If you would like to participate in this workshop, please contact Dr Kimberley Czjakowski (k.czajkowski@ed.ac.uk).

This one-day international workshop will examine the concept of a “nation” and the importance (or not) of origins to one ancient Jewish author, writing in Greek in a Roman imperial context: Flavius Josephus. Josephus’ hybrid identity and experiences across Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures in the first century CE make his works an exemplary lens through which to explore constructions of the “origin of nations”: how were these traditions juxtaposed, employed, combined or reinvented?

12:00               Welcome

12:15               Sarah Pearce (Southampton) – Josephus on Egypt

13:00               David A. Friedman (Cambridge) – Josephus on Judaeans’ non-Egyptian Origins

13:45               Coffee

14:00               Meron M. Piotrkowski (Oxford) – The Origins of Babel: On Rebels, Towers, and Something Biblical in Josephus’ Onias Narrative

14:45               Rotem Avneri Meir (Helsinki) – Josephus and the Origins of the Samarians

15:30               Coffee

15:45               Antonia Lakner (Tübingen) – The Historian and His Past. Josephus’ Origin of Nations in Light of Graeco-Roman Genealogy

16:30               Kimberley Czajkowski (Edinburgh) – Law and the Origin of Nations

17:15               Final discussion (followed by pub and dinner)