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Josephus liked to organize material in three-part structures, which imparted a sense of completion by indicating to readers that an end had been reached. This study focuses on Books 18&ndash, 20 of Josephus&rsquo, s Antiquities, which are organized as such a triad: Book 18 opens Roman rule in Judea and adumbrates the final clash and catastrophe, Book 19 creates some suspense by detailing two possible interruptions that could have changed the course of history but in the end came to nothing, and so Book 20 resumes the story from the end of Book 18 and takes it down to the destruction of Jerusalem. Moreover, all three books, together, form a unit in a larger triad: the story told, in the second half of Antiquities, of Judea&rsquo, s move from sovereignty under the Hasmoneans (Books 12&ndash, 14), to nominal sovereignty under Herod (Books 15&ndash, 17), to subjugation to Rome (Books 18&ndash, 20). This focus on political history is, however, contradicted in various ways, both by Josephus&rsquo, s development from a Judean into a Jew of the Diaspora, who focused more on religion than on state, and by various sources used by Josephus, that pulled in other directions.

Le terme « judéen » a largement remplacé le mot « juif » dans plusieurs travaux d’historiens contemporains. On étudie la pertinence des arguments avancés : ils sont fragiles. Une telle adoption dérive de travaux anglo-saxons (S. Mason, D. Boyarin) dont la validité est, elle-même, contestable. Contre de telles approches, on développe une analyse fondée sur le témoignage des textes eux-mêmes : qu’ils soient écrits en hébreu en grec ou araméen, ils attestent que le mot « juif » connaît une inflexion de son sens à l’époque du Second Temple : elle rend souvent erronée la traduction par « judéen ». The word “Judaean” has now replaced “Jew” in several current historical papers. We propose to study the relevance of the reasoning that induced such a substitution, and find it lacking. The replacement derives from scholarly works written in English (S. Mason, D. Boyarin) whose inherent worth is in itself questionable. In opposition to their chosen approaches, our analysis is based on the actual sources. Whether they were written in Greek, in Hebrew, or in Aramaic, they clearly show that the meaning of the word “Jew” evolved during the Second Temple Period, and that the use of “Judaean” does not account for this semantic development.