Review of Magness, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth

BOOK REVIEW: Is one of history’s most rousing speeches apocryphal? Eleazar Ben-Yair’s death-and-glory address at Masada in AD 73 may have been fabricated by Josephus. But that hasn’t deterred devotees from flocking to the site (Justin Marozzi, The Spectator).

Magness ends with a practical and refreshingly non-academic visitors’ guide to Masada. Should you ever visit the place and hear a lot of noise at the top while searching for your inner Eleazar Ben-Yair, you can blame her. ‘Before leaving,’ she writes, ‘listen to the amazing echo created by the sheer cliff of Mount Eleazar opposite, by shouting as loudly as possible across the chasm’.

Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth
Author: Jodi Magness
Publisher: Princeton
Page count: 242
Price: £20

For past PaleoJudaica posts on the history and archaeology of, and revisionist views on, Masada, see here and links. And some subsequent Masada-related posts are here, here, here, and here.

For more on Professor Magness and her work, see here, here, here, and links.

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