Chapter 9 surveys the biblical exempla that appear in the most example-packed section of the work, the speeches made by the narrative character Josephus before the walls of Jerusalem to his Jewish comrades (De Excidio 5.15–16). This chapter most clearly illustrates Pseudo-Hegesippus’ hermeneutical ingenuity and intensive use of biblical exempla, while also showing how he infused the examples he drew from the Jewish Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) with not only Roman but also overtly Christian ideology.

The Conclusion brings the works chapters into a synthetic discussion of what this book is designed to do: introduce On the Destruction of Jerusalem to contemporary scholarship and point to the ways in which it can enhance our knowledge of historiography, speech-writing, exemplarity, anti-Judaism, Classicism, biblical reception, and Greek-to-Latin literary adaptation in Christian late antiquity.

A great deal of literature attempts to reimagine, rework, revamp, retrieve – in short, retell – the Bible. The growing body of work known as “biblical reception history” is devoted to studying this phenomenon. The essay continues down this productive path: first a review of the biblical Song of Songs, noting the points most salient for understanding later retellings; next, detailing what biblical retellings are and how we might define them. Turning to the essay’s focus, there is close analyses of the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977) and the short story “Song of Songs” by Darcey Steinke (2004) as they interact with the Bible. These stories show how biblical retellings are like a field, with some closer to the center (i.e. the Bible) than others. The essay concludes by suggesting why retellings exist in the first place.