Andrew R. Krause, Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First-Century Jewish Institutions (Brill, 2017).Excerpt:
This book is a valuable addition to scholarship on Josephus and 1st century synagogues, incorporating work on Josephus as a Greco-Roman-Jewish author, considerations for his writing intentions and how his thought developed over his career, while also addressing some of the scholarship on the early synagogue. Josephus is often used as a direct source for synagogue practices in its early developmental stage, and this work counters some of the oversimplifications that have been drawn from cursory readings of Josephus. Krause’s careful discussion of the relevant passages further shows the importance of the emerging synagogue in Judaism of the late 1st century CE.
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