File talk:Josephusbust.jpg

Sculpture of Claims

The 2017 Josephus wikipedia described the image as: //The 1st-century Roman portrait bust said to be of Josephus, conserved in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark//

The bust's item IN 0770 has an official site maintained by Glyptotek museum through Denmark's Agency for Culture and Palaces. It mentions that an identification with Josephus was done by Robert Eisler, so we are talking about the same bust. Steven Fine, tells a little about the history of the identification in the intro to this paper, apparently the museum listed the bust as "some unidentified Jew" in 1925 and Robert Eisler made the Josephus association in 1930. endnote 5: Robert Eisler, “Deux sculptures de l’antiquité classique representant des juif,” Arettwse 26 (1930) -- no link, I can't actually find that paper online.

The Glyptotek museum does not currently identify it as Josephus. The translation software leaves something to be desired, so the museum may identify the bust as that of "Corbulo" Emperor Nero's General, Domitius Corbub, or given the concluding machine translation: //A reasonable naming does not seem possible.// perhaps a more likely reading, is the name is a another unverifiable identification reference. Either way, I have yet to find any history about it being identified as Corbulo.

The other interesting fact about Josephus, is that he was reported by an ancient writer to have a statue in Rome.

//He[Josephus] was the most noted of all the Jews of that day, not only among his own people, but also among the Romans, so that he was honored by the erection of a statue in Rome, and his works were deemed worthy of a place in the library.// Eusebius Book 3 Chapter 9.2, Church History dated to 324, 224 years after Josephus died in 100 using wikipedia dates. — 以上未签名的留言是由该用户加入的： SilentBear (留言 • 贡献) 02:20, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Modern scholarship rejects the identification of this bust as Josephus

Since this image keeps getting re-added to Josephus-related articles, it's worth presenting the facts here –– building off what was stated above.

Modern scholarship definitively rejects the identification of this bust as Josephus, as well as the rationale upon which it was originally made. Indeed, the first of the sources listed below explicitly criticizes Wikipedia for presenting this image as a depiction of Josephus. See e.g.

1) "How Do You Know a Jew When You See One?" by the historian Steven Fine in the collection Fashioning Jews: Clothing, Culture, and Commerce (2013), p. 19–20: [1]

2) "Distinguishing Jewishness in Antiquity" by the historian Jonathan P. Roth in the collection A Tall Order. Writing the Social History of the Ancient World (2005), p. 54: [2]

3) Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls by the archaeologist Magen Broshi (2001), p.47: [3].

4) Flavius Josephus Between Jerusalem and Rome by the classicist Per Bilde (2002 [1988]), p. 60: [4]

I believe that the Summary should be revised accordingly. 2601:1C2:700:8BF0:C51:FE0E:C519:372A 16:18, 1 January 2022 (UTC)