Posted in Curriculum

So about 2 weeks ago JennyBelle left me this comment:

"I have been looking at the Tanglewood Education website and for the ancient history, they used to recommend SOTW as the spine, but now they recommend Our Young Folks' Josephus, which is history from the Hebrew perspective. I was wondering if have heard of it, used it, and/or would recommend it. Our library has SOTW for me to look at and I think it's good for including OT history, but it also has a lot of myths in it which I am not ready to include. Our library does not have the Josephus book, so I'm trying to find someone who can give me a review."

It is a good question and I have been meaning to answer her, but life kept getting in the way.  This morning I am up extra early due to daylight savings time and the house is quiet - for now.  So I have some time to blog!

So for those who have never heard of Tanglewood, their website is here.  Tanglewood is a fairly new curriculum that advertises as merging Classical education with Charlotte Mason.  I am thinking that it came out about 3 years ago when I was doing K level work with the girls.  I remember them being a little too young for it (it starts in 1st grade) but that it looked like what might be a great program for us.  But there wasn't much there yet at the time.

I looked at it again before we started Year 1 (Ancients) and I remember being quite disappointed in it.  Now, I have never used the program so I can't speak to how it works in reality.  But looking at the program then, and then again today, I felt it was way to workbook heavy.  It seems to very much be a workbook based program (although in all fairness, not completely).  But Charlotte Mason was a huge fan of living books, and it concerned me to see that many workbooks in a CM program.  Even in 3rd grade, I don't use that many workbooks.

So that was a huge red flag to me.

The second red flag goes to the heart of Jennybelle's question.  The program uses Josephus as its spine.  At the time that was enough for me to say that I couldn't use their first grade program.  I decided I would look at it again in other years and decide, but I sort of fell into TOG for Year 2 and forgot all about Tanglewood until Jenny reminded me.

So why wouldn't I use Josephus?  Well to understand that, you need to know who Josephus was.  So let's start with that. 

Josephus was a Jewish General in the time of the Second Temple.  He was not a historian , a scholar, a rabbi -or in any way qualified to lecture on Jewish history. 

He led Jewish troops in the rebellion against the Roman Empire.  Specifically he fought in battles against Vespasian (before he was emperor), and wasn't even that good at it, since he lost. As the battle was winding down, Josephus and his remaining troops - I think there were 39 of them - hid in a cave.  No one knows exactly what happened in that cave.  All we have is Josephus' story, so we will go with that.

In the cave, the men decided that rather than surrender to Vespasian and be sold into slavery, that they would commit suicide.  This was a fairly common solution back then it seems, since it also happened on Masada a few years later.  Since Josephus was their leader,  they entrusted him with one final task.  Kill everyone, and then kill himself.  He went through with the first half of the plan - he killed everyone.  But, he did not then kill himself.

When Vespasian overcame the cave, Josephus emerged alone.  He claimed that as he was getting ready to commit suicide, he had a vision.  In this vision he saw Vespasian as the next Roman Emperor, and that Josephus had to help him conquer the Jews so that he could fulfill his destiny.  Vespasian, like most Roman Generals/Emperors, had a big ego and he liked this plan a lot.  So he spared Josephus, who then pledged his loyalty to the Roman army.

Josephus kept his promise.  He became a traitor to the Jews, helped Vespasian conquer them and returned to Rome as an advisor to Vespasian, who did become emperor.

Once in Rome, he was the highest ranking Jew in the Roman government, so he became their "token" Jew so to speak.  The Romans turned to him if they had any questions about the Jews or Jewish history.  And that is how he became known as a Jewish historian, eventually writing a book on the topic.

So the Romans, who became Ch-stians, put a LOT of stock in Josephus.  They read him and think they understand Jewish history.  The Jews - not so much.  It is kind of like asking Benedict Arnold to give you the history of the American revolution - from the American point of view.

"Our Young Folk's Josephus" is just a watered down version of that book for children.  I have never read or used this book, so I can't speak to it exactly.  However, it used to be available on-line for free.  I looked it up back then and read some of it.  I tried to find it again today though, and wasn't able to.

Really, all it was though was a very basic history of the Jews.  You could get the same from reading a Bible.  I was completely unimpressed with it.  I could see how it might be a good book in a Ch-stian program, but not as a spine for the Ancients year.  You just lose way too much.  Yes, the Jews did interact with other peoples, but you are only going to get a very small piece of the puzzle if that is all you teach.  For example, will miss 95% of Greek history and life, if all you cover is the Greek conquest of Ancient Israel.  What a waste....

I truly want my kids to have a broader worldview than that!  Yes, Jewish history is important in our school and I do use a Jewish history spine as well (but NOT Josephus), but to be a citizen of the world they need to know what happened all over the world.  Not just what happened in the Middle East.

So there is a very long explanation of why I did not choose Tanglewood and why Josephus will never be in our curriculum.