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Monday, March 07, 2016

Josephus Street

THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM BLOG: The Street of Josephus (ELAINE ROSE GLICKMAN, Jerusalem Post).
West of Mea Shearim run several parallel streets with exalted names:
Malkei Israel, the kings of Israel, evoking the glory of the Davidic monarchy and the sovereigns of ancient Jerusalem.

... Rather, the street joining these three remarkable streets has a name I didn’t recognize: Yosef ben Matityahu.

Maybe you’d know him by another name: Josephus Flavius.

If you are not as mystified as I by how a street named for Josephus merited such illustrious company, well, please read on. Because while the life of Josephus is not the shining example of Rashi’s or David Yellin’s, it is – to say the least – fascinating.
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Some past posts on Josephus are here and links. More on his little algorithm (the "Josephus problem") which saved him during the mass suicide at the siege of Yodfat (Jotapata) is here. And the account in Ms. Glickman's article needs a correction: Josephus was not the last of the suicide group to survive. When they were down to two, he persuaded his friend to surrender to the Romans and they came out together.