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"The Final Battle" or "A Burnt Offering"?: Lamdan's Masada Revisited
Publication Date: January 2009
Publisher(s): Association for Jewish Studies; Association for Jewish Studies
Author(s): Yael S. Feldman; Yael S. Feldman
Series: AJS Perspectives: The Newsletter of the Association for Jewish Studies, Spring 2009, pp.30-32.
Special Collection: Berman Jewish Policy Archive
Topic: Culture and religion (Religion and religious groups)
Culture and religion (Literature)
Keywords: Literature; History; Religion; Zionism
Type: Report
Abstract:
The author examines Isaac Lamdan's 1926 epic poem "Masada". She argues against the commonly held assumption that Josephus's "Jewish Wars" was Lamdan's primary source. Rather, the author points to the medieval Hebrew work "Book of Yosippon", an anonymous and reworked version of Josephus's history which incorporates religious and sacrifical imagery and language in a manner much closer to Lamdan's poem than Josephus's original work.