Context: winter of 67 AD and the Jewish War:
The leading figure in the
moderate government had been Ananus son of Ananus, a former High Priest. Now
his corpse was left unburied along with those of his comrades. Josephus mourned
his death. He eulogized Ananaus as a patriot, a lover of freedom and democracy,
and a realist. Ananus, he wrote, understood the terrible power of Rome. Had Ananus
lived, wrote Josephus, he would have negotiated peace or, at the least, delayed
Rome’s victory. “I would not be mistaken,” Josephus summed it up, “if I had
said that the capture of the city began with the death of Ananus.” (Josephus, Jewish
War, 4.318; cf. 4.151) (Barry Strauss, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of
Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire [New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2025], 137)
The explication of a “patristic” name appears in Jewish
War 4.160:
οἵ τε δοκιμώτατοι τῶν ἀρχιερέων Γαμάλα μὲν υἱὸς Ἰησοῦς Ἀνάνου δὲ Ἄνανος πολλὰ τὸν δῆμον εἰς νωθείαν κατονειδίζοντες ἐν ταῖς συνόδοις ἐπήγειρον τοῖς ζηλωταῖς
The best esteemed also of the high
priests, Jesus the son of Gamala, and Ananus, the son of Ananus, when
they were at their assemblies, bitterly reproached the people from their sloth,
and stirred them up against the Zealots; (Whiston translation)
Steve Mason offers an alternative English translation:
And the most esteemed of the high
priests, Gamalas’ son Iesous and Ananus’ Ananus, continually berating
the populace in the meetings for their lethargy, kept trying to stir them up
against the “Disciples” [Zealots] (Judean War 4 [Flavius Josephus:
Translation and Commentary 2A; trans. Steve Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2022],
90-91)
Examples of Patristic Names (Patronymics) in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Herbert Bardwell Huffmon on Patronymics in the Amorite Mari Texts