A Companion to Josephus

Honora Howell Chapman, Zuleika Rodgers, Honora Howell Chapman, Zuleika Rodgers

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118325179
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria antica e classica

A Companion to Josephus presents a collection of readings from international scholars that explore the works of the first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

• Represents the first single-volume collection of readings to focus on Josephus
• Covers a wide range of disciplinary approaches to the subject, including reception history
• Features contributions from 29 eminent scholars in the field from four continents
• Reveals important insights into the Jewish and Roman worlds at the moment when Christianity was gaining ground as a movement

Named Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 by Choice Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association

PART I
Writings

CHAPTER 1
Josephus’s Judean War

Steve Mason

1.1 Introduction

When the fourth-century Church Father Eusebius needed proof that Judeans had forfeited their ancient heritage, he turned to Josephus’s Judean War. He quoted whole passages on the miseries of the Judeans, especially the cannibalism-inducing famine that preceded Jerusalem’s destruction, because, he said, they had killed Christ (Hist. eccl. 2.6, 26; 3.5–6; see Chapter 23 by S. Inolowcki in this volume). Eusebius’s predecessors had used the Judean War with diffidence, preferring to borrow Apion’s polemics or to nibble off the bits of the Antiquities that mentioned Jesus, James, or the Baptist. Writing with the anxious confidence of the newly rising Church, by contrast, Eusebius took hold of Josephus’s famous history and boldly repurposed it. Who knew that the unimpeachably accredited Judean (3.9–10) actually proved Christian claims? Eusebius’s daring move launched Josephus’s posthumous career as honorary “Jew for Jesus” and single-handedly rewrote the Companion to the New Testament. Like Eusebius’s History, Josephus’s Judean War would soon be translated into Latin, a treatment not accorded his other works for two centuries (the Life never), ensuring its accessibility in the Christian West.

Eusebius did not convince everyone. Later in the same century, the writer we call Pseudo-Hegesippus insisted that Josephus was just too Judean. If he had been so truthful, why did he remain so wedded to Judean values? Anticipating modern scholarship, Pseudo-Hegesippus thought it possible to liberate Judean War’s facts from Josephus’s interpretation, resetting the jewels in Christian gold (De excid. praef.).

Providing a companion essay for perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history is a tall order. Even if we ignore the fascinating reception-history, as we must, the work itself is a dense and subtle narrative in the best Greco-Roman tradition. In the brief compass of this chapter, we must confine ourselves to a few essential questions: date and purposes, content and structures, themes and devices. A glance at Judean War’s great speeches will end the tour.

1.2 Date, Context, and Purposes

No one doubts that the Judean War was Josephus’s first known work, composed soon after he arrived in Rome in 71 C.E. The Greek text we use is reconstructed from a variety of manuscripts dating from the ninth century or later. These exhibit thousands of small variants, not surprisingly, but aside from apparent lacunae of a few words here and there, the text seems complete and readable in seven volumes (Leoni 2009). How and when Josephus composed the Greek history that underlies our manuscripts seem tolerably clear. As always, however, there are complications. But let us first establish the basic picture.

The Judean War’s prologue shows Josephus living in Rome, in a lively exchange with others over the recent conflict in Judea (1.1–16). Although it was actually the suppression of a revolt in a long-conquered province, this war had become a cause célèbre because of its role, symbolic and practical, in vaulting the victorious generals Vespasian and Titus to imperial power. After the shambles following Nero’s suicide in June 68, the Romans needed a trustworthy pair of hands with the promise of peaceful succession, and this Vespasian and Titus—separated by thirty years—could offer. On the practical side, the war had provided the vehicle for a critical mass of the empire’s legions, from Egypt through Syria to north-eastern Europe, to declare their support for these proven commanders, against a series of contenders with fewer legions from Spain and Germany. Symbolically, supporters of the Flavians could play the Judean victory for all it was worth, as though it involved a previously unconquered nation. The pliant Senate eagerly offered a historic triumphal procession (last held after Claudius’s conquest of Britain in 43/44), the right to extend Rome’s sacred boundary, promulgation through landscape-altering monuments and empire-wide coins, and the creation of the new trophy province of Judea in southern Syria.

Newly settled in Rome after the triumph (summer 71), as the city is being rebuilt to expunge Nero’s miasma and inscribe Flavian valor, Josephus observes that various hacks are busy writing up accounts of the war. He cuts a large clearing for his own effort with the claim that they are mere stylists, using second-hand information. Or, if they were present in Judea, they are falling over themselves to flatter the imperial conquerors at the expense of the defeated (1.1–3, 7–9). As a proud priest from Jerusalem, who personally fought against Vespasian and watched the sequel as a prisoner in the Roman camp, Josephus is in a unique position to provide that most cherished of historiographical values: balance. His clever argument for according the Judeans more respect is that in making the generals (Vespasian and Titus) conquerors of nobodies, “I suppose they regard them too as unworthy!” (autois adoxousin, 1.8). This rhetorical strategy yields the best sense if the two generals are still around to be slighted as he affixes the prologue to his completed work. But Vespasian died on June 23, 79.

This impression that he writes while Vespasian is emperor fits with explicit reflections in his later works. In the Life he claims that King Agrippa II exchanged a flurry of letters with him as he was writing the Judean War, promising detailed information when they should next meet (366). Agrippa and his sister, the great-grandchildren of Herod, rumored lovers, and crucial allies of the Romans in the war, apparently came to Rome in 75 and remained for years enjoying imperial favor—she as Titus’s powerful mistress (Cassius Dio 65/66.15.3–5). Second, Josephus claims that, in contrast to a rival author who delayed making his work public until the principals were dead, he himself had “gifted the volumes to none other than the imperators [Vespasian and Titus], when the deeds were barely out of view” (Life 361).

Similarly, in his last known work Josephus explains that moving to Rome gave him the leisure to gather his materials, enlist collaborators for help with the (literary) Greek, and create a record of what he had seen in Judea. He stresses again his fearlessness in inviting the Flavians themselves to prove his account—suggesting that he was suspected of pushing a Judean perspective (cf. Pseudo-Hegesippus): “I was so confident of the truth that I figured I would take those who had become imperators in the war, Vespasian and Titus, as my first witnesses of all. I gave the volumes to them first …” (Apion 1.50–51). The prologue to Judean War likewise insists that his fairness is unimpeachable: he will not counter Roman chauvinism by inflating the Judean side (1.9). But a fair picture was already an improvement for the Judeans.

The last datable event mentioned in Judean War is Vespasian’s dedication of the stunning Forum and Temple of Peace, which housed many of the spoils from Jerusalem’s temple, near Augustus’s Forum in the city center (War 7.158–162; cf. Pliny, NH 36.102). The site was opened in 75, so Agrippa and Berenice may have timed their arrival for the big event (Cassius Dio 65/66.15.1). Josephus thus finished his account at some point after the summer of 75 and before Vespasian’s death on June 23, 79. We should allow margins on either side, for Josephus to finish Book 7 after mentioning the Temple of Peace and to circulate drafts before having copies disseminated.

Of the many problems that have been proposed for this dating, we can discuss only two kinds here. The first would affect our views of the literary unity of Judean War and of Josephus’s awareness of his environment. For in spite of these clear and coherent indications, scholars have given reasons for shifting the bulk of the work to Titus’s reign (79–81) and much or all of Book 7 to that of Domitian (to 96), with ad hoc insertions even later. The reasons have to with perceived changes of tone or interest, Josephus’s apparent stance toward one or another Flavian ruler, or, more concretely, what he appears to say about a particular individual—a Caecina or a Catullus—in light of what is otherwise known of the man’s career (e.g., Thackeray 1929, 35; Cohen 1979, 84–90; Schwartz 1990, 13–21; Jones 2002, 113–114; Barnes 2005, 136–144). We lack the space even to explain each relevant issue here, so it is fortunate that two recent studies offer quite full analyses. In a sign of the changed times, they agree that Josephus’s dating of the completed Judean War to Vespasian’s reign remains the best explanation—if the relevant evidence is understood contextually (Brighton 2009, 33–41; Siggelkow-Berner 2011, 25–33). This does not preclude possible tinkering at a later date, of course. It fits, however, with the structural features that I shall point out later.

The other complication would suggest a pre-75 date and potentially affect our view of the Judean War’s purpose. In the 264-word opening sentence of Judean War, where he is driving home his advantages as an author, Josephus refers twice to an account of the conflict that he had written in his native language (presumably Aramaic). First: “I have set myself the task of providing a narrative in the Greek language, … having reworked what I had formerly recounted in the ancestral [language] and sent to the upper barbarians” (1.3). It is absurd, he continues, that here in t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I: Writings
• PART II: Josephus's Literary Context
• PART III: Themes
• PART IV: Transmission and Reception History
• Index
• End User License Agreement