Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: The impact of Zionism on Joseph Klausner’s ‘History of the Second Temple’

Abstract

It is hardly a secret that Zionist ideology had a profound impact on Joseph Klausner’s historiographic enterprise. Even a superficial perusal of his works reveals a powerful Zionist commitment expressed in both rhetoric and analysis, so much so that his right to teach the period of the Second Temple in the Hebrew University was held up for years on the grounds that he was more of a publicist and ideologue—and of the Revisionist variety no less—than a historian.