BIO

Ashleigh Witherington is a Junior honors student majoring in Latin and Greek and minoring in Religion. She is from Tallahassee, Florida. Ashleigh is grammateus (secretary) of FSU’s chapter of Eta Sigma Phi (Classics Honor Society). She is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Eta Sigma, Phi Kappa Phi, and Golden Key International Honor Society. Her research interests include Latin textual criticism and paleography. She plans to continue her research on the Latin text of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and produce a critical edition of a larger section from Book 13.

A Critical Edition of the Latin Translation of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, Book 13.301-313

Abstract

My research focuses on producing the first critical edition for the Latin translation of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, Book 13. Josephus wrote the Antiquities in Greek at the end of the 1st century CE, and it remains the most important source for the history of the Jews from the end of the Biblical era to Josephus’ own time. The sixth-century Latin translation is significant because it is through this translation that Josephus’ account of Jewish history was known for centuries in Western Europe up to the publication of the first Greek printed edition in 1544. Unfortunately, there is currently no critical edition noting the textual differences among manuscripts of the Latin translation of Antiquities 6-20. Here I present my preliminary results based on the collation of thirty-four of the ninety-eight extant manuscripts for Antiquities 13.301-313. This passage details the accession of the Jewish king Aristobulus and the jealousy which led to the death of his brother. I also present discussions of (1) how manuscript groups can be identified based on the wide variety of textual differences among the manuscripts and (2) how the original text can be established based on these variants and groups.

Keywords: Textual Criticism, Josephus, Latin, Religion