but is sometimes distinguished as Seleucia-on-Tigris or Seleucia on the Tigris ( Latin : Seleucia ad Tigridem ) from the name of its river . Texts from

222-418: A Jewish priest . His older full-blooded brother was also, like his father, called Matthias. Their mother was an aristocratic woman who was descended from the royal and formerly ruling Hasmonean dynasty . Josephus's paternal grandparents were a man also named Joseph(us) and his wife—an unnamed Hebrew noblewoman—distant relatives of each other. Josephus's family was wealthy. He descended through his father from

333-655: A Greek Jewish woman from Crete , who was a member of a distinguished family. They had two sons, Flavius Justus and Flavius Simonides Agrippa. Josephus's life story remains ambiguous. He was described by Harris in 1985 as a law-observant Jew who believed in the compatibility of Judaism and Graeco-Roman thought, commonly referred to as Hellenistic Judaism . Josippon , the Hebrew version of Josephus, contains changes. His critics were never satisfied as to why he failed to commit suicide in Galilee, and after his capture, accepted

444-476: A Roman onslaught. In Upper Galilee , he fortified the towns of Jamnith , Seph , Mero , and Achabare , among other places. Josephus, with the Galileans under his command, managed to bring both Sepphoris and Tiberias into subjection, but was eventually forced to relinquish his hold on Sepphoris by the arrival of Roman forces under Placidus the tribune and later by Vespasian himself. Josephus first engaged

555-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

666-604: A brief visit to Rome in the early 60s ( Life 13–17). In the wake of the suppression of the Jewish revolt, Josephus would have witnessed the marches of Titus 's triumphant legions leading their Jewish captives, and carrying treasures from the despoiled Temple in Jerusalem . It was against this background that Josephus wrote his War . He blames the Jewish War on what he calls "unrepresentative and over-zealous fanatics" among

777-609: A detailed examination of all the available manuscripts, mainly from France and Spain. Henry St. John Thackeray and successors such as Ralph Marcus used Niese's version for the Loeb Classical Library edition widely used today. On the Jewish side, Josephus was far more obscure, as he was perceived as a traitor. Rabbinical writings for a millennium after his death (e.g. the Mishnah ) almost never call out Josephus by name, although they sometimes tell parallel tales of

888-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

999-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1110-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

1221-670: A person of great experience in everything belonging to his own nation, he attained to that remarkable familiarity with his country in every part, which his antiquarian researches so abundantly evince. But he was controlled by political motives: his great purpose was to bring his people, the despised Jewish race, into honour with the Greeks and Romans; and this purpose underlay every sentence, and filled his history with distortions and exaggerations. Josephus mentions that in his day there were 240 towns and villages scattered across Upper and Lower Galilee , some of which he names. Josephus's works are

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1332-524: A side. Based on this size, the population has been estimated to number over 100,000 initially and probably more later. Its surrounding region might have supported half a million people. Polybius (5,52ff) uses the Macedonian peliganes for the council of Seleucia, which implies a Macedonian colony, consistent with its rise to prominence under Seleucus I; Pausanias ( 1,16 ) records that Seleucus also settled Babylonians there. Archaeological finds support

1443-972: A significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the Maccabees , the Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of Herod the Great . He also describes the Sadducees , the Pharisees and Essenes , the Herodian Temple, Quirinius 's census and the Zealots , and such figures as Pontius Pilate , Herod the Great , Agrippa I and Agrippa II , John the Baptist , James the brother of Jesus , and Jesus . Josephus represents an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism and

1554-524: A systematic order, proceeding topically and logically" and included all relevant material for their subject. Antiquarians moved beyond political history to include institutions and religious and private life. Josephus does offer this wider perspective in Antiquities . The works of Josephus are major sources of our understanding of Jewish life and history during the first century. His first work in Rome

1665-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

1776-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

1887-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

1998-468: Is damaged in some places. In the Life , Niese follows mainly manuscript P, but refers also to AMW and R. Henry St. John Thackeray for the Loeb Classical Library has a Greek text also mainly dependent on P. André Pelletier edited a new Greek text for his translation of Life . The ongoing Münsteraner Josephus-Ausgabe of Münster University will provide a new critical apparatus. Late Old Slavonic translations of

2109-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

2220-423: Is repentance: in later life he felt so bad about the traitorous War that he needed to demonstrate … his loyalty to Jewish history, law and culture." However, Josephus's "countless incidental remarks explaining basic Judean language, customs and laws … assume a Gentile audience. He does not expect his first hearers to know anything about the laws or Judean origins." The issue of who would read this multi-volume work

2331-1045: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Josephus Flavius Josephus ( / dʒ oʊ ˈ s iː f ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἰώσηπος , Iṓsēpos ; c.  AD 37  – c.  100 ) or Yosef ben Mattityahu ( Hebrew : יוֹסֵף בֵּן מַתִּתְיָהוּ )

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2442-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

2553-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

2664-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

2775-538: Is unresolved. Other possible motives for writing Antiquities could be to dispel the misrepresentation of Jewish origins or as an apologetic to Greek cities of the Diaspora in order to protect Jews and to Roman authorities to garner their support for the Jews facing persecution. Josephus was a very popular writer with Christians in the 4th century and beyond as an independent source to the events before, during, and after

2886-612: The Haskalah ("Jewish Enlightenment") in the 19th century, when sufficiently "neutral" vernacular language translations were made. Kalman Schulman finally created a Hebrew translation of the Greek text of Josephus in 1863, although many rabbis continued to prefer the Yosippon version. By the 20th century, Jewish attitudes toward Josephus had softened, as he gave the Jews a respectable place in classical history. Various parts of his work were reinterpreted as more inspiring and favorable to

2997-411: The nomen Flavius from his patrons, as was the custom amongst freedmen . Vespasian arranged for Josephus to marry a captured Jewish woman, whom he later divorced. Around the year 71, Josephus married an Alexandrian Jewish woman as his third wife. They had three sons, of whom only Flavius Hyrcanus survived childhood. Josephus later divorced his third wife. Around 75, he married his fourth wife,

3108-610: The Church of the East 's synods referred to the city as Salīq ( Syriac : ܣܠܝܩ ) or some times Māḥôzē ( Syriac : ܡܚܘܙ̈ܐ ) when referring to the metropolis of Seleucia-Ctesiphon . The Sassanids named the eastern city as Veh-Ardashir ( Persian : ویه‌اردشیر ), Arabs called it Bahurasīr. Seleucia, as such, was founded as the first capital of the Seleucid Empire by Seleucus I Nicator . A foundation date of 300 BC

3219-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

3330-651: The Egyptians , who, in turn, taught the Greeks . Moses set up a senatorial priestly aristocracy, which, like that of Rome, resisted monarchy . The great figures of the Tanakh are presented as ideal philosopher-leaders. He includes an autobiographical appendix defending his conduct at the end of the war when he cooperated with the Roman forces. Louis H. Feldman outlines the difference between calling this work Antiquities of

3441-514: The Euphrates , Seleucia was placed to receive traffic from both great waterways. During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, it was one of the great Hellenistic cities, comparable to Alexandria in Egypt , and greater than Syrian Antioch . Excavations indicate that the walls of the city enclosed an area of at least 550 hectares (1,400 acres), equivalent to a square roughly 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) on

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3552-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

3663-838: The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology on behalf of the American School of Oriental Research of Baghdad with funds supplied by the Toledo Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art . Finds included many coins, mostly bronze, salt receipts with the name of Seleucia, a blue glazed incense burner, now in the Baghdad museum, a stele inscribed in Greek, numerous beads, metal objects including weights and surgeons instruments, and one pre-Sargonic brick. From 1964 to 1968 and then between 1985 and 1989, an Italian mission from

3774-600: The Parthian style . It was completely destroyed by the Roman general Avidius Cassius in 165. Over sixty years later a new city, Veh-Ardashir , was built across the river by Persian emperor Ardashir I . This new city was long believed to be located at Seleucia but was shown by Italian excavations to be a fresh construction separate from Seleucia and Ctesiphon. There were active Christian churches in Mesopotamia from

3885-607: The Roman army led by military commander Vespasian after the six-week siege of Yodfat . Josephus claimed the Jewish messianic prophecies that initiated the First Jewish–Roman War made reference to Vespasian becoming Roman emperor . In response, Vespasian decided to keep him as a slave and presumably interpreter . After Vespasian became emperor in AD ;69, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed

3996-696: The University of Turin directed by Antonio Invernizzi and Giorgio Gullini excavated at the site. They found a Seleucid archive building with about 30,000 seal impressions, all in a fully Greek style. In an outer wall of the Parthian period, a reused brick dated by stamp to 821 BC, during the Neo-Assyrian period. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

4107-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

4218-617: The 17th century. The 1544 Greek edition formed the basis of the 1732 English translation by William Whiston , which achieved enormous popularity in the English-speaking world. It was often the book—after the Bible—that Christians most frequently owned. Whiston claimed that certain works by Josephus had a similar style to the Epistles of St. Paul . Later editions of the Greek text include that of Benedikt Niese , who made

4329-537: The 1st century onwards and in the 3rd or 4th century Seleucia became an important centre. Following the edict of toleration by the Persian Sassanian King Yazdegerd I , which for the time being brought an end to the persecution of Christians , which had lasted for 70 years, the remaining Christians set about reorganizing and strengthening the church. The Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (The Synod of Mar Isaac) met in 410 AD under

4440-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

4551-524: The Catholicos of Seleucia Ctesiphon be supreme among the bishops of the East. The Synod of Dadyeshu decided that the Catholicos should be the sole head of the Church of the East and that no ecclesiastical authority should be acknowledged above him. For the first time, this synod referred to the Catholicos as Patriarch and that their Catholicos was answerable to God alone. This had some effect in reassuring

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4662-564: The Emperor's family name of Flavius . Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship . He became an advisor and close associate of Vespasian's son Titus , serving as his translator during Titus's protracted siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, which resulted in the near-total razing of the city and the destruction of the Second Temple . Josephus recorded

4773-461: The Galileans and by the Romans; he was guilty of shocking duplicity at Jotapata, saving himself by sacrifice of his companions; he was too naive to see how he stood condemned out of his own mouth for his conduct, and yet no words were too harsh when he was blackening his opponents; and after landing, however involuntarily, in the Roman camp, he turned his captivity to his own advantage, and benefited for

4884-516: The Great Jewish Revolt (AD 66–70), including the siege of Masada . His most important works were The Jewish War ( c.  75 ) and Antiquities of the Jews ( c.  94). The Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation. Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective for an ostensibly Greek and Roman audience. These works provide insight into first-century Judaism and

4995-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

5106-519: The Greek also exist, but these contain a large number of Christian interpolations. Author Joseph Raymond calls Josephus "the Jewish Benedict Arnold " for betraying his own troops at Jotapata, while historian Mary Smallwood , in the introduction to the translation of The Jewish War by G. A. Williamson , writes: [Josephus] was conceited, not only about his own learning, but also about the opinions held of him as commander both by

5217-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

5328-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

5439-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

5550-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

5661-412: The Jews (cf. Life 430) – where the author for the most part re-visits the events of the War and his tenure in Galilee as governor and commander, apparently in response to allegations made against him by Justus of Tiberias (cf. Life 336). Josephus's Against Apion is a two-volume defence of Judaism as classical religion and philosophy , stressing its antiquity, as opposed to what Josephus claimed

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5772-411: The Jews , completed during the last year of the reign of the Emperor Flavius Domitian , around 93 or 94 AD. In expounding Jewish history, law and custom, he is entering into many philosophical debates current in Rome at that time. Again he offers an apologia for the antiquity and universal significance of the Jewish people. Josephus claims to be writing this history because he "saw that others perverted

5883-517: The Jews instead of History of the Jews . Although Josephus says that he describes the events contained in Antiquities "in the order of time that belongs to them," Feldman argues that Josephus "aimed to organize [his] material systematically rather than chronologically" and had a scope that "ranged far beyond mere political history to political institutions, religious and private life." An autobiographical text written by Josephus in approximately 94–99 CE – possibly as an appendix to his Antiquities of

5994-419: The Jews than the Renaissance translations by Christians had been. Notably, the last stand at Masada (described in The Jewish War ), which past generations had deemed insane and fanatical, received a more positive reinterpretation as an inspiring call to action in this period. The standard editio maior of the various Greek manuscripts is that of Benedictus Niese , published 1885–95. The text of Antiquities

6105-424: The Jews, who led the masses away from their traditional aristocratic leaders (like himself), with disastrous results. For example, Josephus writes that " Simon [bar Giora] was a greater terror to the people than the Romans themselves." Josephus also blames some of the Roman governors of Judea , representing them as corrupt and incompetent administrators. The next work by Josephus is his 21-volume Antiquities of

6216-417: The Orient. The Synod also declared its adherence to the decision of the Council of Nicaea and subscribed to the Nicene Creed . The Canons of the Synod leave no doubt as to the authority of the great Metropolitan, the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Without his approval, no election of bishop would be valid. Towards the end of the reign of Yazdegerd I, the Christians were again persecuted in 420. Dadyeshu

6327-403: The Roman army at a village called Garis , where he launched an attack against Sepphoris a second time, before being repulsed. At length, he resisted the Roman army in its siege of Yodfat (Jotapata) until it fell to the Roman army in the lunar month of Tammuz , in the thirteenth year of Nero 's reign. After the Jewish garrison of Yodfat fell under siege, the Romans invaded, killing thousands;

6438-442: The Roman forces and became prisoners. In 69 AD, Josephus was released. According to his account, he acted as a negotiator with the defenders during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, during which time his parents were held as hostages by Simon bar Giora . While being confined at Yodfat (Jotapata), Josephus claimed to have experienced a divine revelation that later led to his speech predicting Vespasian would become emperor. After

6549-456: The Sasanian monarchy that the Persian Christians were not influenced by the Roman enemy. The city eventually faded into obscurity and was swallowed by the desert sands, probably abandoned after the Tigris shifted its course. The site of Seleucia was rediscovered in the 1920s by archaeologists looking for Opis . Beginning in 1927, University of Michigan professors Leroy Waterman (1927–1932) and Clark Hopkins (1936–1937) oversaw excavations for

6660-405: The Seleucids. To make his capital into a metropolis, Seleucus forced almost all inhabitants of Babylon, except the local temple priests/supporting workers, to leave and resettle in Seleucia. A tablet dated 275 BC states that the inhabitants of Babylon were transported to Seleucia, where a palace and a temple (Esagila) were built. Standing at the confluence of the Tigris River with a major canal from

6771-460: The actions of both parties with accuracy." Josephus confesses he will be unable to contain his sadness in transcribing these events; to illustrate this will have little effect on his historiography, Josephus suggests, "But if any one be inflexible in his censures of me, let him attribute the facts themselves to the historical part, and the lamentations to the writer himself only." His preface to Antiquities offers his opinion early on, saying, "Upon

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6882-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

6993-400: The ancient geography of the region: Outside of the Scriptures, Josephus holds the first and the only place among the native authors of Judaea; for Philo of Alexandria, the later Talmud, and other authorities, are of little service in understanding the geography of the country. Josephus is, however, to be used with great care. As a Jewish scholar, as an officer of Galilee, as a military man, and

7104-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

7215-427: The background of Early Christianity . Josephus's works are the chief source next to the Bible for the history and antiquity of ancient Israel , and provide an independent extra-biblical account of such figures as Pontius Pilate , Herod the Great , John the Baptist , James, brother of Jesus , and Jesus of Nazareth . Josephus was born into one of Jerusalem's elite families. He was the second-born son of Matthias,

7326-521: The context of early Christianity . A careful reading of Josephus's writings and years of excavation allowed Ehud Netzer , an archaeologist from Hebrew University , to discover what he considered to be the location of Herod's Tomb , after searching for 35 years. It was above aqueducts and pools, at a flattened desert site, halfway up the hill to the Herodium , 12 km south of Jerusalem—as described in Josephus's writings. In October 2013, archaeologists Joseph Patrich and Benjamin Arubas challenged

7437-474: The difference between history and philosophy by saying, "[T]hose that read my book may wonder how it comes to pass, that my discourse, which promises an account of laws and historical facts, contains so much of philosophy." In both works, Josephus emphasizes that accuracy is crucial to historiography. Louis H. Feldman notes that in Wars , Josephus commits himself to critical historiography, but in Antiquities , Josephus shifts to rhetorical historiography, which

7548-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

7659-432: The entourage of Titus. There, he became a Roman citizen and client of the ruling Flavian dynasty . In addition to Roman citizenship , he was granted accommodation in the conquered Judaea and a pension. While in Rome and under Flavian patronage, Josephus wrote all of his known works. Although he only ever calls himself "Josephus" in his writings, later historians refer to him as "Flavius Josephus", confirming that he adopted

7770-448: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

7881-436: The fall of Jerusalem , and the subsequent fall of the fortresses of Herodion, Macharont and Masada and the Roman victory celebrations in Rome, the mopping-up operations, Roman military operations elsewhere in the empire and the uprising in Cyrene . Together with the account in his Life of some of the same events, it also provides the reader with an overview of Josephus's own part in the events since his return to Jerusalem from

7992-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

8103-514: The founder of the Arabs , the connection of "Semites", "Hamites" and "Japhetites" to the classical nations of the world , and the story of the siege of Masada . Scholars debate about Josephus's intended audience. For example, Antiquities of the Jews could be written for Jews—"a few scholars from Laqueur onward have suggested that Josephus must have written primarily for fellow Jews (if also secondarily for Gentiles). The most common motive suggested

8214-501: The identification of the tomb as that of Herod. According to Patrich and Arubas, the tomb is too modest to be Herod's and has several unlikely features. Roi Porat, who replaced Netzer as excavation leader after the latter's death, stood by the identification. Josephus's writings provide the first-known source for many stories considered as Biblical history, despite not being found in the Bible or related material. These include Ishmael as

8325-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

8436-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

8547-620: The life of Jesus of Nazareth . Josephus was always accessible in the Greek-reading Eastern Mediterranean. His works were translated into Latin, but often in abbreviated form such as Pseudo-Hegesippus 's 4th century Latin version of The Jewish War ( Bellum Judaicum ). Christian interest in The Jewish War was largely out of interest in the downfall of the Jews and the Second Temple, which

8658-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

8769-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

8880-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

8991-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

9102-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

9213-522: The patronage of Romans. The works of Josephus provide information about the First Jewish–Roman War and also represent literary source material for understanding the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls and late Temple Judaism. Josephan scholarship in the 19th and early 20th centuries took an interest in Josephus's relationship to the sect of the Pharisees . Some portrayed him as a member of

9324-708: The people of Tiberias appealed to King Agrippa 's forces to protect them from the insurgents. Josephus trained 65,000 troops in the region. Josephus also contended with John of Gischala who had also set his sight over the control of Galilee. Like Josephus, John had amassed to himself a large band of supporters from Gischala (Gush Halab) and Gabara , including the support of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Josephus fortified several towns and villages in Lower Galilee , among which were Tiberias, Bersabe , Selamin , Japha , and Tarichaea , in anticipation of

9435-480: The philosophical school of the Pharisees as a matter of deference, and not by willing association. The works of Josephus include useful material for historians about individuals, groups, customs, and geographical places. However, modern historians have been cautious of taking his writings at face value. For example, Carl Ritter , in his highly influential Erdkunde in the 1840s, wrote in a review of authorities on

9546-454: The prediction came true, he was released by Vespasian, who considered his gift of prophecy to be divine. Josephus wrote that his revelation had taught him three things: that God, the creator of the Jewish people, had decided to "punish" them; that "fortune" had been given to the Romans; and that God had chosen him "to announce the things that are to come". To many Jews, such claims were simply self-serving. In 71 AD, he went to Rome as part of

9657-530: The presence of a large population not of Greek culture. In 141 BC, the Parthians under Mithridates I conquered the city, and Seleucia became the western capital of the Parthian Empire . Tacitus described its walls, and mentioned that it was, even under Parthian rule, a fully Hellenistic city. Ancient texts claim that the city had 600,000 inhabitants, and was ruled by a senate of 300 people. It

9768-465: The presidency of Mar Isaac , the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon . The most important decision of the Synod which had a very far reaching effect on the life of the church, was to declare the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon as the primate of the Church of the East ; and in recognition of this pre-eminence he was given the title ' Catholicos '. The Synod confirmed Mar Isaac as Catholicos and Archbishop of all

9879-508: The priestly order of the Jehoiarib , which was the first of the 24 orders of priests in the Temple in Jerusalem . Josephus calls himself a fourth-generation descendant of " High Priest Jonathan", referring to either Jonathan Apphus or Alexander Jannaeus . He was raised in Jerusalem and educated alongside his brother. In his mid twenties, he traveled to negotiate with Emperor Nero for

9990-431: The primary source for the chain of Jewish high priests during the Second Temple period. A few of the Jewish customs named by him include the practice of hanging a linen curtain at the entrance to one's house, and the Jewish custom to partake of a Sabbath-day 's meal around the sixth-hour of the day (at noon). He notes also that it was permissible for Jewish men to marry many wives ( polygamy ). His writings provide

10101-438: The reigning monarch was defeated, allowing Orodes to re-establish himself as king. In 41 BC, Seleucia was the scene of a massacre of around 5,000 Babylonian Jewish refugees ( Josephus , Ant. xviii. 9, § 9). [3] In 117 AD, Seleucia was burned down by the Roman emperor Trajan during his conquest of Mesopotamia, but the following year it was ceded back to the Parthians by Trajan's successor, Hadrian , then rebuilt in

10212-485: The release of some Jewish priests. Upon his return to Jerusalem, at the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War , Josephus was appointed the military governor of Galilee . His arrival in Galilee, however, was fraught with internal division: the inhabitants of Sepphoris and Tiberias opted to maintain peace with the Romans; the people of Sepphoris enlisted the help of the Roman army to protect their city, while

10323-555: The rest of his days from his change of side. In the Preface to Jewish Wars , Josephus criticizes historians who misrepresent the events of the Jewish–Roman War , writing that "they have a mind to demonstrate the greatness of the Romans, while they still diminish and lessen the actions of the Jews." Josephus states that his intention is to correct this method but that he "will not go to the other extreme ... [and] will prosecute

10434-491: The same events that Josephus narrated. An Italian Jew writing in the 10th century indirectly brought Josephus back to prominence among Jews: he authored the Yosippon , which paraphrases Pseudo-Hegesippus's Latin version of The Jewish War , a Latin version of Antiquities , as well as other works. The epitomist also adds in his own snippets of history at times. Jews generally distrusted Christian translations of Josephus until

10545-466: The sect and as a traitor to the Jewish nation—a view which became known as the classical concept of Josephus. In the mid-20th century, a new generation of scholars challenged this view and formulated the modern concept of Josephus. They consider him a Pharisee but describe him in part as patriot and a historian of some standing. In his 1991 book, Steve Mason argued that Josephus was not a Pharisee but an orthodox Aristocrat-Priest who became associated with

10656-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

10767-524: The survivors committed suicide. According to Josephus, he was trapped in a cave with 40 of his companions in July 67 AD. The Romans (commanded by Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus, both subsequently Roman emperors ) asked the group to surrender, but they refused. According to Josephus's account, he suggested a method of collective suicide; they drew lots and killed each other, one by one, and Josephus happened to be one of two men that were left who surrendered to

10878-612: The truth of those actions in their writings", those writings being the history of the Jews. In terms of some of his sources for the project, Josephus says that he drew from and "interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures" and that he was an eyewitness to the wars between the Jews and the Romans, which were earlier recounted in Jewish Wars . He outlines Jewish history beginning with the creation, as passed down through Jewish historical tradition. Abraham taught science to

10989-465: The whole, a man that will peruse this history, may principally learn from it, that all events succeed well, even to an incredible degree, and the reward of felicity is proposed by God." After inserting this attitude, Josephus contradicts Berossus: "I shall accurately describe what is contained in our records, in the order of time that belongs to them ... without adding any thing to what is therein contained, or taking away any thing therefrom." He notes

11100-581: Was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War , he was born in Jerusalem —then part of the Roman province of Judea —to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry . He initially fought against the Roman Empire during the First Jewish–Roman War as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee , until surrendering in AD 67 to

11211-515: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

11322-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

11433-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

11544-666: Was an account of the Jewish War, addressed to certain "upper barbarians"—usually thought to be the Jewish community in Mesopotamia —in his "paternal tongue" ( War I.3), arguably the Western Aramaic language . In AD 78 he finished a seven-volume account in Greek known as the Jewish War ( Latin Bellum Judaicum or De Bello Judaico ). It starts with the period of the Maccabees and concludes with accounts of

11655-461: Was clearly one of the largest cities in the Western world; only Rome, Alexandria , and possibly Antioch were more populous. In 55 BC, a battle fought near Seleucia was crucial in establishing dynastic succession of the Arsacid kings. In this battle between the reigning Mithridates III (supported by a Roman army of Aulus Gabinius , governor of Syria) and the previously deposed Orodes II ,

11766-492: Was elected Catholicos in 421 and himself suffered during the persecution and was imprisoned. When he was released he resigned and left Seleucia, but the church refused to accept the resignation and there followed the Synod of Dadyeshu , which met in 424 in Markabata of the Arabs under the presidency of Mar Dadyeshu. It proved to be one of the most significant of all Persian synods. The first synod of Isaac in 410 had decided that

11877-460: Was proposed by Auguste Bouch-Leclerq in 1914. Other scholars proposed 306 BC and 312 BC. Seleucus was one of the Diadochi successors of Alexander the Great who, after Alexander's death, divided his empire among themselves. Although Seleucus soon moved his main capital to Antioch , in northern Syria , Seleucia became an important center of trade, Hellenistic culture, and regional government under

11988-520: Was the norm of his time. Feldman notes further that it is significant that Josephus called his later work "Antiquities" (literally, archaeology) rather than history; in the Hellenistic period, archaeology meant either "history from the origins or archaic history." Thus, his title implies a Jewish peoples' history from their origins until the time he wrote. This distinction is significant to Feldman, because "in ancient times, historians were expected to write in chronological order," while "antiquarians wrote in

12099-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

12210-688: Was widely considered divine punishment for the crime of killing Jesus . Improvements in printing technology (the Gutenberg Press ) led to his works receiving a number of new translations into the vernacular languages of Europe, generally based on the Latin versions. Only in 1544 did a version of the standard Greek text become available in French, edited by the Dutch humanist Arnoldus Arlenius . The first English translation, by Thomas Lodge , appeared in 1602, with subsequent editions appearing throughout

12321-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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