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Jun 09Josephus' Circle
by in Bring Your Own Code on 2009-07-29With nearly 750 responses, and solutions written in everything from ABAP to MUMPS to XSLT, I’d say that last week’s Programming Praxis (Russian Peasant Multiplication) was certainly a success. The comments are most certainly worth a read, if nothing else but to see things like the circuit diagram solution, something done entirely using regular expressions, and some obscure childrens' language called Baltie 3. That said, I'm excited to present this next Programming Praxis.
Titus Flavius Josephus was an important first-century historian. Having survived the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, he authored several works on Jewish history, including The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. Not only have his writings given valuable insight into first century Judaism, they provide an extra-Biblical account of early Christianity. But aside from the books, and the writings, and all of his other invaluable contributions to history, Josephus also told the story of how he had escaped death by quickly standing in the "safe spot" of what is now called Josephus’ Circle.