Steve Mason

• BA, MA, PhD
• Professor at University of Groningen

The T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism provides a comprehensive reference resource of over 600 scholarly articles aimed at scholars and students interested in Judaism of the Second Temple Period. The two-volume work is split into four parts. Part One offers a prolegomenon for the contemporary study and appreciation of Second Temple Jud...

In NTS 62.3 (July 2016) David Horrell argued that certain passages in 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Peter 3 showed ‘ethnicising’ traits among the early Christians. He set this result against an alleged trend in scholarship that would distinguish and disparage a closed ethnic Judaism in relation to a new spiritual-universal Christianity. The present authors...

This article examines two topics that emerge from N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of the Gospel : Paul the Shammaite-zealot and the ‘great narrative’ of an Israel in exile, waiting for something. The perspective adopted is that of a historian, for whom the fundamental question is whether Wright's accounts approximate plausible reality two...

A conflict that erupted between Roman legions and some Judaeans in late A.D. 66 had an incalculable impact on Rome's physical appearance and imperial governance; on ancient Jews bereft of their mother-city and temple; and on early Christian fortunes. Historical scholarship and cinema alike tend to see the conflict as the culmination of long Jewish...

Students of the Roman triumph usually amputate Josephus’ account (Bell. Iud. 7.121-162) for comparison with others. This has encouraged the view that he gives an official Flavian description of something he may not even have seen. The present chapter argues that reading Josephus’ triumph story as an integral part of his Judaean War produces a diffe...

Flavius Josephus's Judean War deserves its place among the most influential ancient western texts, though not for the reasons that caused it to survive. In it, we see a Judean aristocrat living in Rome and writing in Greek in the decade following the destruction of Jerusalem. Josephus manages the extraordinary feat of meshing his native traditions...

Obwohl sich die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft seit langem der Bedeutung der Rhetorik für die griechisch-römische Kultur bewusst ist, konzentriert sie sich fast ausschließlich auf deren äußerliche Eigenschaft, eine ernsthafte Botschaft zu vermitteln. Dabei wird ein zentrales Moment der Rhetorik, nämlich Sprache als formbar zu betrachten, übersehen....

Obwohl sich die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft seit langem der Bedeutung der Rhetorik für die griechisch-römische Kultur bewusst ist, konzentriert sie sich fast ausschließlich auf deren äußerliche Eigenschaft, eine ernsthafte Botschaft zu vermitteln. Dabei wird ein zentrales Moment der Rhetorik, nämlich Sprache als formbar zu betrachten, übersehen....

Volume 1b in Brill's Josephus Project contains Book 2 of Josephus' Judean War (translation and commentary). This book deals with a period of enormous consequence: from King Herod's death (4 BCE) to the first phase of the war against Rome (66 CE). The commentary aims at a balance between historical and literary issues. © 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV...

The very title of this journal reflects a commonplace in scholarly discourse. We want to understand "Judaism" in the Persian and Graeco-Roman periods: the lives and religion of ancient Jews. Some scholars in recent years have asked whether Ioudaioi and its counterparts in other ancient languages are better rendered "Jews" or "Judaeans" in English....

Once the site of Qumran had been identified as an Essene installation and the Dead Sea Scrolls declared Essene productions, this nexus imposed constraints upon interpreters of both the DSS and the Greek and Latin texts that describe Essenes. This chapter focuses on understanding the Essenes of Josephus' Judean War. Josephus concedes that the Sparta...

This chapter discusses the rhetoric of Josephus' narratives with special attention to his use of irony. It argues that Josephus' Roman audience would have expected such artistry and playfulness; previous scholarship has not dealt with the concept of irony because they have not looked hard enough at the Flavian context within which Josephus worked....

Grabbe's two-volume manual represents a significant methodological advance over other treatments of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. It tries to make explicit the process of historical reasoning from evidence. This willingness to reason publicly, however, also exposes the book's weaknesses, which emerge where the author fails to reason clearly fro...

Understandably, throughout Christian history, the "Works of Josephus" have been indispensable in helping us reconstruct the history and world of the New Testament. After all, Josephus tells us firsthand about the Herodian family, the temple, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. He mentions James the brother of Jesus, John the Baptist, and...

Recent books of interest in biblical, pastoral, historical, and theological scholarship.

The following study treats two distinct but related questions. First, were the Pharisees the dominant party in Palestinian Judaism before the destruction of the temple? And second, did Jesus of Nazareth engage in controversy with them? Many scholars today would answer one or both of these questions negatively. My thesis, however, is that both shoul...