The legend and mystery of Masada, the story of heroic resistance by ancient Jews against the Roman Empire, is the topic of the annual Klingenstein Lecture at New College of Florida
Prof. Jonathan Klawans, professor of religion at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, will speak on “The Masada Story: Martyrs, Murders, and Myth,” at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, in Sainer Auditorium at New College of Florida. The talk is free and open to the public.
Masada has become a symbol of sacrifice, heroism and nationalism. Klawans’ talk will examine what we know – and what we don’t know – about Masada, and the greater truths that emerge from examining the legend.
The popular account of the Masada legend stems from Prof. Yigael Yadin’s accounts of an archaeological dig he led in the mid-1960s.
A band of Jewish fighters, rebelling against the Roman Empire around 70 C.E., took refuge in a mountaintop fort. When the Romans laid siege, the rebels chose to kill themselves rather than surrender and become slaves.
The only contemporary account of the events at Masada, Klawans explains, comes from Josephus, a wealthy priest who at first participated in the rebellion, but later advocated surrender as the cause turned hopeless. Josephus wrote the historical accounts of the rebellion, including the fall of Masada, decades later.
“What proves interesting for modern audiences to learn,” Klawans said, “is that the story we know—of freedom-loving nationalist rebels who fight to the last before committing suicide—is not quite the story that Josephus tells.”
“Josephus didn’t like these rebels at all. Is that because of Josephus’s biases?” Klawans asked. “But if Josephus’s story is not correct, what then can we really know about what happened?”
Prof. Susan Marks, Klingenstein Chair of Judaic Studies at New College, said Josephus is a “wonderful example of an unreliable narrator. We get a lot of information from Josephus, but the challenge is, what do we do with this?”
The answer, Klawans suggests, is to “recognize that all retellings of the past are shaped by the author’s priorities and presuppositions.”
In the talk, Klawans and the audience will re-read the Josephus story together. Both that account and the modern legend are truly Jewish stories, he said, but the Josephus account may contain greater moral truths.
“The Jewish people shouldn’t be afraid of questioning stories—the Jewish story will only get stronger when it’s closer to the truth,” he said. “And often the truth can be found by looking anew at our own historical records.”
This will be the 10th annual Judaic Studies Lecture, sponsored by the Klingenstein Chair of Judaic Studies and the Jay Rudolph Endowment. The lecture is named for Selma Klingenstein, who, along with her husband Paul, helped establish the Klingenstein Chair in Judaic Studies at New College in 2001.
To register for the free talk, visit donate.ncf.edu/events. For more information, email [email protected] or call 941-487-4888.
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Contact: David Gulliver, News Services Manager, 941-487-4154, [email protected]
New College of Florida is a national leader in the arts and sciences and is the State of Florida’s designated honors college for the liberal arts. Consistently ranked among the top public liberal arts colleges in America by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes and The Princeton Review, New College attracts highly motivated, academically talented students from 38 states and 20 foreign countries. A higher proportion of New College students receive Fulbright awards than graduates from virtually all other colleges and universities.