A Jew Among Romans

Description

From the acclaimed biographer, screenwriter, and novelist--an audacious history of Josephus, the Jewish general turned Roman historian, whose emblematic betrayal is a touchstone for the singular Jew alone in the Gentile world.Joseph ben Mattathias's transformation into Titus Flavius Josephus, historian to the Roman emperor Vespasian is a gripping and dramatic story. His life, in the hands of Frederic Raphael, becomes a launching point for an historical appraisal of Diasporan Jews seeking a place in the dominant cultures they inhabit. Raphael brings a scholar's rigor, an historian's intelligence, and a novelist's imagination to this project. He goes beyond the fascinating details of Josephus's life and his singular literary achievements, to examine how he has been viewed by posterity, finding in Josephus the prototype for the unJewish Jew, the assimilated intellectual, and the abiding apostate: the recurrent figures in the long centuries of the Diaspora....