Saturday, January 16, 2010

Most Excellent Epaphroditus

The Life ended interestingly. Josephus mentioned his wives and alluded to his relationships with the emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. But the War gets into some of that in more detail.

Most interesting is an allusion to his principal patron, Epaphroditus. Both at the end of the Life (430) and at the beginning of Apion (1), Josephus addresses "most excellent Epaphroditus," using the same adjective that Luke-Acts does. Presumably this is a literary convention for addressing the principal person who funded the writing of a work. It is, once again, another blip on the cumulatively impressive parallels between Josephus and Luke-Acts.

No comments:

Post a Comment