Λῃσταί, Τύραννοι, Βασιλεῖς: prime osservazioni su regalità e banditismo nel Bell. Iud. di Flavio Giuseppe

Through a semantic analysis of the terms Λῃσταί, τύραννοι and βασιλεῖς, this paper investigates the historical phenomena of banditry and royalty in Josephus’ BJ. The militant approach of the Jewish historian, for which the rebel leaders and most of the rioters were sacrilegious criminals dedicated only to the bellum latronum modo, offers only a partial point of view of the religious and socio-economic motivations that in 66 pushed the Palestine to wage war with Rome. In reality, phenomena of simple grassing were superimposed, well before the outbreak of the conflict, by genuine revolutionary forces; and above all there were the claims of numerous Jewish leaders, who, often relying on messianism, aimed at the creation of real territorial dominations. And yet the most significant fact that emerges from Josephus is that Rome and the various Jewish factions had a very different conception of royalty: for the Empire, power was essentially based on political-military legitimacy; for the Jews, however, the βασιλεία could not be separated from God and his Law.

Keywords: banditry, royalty, crime, Judaism, Josephus, the Jewish War, bellum latronum modo