F B a Asiedu Josephus and Paul Hardcover sku-525684728

Josephus, Paul, and the Fate of Early Christianity: History and Silence in the First Century is a hardcover by F B a Asiedu, sku-525684728, listed under Christian Books & Bibles. Asiedu examines why Josephus, a Jerusalem priest affiliated with the Pharisees and a major source on first-century Jewish life, said little about Christians in Judaea and nothing about those in Rome.

His account of the death of James, Jesus's brother, suggests he knew of Jesus's followers in Jerusalem and Judaea. Josephus lived in Rome after the Jewish War, where Christians appear to have flourished if 1 Clement is an indication. He did not mention Paul, a former Pharisee and contemporary of Josephus's father in Jerusalem.

According to Acts, Paul's activities were known to the successive Roman governors Marcus Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, and to King Herod Agrippa II and his sisters Berenice and Drusilla. Asiedu suggests Josephus's silence about Paul may have been deliberate.

Josephus also wrote little about other contemporaries in Rome; relying on him alone could make some historical figures seem absent or unimportant. Asiedu considers life under Emperor Domitian and how Josephus and the Christians behind 1 Clement dealt with his regime, alongside contemporaries including Martial, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.

He argues that many writers of the period kept different kinds of silence, so the absence of references to Jews or Christians in Roman writing from the last three decades of the first century does not prove they were absent from Flavian Rome.