prof. dr. S.N. (Steve) Mason
Em. Distinguished Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Cultures
E-mail:
s.mason rug.nl
- Editor, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary (Brill, 2000-). This is an international project involving scholars from North America, the UK and Europe, Israel, and Australia. We are preparing the first comprehensive commentary to the thirty Greek volumes by the first-century Jewish-Roman author Flavius Josephus. These provide most of our material for understanding the insitutions (temple, priesthood, Sanhedrin), groups (Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots), events (conflicts, changes of governance, revolts), and personalities (Herod, Antipas, Agrippa I and II, Pilate) in early Roman Judaea. The commentary balances literary-rhetorical and historical issues. We expect it to occupy sixteen print volumes, of which seven have appeared. Along with the editing, I have contributed two of those (Life of Josephus; Judean War 2); my next assignment is War 4.
- Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement. This is an electronic database, which I developed at York. It focuses so far on the texts of Polybius and Josephus as luminous examples of writers with multiple cultural identities. The site has their complete works in Greek, tagged (thanks to Perseus), and matched to translations, commentaries (including the new Brill for Josephus as it appears), bibliography, archaeological site reports, images, and notes on reception history among other things. We are bringing the project to Groningen, but for now the link is at my Canadian alma mater: pace-ancient.mcmaster.ca.
- Cambridge University Press expects to publish my most recent book, A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74, at the beginning of 2016. This is a new historical investigation of that momentous conflict (for Western civilisation), in each of its phases. See their website.
- I have just completed several articles that will appear in the coming few months -- for example, three chapters in the new Companion to Josephus from Wiley-Blackwell edited by Honora Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers.
- Two new projects in their infancy -- we can dream, can't we? -- are a rethink of Roman-Jewish/Judaan-Christian relations to the Emperor Julian or so and a rethink of the ancient sources and resources for realist, on the one side, and 'human rights'-based, on the other side, views of inter-polis and inter-ethnic / international conflict.
| Last modified: | 25 June 2022 4.38 p.m. |