Josephus and the Mishnah: Two views on the outline of the map of Palestine in the first two centuries A.D.

The passage exhibits two different approaches - those of Josephus and the Mishnah - to the geographic description of the land of Israel. Each one of them is based on the background of its own period and on the goals of its writer. Josephus, as a historian, continues the Hellenistic (Greek) tradition of geography. He outlines a map of all the edges of the land with Jerusalem in the middle as part of the reality of his days and his priestly outlook on the world. By comparison, the Mishnah, which is a book of laws, undertakes geographic descriptions in its desire to clarify the law. It was written after the destruction of the Temple, with Jerusalem in ruins - therefore, many changes occurred in the map of the Jewish settlement of the land. While the Mishnah's description does contain some remnants of similarities to Josephus, the Mishnah's description also contains a difference in which the coastal area is emphasized as is appropriate for the conditions of the period.