The Jewish War, fit the seventh, covering Book V

Josephus interrupts his narrative at points with long expositions on the geography of Judaea and the Galilee; Williamson separates these out into Excursuses at the end, which is how I missed out blogging this when I was doing Book IV:

( The fruits of Sodom have a colour as if they were fit to be eaten, but if you pluck them with your hands, they dissolve into smoke and ashes. )

This sounds like something from Sir John de Mandeville, but I've actually seen this fruit growing near the Dead Sea. It's called a Sodom apple, and looks vaguely apple-shaped from the outside, but if you open it up, it's like dandelions seeds inside.

   

About missiles from Roman catapults, Josephus writes (V.6):

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For "THE STONE COMETH", Williamson translates rather, "Baby on the way!" Turns out the original Greek (i.e. the translation Josephus had made of his original Aramaic) reads "ὁ υἱὸς ἔρχεται", meaning "the son cometh". The online commentary, which seems perhaps to have been written by Samuel Burder (1773–1836) has a rather impenetrable footnote caused by OCR of Greek characters (ΥΙΟΣ, ΥΙΟΣ and ΠΕΤΡΟΣ), as Latin (you can view a scan here) that suggests it does indeed say "son" in the original. I rather like Williamson's creative handling of it, then.

When the Romans came to besiege Jerusalem, they brought Josephus to try and negotiate a settlement. Josephus tries to argue the people are fighting not the Romans but the will of God, and gives a long list of how with God on their side, their ancestors had always prevailed, at one point saying (V.9):

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We know Josephus is (or at any rate, would be by the time he wrote Antiquities) knowledgeable in Jewish history; I can only assume here he's playing on the people's ignorance. Sarai was taken by Pharaoh (with no mention of any armies) when Abram had gone down into Egypt; this did not happen in Jerusalem at all, which had no significance as yet for Abram. Nor would it yet until after the war of the four kings and the five kings, when he met its king Melchi-Ṣedeq, and later on when God called on him to sacrifice his son on the mountain then above Jerusalem, and now at its heart. It's also not until the war of the four kings and the five kings that we learn he had three hundred and eighteen servants (not captains of armies!), and from the lack of mention of them anywhere else, the Midrash concludes that these three hundred and eighteen were but one person, Dammeseq Eliezer (the gematria of whose name reaches that figure). The description of Sarah as "queen", however is not literal; it refers to her name, which means "princess".

Josephus notes         Jewish learning notes index

Red squirrel

Yesterday I saw a red squirrel for the second (and then the third) time. :o)

(Note for foreign readers: Competition from the invasive American grey squirrel has displaced red squirrels from almost all of the UK. There's still a few places left where red squirrels are to be found, but the only ones I've seen have been on the Continent, in Prague and Berlin.)