As one deeply involved in the politics of his day, whether in Palestine or in Rome, and as a student of Thucydides and of Plato (particularly of the latter's Republic), Josephus was much concerned with examining the qualities of the ideal leader of the state, convinced as he was, with Plato, that the wrong kind of leadership could and did bring about its downfall. Since one of the most important qualities of a great leader is to be able to discern the qualities of people and, above all, to select a worthy successor, the fact that Moses, the greatest leader that the Israelites had ever had, chose as his successor Joshua led Josephus to the conclusion that Joshua possessed the qualities of an ideal statesman. As Josephus puts itin an editorial comment (Ant. 3.49) which has no biblical basis, Joshua possessed five crucial qualities: he was extremely courageous, valiant in endurance of toil, highly gifted in intellect, highly gifted in speech, and distinguished for piety in worshiping God. Again, when summarizing his qualities upon Joshua's death (5.188), Josephus singles out four qualities—his supreme intelligence, his supreme skill in speaking lucidly (σαφώς) to the multitude, his stout-heartedness and great daring, and his utmost dexterity in directing affairs (Πρνλανεσαι) in peacetime and his adaptabilityto every occasion. If we combine these two accounts we see that Josephus stressed in Joshua the qualities of wisdom, eloquence, courage, endurance, flexibility, and piety.

The slapdash, seamy character of the second half of Josephus's Antiquities frequently obscures the author's purpose; the recovery of this information is therefore often neglected, though scholars are becoming increasingly aware of the task's importance. A good example of this scholarly neglect concerns the little narrative complex of Ant. 13.1-79, covering the period from Judas's death in battle against Bacchides in 160 BCE to the appointment of Jonathan as high priest (152 BCE) and the death of Demetrius I in 150 BCE; the complex concludes with two stories about Jewish affairs in Egypt (13.62-79). These stories have been clumsily introduced into a narrative which is otherwise a close paraphrase of 1 Maccabees, and are not commonly understood to have any relation to their context other than a vague chronological aptness: both stories are said to have occurred, like most of the high priesthood of Jonathan, in the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (13.79). I shall argue that the stories have not only a chronological but also a close thematic connection to their context, and that the narrative, properly understood, expresses a propagandists motif not hitherto noticed in Antiquities. Furthermore, this motif may have important implications for our understanding of Antiquities as a whole, and perhaps important historical implications, as well.

In their recovery and interpretation of the evidence for women's religious involvement in antiquity, feminist historians of religion employ terms like “image,” “reflection,” and “symbol” as constants in their vocabulary. This terminology indicates the importance feminist scholars attach to the ways in which women's activities are presented and the ways in which they are interpreted. Interpretation becomes the more difficult as one approaches the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, not only because of the relative paucity and elusive nature of the evidence for women's participation in these religions, but also because the two great bodies of canon in the West—the literary artifacts of the Greco-Roman world and the canon of biblical literature—reflect a dual process of “canonization.” Certain cultural constructs and dominant metaphors have become embodied in the text themselves, while a tradition of “canonized conventions” has been modeled by these metaphors to “evaluate a priori what we see.” The interaction of conceptualization, representation, and interpretation of appearance, moreover, is such that there cannot be an “innocent eye.” Nelson Goodman observes: “The eye always comes ancient to its work. …Not only how but what it sees is regulated by need and perspective. …It does not so much mirror as take and make.” Moreover, the use of the term “image” itself reflects a process by which a particular representation is shaped and subsequently held up as the way in which something is conceptually “seen” or meant to be “seen,” and which is not necessarily or even possibly a “true” reflection.

The opening chapters of Eusebius's De vita Constantini contain several comparisons of Constantine with great figures from the past. The first two, Cyrus and Alexander (Vit. Const. 1.7-8), are predictable names in a work that bears many features of conventional royal panegyric. But Eusebius's choice of Moses for a third comparison (Vit. Const. 1.12) departs from conventional norms and shows that the subject of his bios is not going to be measured simply by traditional imperial standards. The following analysis of Vit. Const. 1.12 begins with a consideration of Eusebius's choice of subjects to compare with Constantine. We will see that the literary construction of the comparison with Moses derives from biblical typology as much as it does from a typical classical synkrisis. Embedded in the typological construction is an allusion by Eusebius to a widespread opinion that the story of the Exodus was a myth. This aspect of the comparison has not received the attention which it deserves. I will argue that the mythic reference works against the rhetoric of the comparison as a whole. Its anomalous presence requires an explanation. This paper identifies various sources of the mythic charge, and defends the hypothesis that the critic foremost in Eusebius's mind was the pagan philosopher Porphyry. It ends with the conclusion that the triumph of Constantine was a valuable antidote to the critique of Exodus as myth.

Schubert Ogden is often considered a process theologican because, drawing upon the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, he holds a “process” view of the nature of reality and of God. But the strategy used in his philosophical theology makes Ogden a sort of “transcendental” theologian as well. I refer to Ogden's argument in The Reality of God that a necessary condition of the possibility of scientific and moral activity is the kind of confidence in the meaning and worth of life that must be seen as an implicit faith in God. This faith might be characterized as innate or a priori because Ogden portrays it not as derived from, but as presupposed by, all our experience; indeed, Ogden claims that such faith is the necessary condition of the possibility of even “secular” scientific and moral experience. Thus one might see this part of his philosophical theology as pursuing a transcendental strategy of argument.