The ancient Mediterranean and near-eastern worlds remain endlessly fascinating. Not only was the Roman empire host to many languages and cultures, but it also had a symbiotic relationship with the Parthian empire to the east (from modern Iraq to Pakistan), itself a vast cultural mosaic. My research is on the large set of problems covered by the phrase 'cultural interaction' in the Roman period, particularly in the Greek-speaking eastern part of the empire (before about 200 CE), which had strong ties with the east. Many western Arabs, Judaeans, and Syrians, did not necessarily consider themselves a permanent part of the Roman empire, even though it's easy for us to categorize them that way in hindsight.
How did the various populations of the Roman east understand themselves and others in relation to themselves? What categories were current (e.g., ethnos, patria, nomos, eusebeia, paideia, philosophia) and what sort of mentality do they reflect? How did people really see the world, not least in the absence of the map mentality that we take so much for granted? How do some of our basic categories (e.g., 'nation, state, religion, culture') relate to their conceptions? How did members of the educated classes cope with cultural engagement, rhetorically and in actual practice? What did such categories as Hellenization/Hellenism, Romanization, and Judaism mean in antiquity? In particular, how did members of local elites, from Polybius to Josephus, Dio Chrysostom, and Plutarch, manage relations with the dominant Roman power, and what role did they assign their native traditions or political constitutions in that environment? How and to what extent did they try to preserve the self-respect of their peoples as they lived under Roman dominance? Such problems, needless to say, have parallels with contemporary issues in our world, but my main interest as a historian is in understanding the ancient phenomena in their own right (by 'emic' kinds of analysis).
It
would be hard to find a better personal case of
cultural interaction in the Roman world than Flavius
Josephus (37 – 100+ CE). By his late twenties this
well-educated, Aramaic- and Hebrew-speaking
priest-aristocrat from Jerusalem, who had ties with
groups in Arabia and the Parthian kingdom, found
himself caught up in the serious problem of managing
relations with Rome at a time of crisis. His Judaean
homeland was in revolt against Rome, partly with the
help of influential figures from the east, and Josephus
found himself the defending 'general' of the Galilean
theatre. Not long after the legions arrived, he
surrendered and, after two years' imprisonment awaiting
the conclusion, was freed and escorted to Rome. There
he lived the last thirty or forty (fifty?) years of his
life writing about Judean culture. He wrote in Greek,
employing many themes and devices of Greek rhetoric,
historiography, and ethnography developed by other
writers from the Greek east living under Roman rule.
Josephus' representation of his people’s 'nature' or
'character,' and of other cultures in relation to his
own, is rich soil for investigation. He ended up
writing three or four works (depending on how one
counts) in thirty Greek volumes. So there is plenty of
material for reflection and analysis, and Josephus has
taken centre stage in my research. As it happens, the
period of Judaean history that Josephus wrote about in
the greatest detail, from King Herod the Great to the
second third of (what we call) the first century CE,
was precisely the environment in which Christianity was
born and began to define itself over against Judaean
culture.
The
projects that occupy my time have mostly to do with
these issues: Roman Judaea, eastern provincial
administration, politics and war in this region, Greek
politics under Roman rule, understanding Josephus'
writings in historical context, the structures and
themes of his work, his writing environment and
audiences in Flavian Rome, and the origins of
Christianity in Judaea and the Roman east. If you would
like to know more, please follow the links above
left.
