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 _^lOS-ANCEtfj>
 
 JOSEPHUS
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN BENTWICH 
 
 Author of " Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria " 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 
 1914
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY 
 THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
 
 Stack 
 
 Annex 
 
 s 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 Josephus hardly merits a place on his own account 
 in a series of Jewish ^Yorthies, since neither as man of 
 action nor as man of letters did he deserve particularly 
 well of his nation. It is not his personal worthiness, 
 but the worth of his work, that recommends him to 
 the attention of the Jewish people. He was not a loyal 
 general, and he was not a faithful chronicler of the 
 struggle with Eome ; hut he had the merit of writing 
 a number of books on the Jews and Judaism, which 
 not only met the desire for knowledge of his nation in 
 his own day, but which have been preserved through 
 the ages and still remain one of the chief authorities 
 for Jewish history. He lived at the great crisis of 
 his people, when it stood at the parting of the ways. 
 And while in his life he was patronized by those who 
 had destroyed the national center, after his death 
 he found favor with that larger religious community 
 which was beginning to carry part of the Jewish mis- 
 sion to the Gentiles. For centuries Josephus was 
 regarded by the Christians as the standard historian 
 of the Jews, and, though for long he was forgotten 
 and neglected by his own people, in modern times he 
 has been carefully studied also by them, and his 
 merits and demerits both as patriot and as writer 
 have been critically examined. 
 
 It has been my especial aim in this book to consider 
 Josephus from the Jewish point of view. I have made 
 no attempt to extenuate his personal conduct or his 
 
 1C6C150
 
 6 PREFACE 
 
 literary faults. My judgment may appear somewhat 
 severe, but it is when tried by the test of faithful- 
 ness to his nation that Josephus is found most want- 
 ing; and I hope that while extenuating nothing I 
 have not set down aught in malice. 
 
 Of the extensive literature bearing on the subject, 
 the books to which I am under the greatest obligation 
 are Niese's text of the collected works and Schiirer's 
 History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus. 
 I have given in an Appendix a Bibliography, which 
 contains the names of most of the works I have re- 
 ferred to. I would mention in particular Schlat- 
 ter's Zur TopograpJiie und Geschichte Paldstinas, 
 which is a remarkably stimulating and suggestive 
 book, and which confirmed a view I had formed inde- 
 pendently, that in the Wars, as in the Antiquities, 
 Josephus is normally a compiler of other men's writ- 
 ings, and constantly expresses opinions not his own. 
 
 My greatest debt of thanks, however, is due to the 
 spoken rather than the written word. Doctor Biichler, 
 the Principal of Jews' College, London, has constantly 
 assisted me with advice, directed me to sources of in- 
 formation, and let me draw plentifully from his own 
 large stores of knowledge about Josephus ; and Doctor 
 Friedlaender, Sabato Morais Professor at the Jewish 
 Theological Seminary of America, has done me the 
 brotherly service of reading my manuscript and mak- 
 ing many valuable suggestions on it. To their gener- 
 ous help this book owes more than I can acknowledge. 
 
 NORMAN BEXTWICH. 
 .Cairo, February, 1914.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 11 
 
 II. THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS TO THE FALL OF JOTAPATA 37 
 
 III. THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS FROM THE TIME OF His 
 
 SURRENDER 58 
 
 IV. THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS AND His RELATION TO 
 
 His PREDECESSORS 81 
 
 V. THE JEWISH WARS 108 
 
 VI. JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 136 
 
 VII. JOSEPHUS AND POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 172 
 
 VIII. THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 205 
 
 IX. CONCLUSION 240 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 
 
 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING TO THE 
 
 WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 263 
 
 INDEX 265
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BAS-RELIEF FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS AT 
 
 ROME Frontispiece 
 
 COINS CURRENT IN PALESTINE (34 B. c. E. to 
 
 98 c. E.) Between pp. 114 and 115 
 
 RUINS OF AX ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE AT KAFR 
 
 BIR'IJI, UPPER GALILEE Facing p. 186
 
 JOSEPHUS 
 
 THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 
 
 The life and work of Flavius Josephus are bound up 
 with the struggle of the Jews against the Romans, and 
 in order to appreciate them it is necessary to sum- 
 marize the relations of the two peoples that led up 
 to that struggle. 
 
 It is related in the Midrash that the city of Rome 
 was founded on the day Solomon married an Egypt- 
 ian princess. The Rabbis doubtless meant by this 
 legend that the power of Rome was created to be a 
 scourge for Israel's backslidings. They identified 
 Rome with the Edom of the Bible, representing thus 
 that the struggle between Esau and Jacob was carried 
 on by their descendants, the Romans and the Jews, 
 and would continue throughout history. 1 Yet the 
 earliest relations of the two peoples were friendly and 
 peaceful. They arose out of the war of independence 
 that the Maccabean brothers waged against the 
 Syrian Empire in the middle of the second century 
 B. c. E., when the loyal among the people were 
 roused to stand up for their faith. Antiochus Epiph- 
 
 a Lev. R. xiii. (5), quoted in Schechter, Aspects of Rab- 
 binic Theology, p. 100.
 
 12 JOSEPHUS 
 
 anes, anxious to strengthen his tottering empire, which 
 had been shaken by its struggles with Rome, sought to 
 force violently on the Jews a pagan Hellenism that 
 was already making its way among them. He suc- 
 ceeded only in evoking the latent force of their national 
 consciousness. Rome was already the greatest power 
 in the world: she had conquered the whole of Italy; 
 she had destroyed her chief rival in the West, the 
 Phoenician colony of Carthage ; she had made her will 
 supreme in Greece and Macedonia. Her senate was 
 the arbiter of the destinies of kingdoms, and though 
 for the time it refrained from extending Eoman sway 
 over Egypt and Asia, its word there was law. Its 
 policy was " divide and rule/' to hold supreme sway 
 by encouraging small nationalities to maintain their 
 independence against the unwieldy empires which 
 the Hellenistic successors of Alexander had carved out 
 for themselves in the Orient. 
 
 At the bidding of the Roman envoy, Antiochus 
 Epiphanes himself, immediately before his incursion 
 into Jerusalem, had slunk away from Alexandria ; and 
 hence it was natural that Judas Maccabaeus, when he 
 had vindicated the liberty of his nation, should look to 
 Rome for support in maintaining that liberty. In the 
 year 161 B. c. E. he sent Eupolemus the son of Johanan 
 and Jason the son of Eleazar, " to make a league of 
 amity and confederacy with the Romans " 1 : and the 
 
 11 1 Mace. viii. 7. It is interesting to note that the sons 
 had Greek names, while their fathers had Hebrew names.
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE EOMA^S 13 
 
 Jews were received as friends, and enrolled in the class 
 of Socii. His brother Jonathan renewed the alliance in 
 146 B. c. E. ; Simon renewed it again five years later, 
 and John Hyrcanus, when he succeeded to the high 
 priesthood, made a fresh treaty. 1 Supported by the 
 friendship, and occasionally by the diplomatic inter- 
 ference, of the "Western Power, the Jews did not re- 
 quire the intervention of her arms to uphold their in- 
 dependence against the Seleucid monarchs, whose 
 power was rapidly falling into ruin. At the beginning 
 of the first century B. c. E., however, Eome, having 
 emerged triumphant from a series of civil struggles 
 in her own dominions, found herself compelled to take 
 an active part in the affairs of the East^During her 
 temporary eclipse there had been violent upheavals in 
 Asia. The semi-barbarous kings of Pontus and 
 Armenia took advantage of the opportunity to overrun 
 the Hellenized provinces and put all the Greek and 
 Eoman inhabitants to the sword. To avenge this out- 
 rage, Eome sent to the East, in 73 B. c. E., her most 
 distinguished soldier, Pompeius, or Pompey, who, in 
 two campaigns, laid the whole of Asia Minor and 
 Syria at his feet. 
 
 Unfortunately civil strife was waging in Palestine 
 between the two Hasmonean brothers, Aristobulus and 
 Hyrcanus, who fought for the throne on the death of 
 the queen Alexandra Salome. Both in turn appealed 
 to Pompey to come to their aid, on terms of becoming 
 
 J I Mace. xii. 3; xiv. 24.
 
 14 JOSEPHUS 
 
 subject to the Eoman overlord. At the same time, a 
 deputation from the Jewish nation appeared before 
 the general, to declare that they did not desire to be 
 ruled by kings : " for what was handed down to them 
 from their fathers was that they should obey the 
 priests of God; but these two princes, though the 
 descendants of priests, sought to transfer the nation 
 to another form of government, that it might be en- 
 slaved." 
 
 Pompey, who had resolved to establish a strong 
 government immediately subject to Eome over the 
 whole of the near Orient, finally interfered on behalf 
 of Hyrcanus. Aristobulus resisted, at first somewhat 
 half-heartedly, but afterwards, when the Eoman 
 armies laid siege to Jerusalem, with fierce determina- 
 tion. The struggle was in vain. On a Sabbath, it is 
 recorded, when the Jews desisted from their defense, 
 the Boman general forced his way into the city, and, 
 regardless of Jewish feeling, entered the Holy of 
 Holies. The intrigues of the Jewish royal house had 
 brought about the subjection of the nation. As it is 
 said in the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon, which were 
 written about this time : " A powerful srniter has 
 God brought from the ends of the earth. He decreed 
 war upon the Jews and the land. The princes of the 
 land went out with joy to meet him, and said to him, 
 ' Blessed be thy way ; draw near and enter in peace.' }: 
 Yet Pompey did not venture, or did not care, to 
 destroy or rob the Temple, according to Cicero and
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE ROMAXS 15 
 
 Josephus, 1 because of his innate moderation, but 
 really, one may suspect, from less noble motives. 
 It was the custom of the Koman conquerors to de- 
 mand the surrender, not only of the earthly posses- 
 sions of the conquered, but of their gods, and to 
 carry the vanquished images in the triumph which 
 they celebrated. But Pompey may have recognized 
 the difference between the Jewish religion and that 
 of other peoples, or he realized the widespread power 
 of the Jewish people, which would rise as a single 
 body in defense of its religion; for he made no 
 attempt to interfere either with Jewish religious lib- 
 erties, or with a worship that Cicero declared to be 
 " incompatible with the majesty of the Empire." 
 
 The Jews, however, were henceforth the clients, in- 
 stead of the allies, of Rome. Though Hyrcanus was 
 recognized by Pompey as the high priest and ethnarch 
 of Judea, and his wily counselor, the Idumean Antipa- 
 ter, was given a general power of administering the 
 country, they were alike subject to the governor of 
 Syria, which was now constituted a Roman province. 
 Moreover, the Hellenistic cities along the coast of 
 Palestine and on the other side of Jordan, which had 
 been subjugated by John Hyrcanus and Alexander 
 Jannaeus, were restored to independence, and placed 
 under special Roman protection, and the Jewish terri- 
 tory itself was shortly thereafter split by the Roman 
 governor Gabinius into five toparchies, or provinces, 
 each with a separate administration. 
 
 1 Cicero, Pro Flacco, 69, and Ant. XVI. iv, 4.
 
 16 JOSEPHUS 
 
 The guiding aim of the conqueror was to weaken the 
 Oriental power (as the Jews were regarded) and 
 strengthen the Hellenistic element in the country. 
 The Jews were soon to feel the heavy hand and suffer 
 the insatiate greed of Rome. National risings were 
 put down with merciless cruelty, the Temple treasury 
 was spoiled in 56 B. c. E. by the avaricious Crassus, 
 one of the triumvirate that divided the Eoman Empire, 
 when he passed Jerusalem on his way to fight against 
 the Parthians; even the annual offering contributed 
 voluntarily by the Jews of the Diaspora to the Temple 
 was seized by a profligate governor of Asia. The 
 Roman aristocrats during the last years of the Re- 
 public were a degenerate body ; they regarded a gover- 
 norship as the opportunity of unlimited extortion, the 
 means of recouping themselves for all the gross ex- 
 penses incurred on attaining office, and of making 
 themselves and their friends affluent for the rest of 
 their lives. And Judea was a fresh quarry. 
 
 A happier era seemed to be dawning for the Jews 
 when Julius Caesar became dictator. At the begin- 
 ning of the civil war between him and Pompey, Hyr- 
 canus, at the instance of Antipater, prepared to sup- 
 port the man to whom he owed his position ; but when 
 Pompey was murdered, Antipater led the Jewish 
 forces to the help of Caesar, who was hard pressed at 
 Alexandria. His timely help and his influence over 
 the Egyptian Jews recommended him to Caesar's 
 favor, and secured for him an extension of his au- 
 thority in Palestine, and for Hyrcanus the confirma-
 
 THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 17 
 
 tion of his ethnarchy. Joppa was restored to the 
 Hasmonean domain, Judea was granted freedom from 
 all tribute and taxes to Rome, and the independence 
 of the internal administration was guaranteed. 
 Caesar, too, whatever may have been his motive, 
 showed favor to the Jews throughout his Empire. 
 Mommsen thinks that he saw in them an effective 
 leaven of cosmopolitanism and national decomposi- 
 tion, and to that intent gave them special privileges ; 
 but this seems a perverse reason to assign for the 
 grant of the right to maintain in all its thoroughness 
 their national life, and for their exemption from all 
 Imperial or municipal burdens that would conflict 
 with it. It is more reasonable to suppose that, taking 
 in this as in many other things a broader view than 
 that of his countrymen, Caesar recognized the weak- 
 ness of a world-state whose members were so dena- 
 tionalized as to have no strong feeling for any com- 
 mon purpose, no passion of loyalty to any community, 
 and he favored Judaism as a counteracting force to 
 this peril. 
 
 His various enactments constituted, as it were, a 
 Magna Charta of the Jews in the Empire; Judaism 
 was a favored cult in the provinces, a licita religio in 
 the capital. At Alexandria Caesar confirmed and ex- 
 tended the religious and political privileges of the 
 Jews, and ordered his decree to be inscribed on pillars 
 of brass and set up in a public place. At Rome, though 
 the devotees of Bacchus were forbidden to meet, he 
 permitted the Jews to hold their assemblies and cele- 
 2
 
 18 JOSEPHUS 
 
 brate their ceremonials. At his instance the Hellen- 
 istic cities of Asia passed similar favorable decrees for 
 the benefit of the Jewish congregations in their midst, 
 which invested them with a kind of local autonomy. 
 The proclamation of the Sardians is typical. "This 
 decree," it runs, " was made by the senate and people, 
 upon the representation of the praetors : 
 
 Whereas those Jews who are our fellow-citizens, and 
 live with us in this city, have ever had great benefits 
 heaped upon them by the people, and have come now into 
 the senate, and desired of the people that, upon the resti- 
 tution of their law and their liberty by the senate and 
 people of Rome, they may assemble together according to 
 their ancient legal custom, and that we will not bring 
 any suit against them about it; and that a place may be 
 given them where they may hold their congregations with 
 their wives and children, and may offer, as did their fore- 
 fathers, their prayers and sacrifices to God: now the 
 senate and people have decreed to permit them to as- 
 semble together on the days formerly appointed, and to 
 act according to their own laws; and that such a place 
 be set apart for them by the praetors for the building and 
 inhabiting the same as they shall esteem fit for that 
 purpose, and that those who have control of the provi- 
 sions of the city shall take care that such sorts of food 
 as they esteem fit for their eating may be imported into 
 the city." 
 
 Caesar's decrees marked the culmination of Roman 
 
 ^^M*^*^^** ^tf0"i^ B ^mMHBMm 
 
 tolerance, and the Jews enjoyed their privileges for 
 but a short time. It is related by the historian Sue- 
 tonius that they lamented his death more bitterly than 
 
 1 Ant XIV. x. 24.
 
 THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 19 
 
 any other class. 1 And they had good reason. The Re- 
 publicans, who had murdered him, and his ministers, 
 who avenged him, vied with each other for the sup- 
 port of the Jewish princes ; but the people in Palestine 
 suffered from the burden that the rivals imposed on 
 the provinces in their efforts to raise armies. Antip- 
 ater and his ambitious sons Herod and Phasael con- 
 trived to maintain their tyranny amid the constant 
 shifting of power ; and when the hardy mountaineers 
 of Galilee strove under the lead of one Hezekiah 
 (Ezekias), the founder of the party of the Zealots, to 
 shake off the Roman yoke, Herod ruthlessly put down 
 the revolt,. But when Antigonus, the son of that Aris- 
 tobulus who had been deprived of his kingdom by Hyr- 
 canus and Pompey, roused the Parthians to invade 
 Syria and Palestine, the Jews eagerly rose in support 
 of the scion of the Maccabean house, and drove out the 
 hated Idumeans with their puppet Jewish king. The 
 struggle between the people and the Romans had be- 
 gun in earnest, and though Antigonus, when placed on 
 the throne by the Parthians, proceeded to spoil and 
 harry, the Jews, rejoicing at the restoration of the 
 Hasmonean line, thought a new era of independence 
 had come. 
 
 The infatuation of Mark Antony for Cleopatra en- 
 abled Antigonus to hold his kingdom for three years 
 (40-37 B. c. E.). Then Herod, who had escaped to 
 Rome, returned to Syria to conquer the kingdom that 
 Antony had bestowed on him. He brought with him 
 
 1 Suetonius, Caesar, Ixxxiv. 7.
 
 20 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the Roman legions, and for two years a fierce straggle 
 was waged between the Idumeans, Romans, and Roma- 
 nizing Jews on the one hand, and the national Jews 
 and Parthian mercenaries of Antigonus on the other. 
 The struggle culminated in a siege of Jerusalem. As 
 happened in all the contests for the city, the power of 
 trained force in the end prevailed over the enthusiasm 
 of fervent patriots. Herod stormed the walls, put 
 to death Antigonus and his party, and established a 
 harsher tyranny than even the Roman conqueror had 
 imposed. For over thirty years he held the people 
 down with the aid of Rome and his body-guard of mer- 
 cenary barbarians. His constitution was an autocracy, 
 supplemented by assassination. In the civil war be- 
 tween Antony and Octavian, he was first on the losing 
 side, as his father had been in the struggle between 
 Pompey and Caesar ; but, like his father, he knew when 
 to go over to the victor. The master of the Roman 
 Empire, henceforth known as Augustus, was so im- 
 pressed with his carriage and resolution that he not 
 only confirmed him in his kingdom, but added to it the 
 territories of Chalcis and Perea to the north and east 
 of the Jordan. Throughout his reign Herod contrived 
 to preserve the friendship of Rome as effectually as he 
 contrived to arouse the hatred of his Jewish subjects. 
 "The Imperial "Eagle an3 some distinguished Roman 
 or other," says George Adam Smith, 1 "were always 
 fixed in Herod's heaven." He ruled with a strong but 
 merciless hand. He insured peace, and while he turned 
 
 Jerusalem, ii. 504.
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE ROMANS 21 
 
 his own home into a slaughter-house, he glorified the 
 Jewish dominion outwardly to a height and magnifi- 
 cence it had never before attained. Yet the Jewish dep- 
 utation that went to plead before Augustus on his 
 death declared that " Herod had put such abuses on 
 them as a wild beast would not have done, and no 
 calamity they had suffered was comparable with that 
 which he had brought on the nation." 1 Beneath the 
 fine show of peace, splendor, and expansion, the pas- 
 sions of the nation were being aroused to the breaking- 
 point. 
 
 Augustus himself, following the example of his uncle 
 Julius Caesar, yet lacking the same large tolerance, 
 held towards Judaism an ambiguous attitude of im- 
 partiality rather than of favor. He caused sacrifices 
 to be offered for himself at the Temple at Jerusalem,* 
 but he praised his nephew Gaius for having refrained 
 from doing likewise during his Eastern travels.* He 
 was anxious that the national laws and customs of 
 each nation should be preserved, and he issued a decree 
 in favor of the Jews of Cyrene ; but he initiated the 
 worship of the Emperors, which necessitated a con- 
 flict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of 
 Caesar, and in the end destroyed the religious liberty 
 that Julius Caesar had given to the Empire. His aim 
 was at once to foster the veneration of the Imperial 
 power and establish an Imperial worship that should 
 replace the effete paganism of his subjects. He made 
 
 1 Ant. XVII. xi. 2. a Philo, De Leg. 11. 507. 
 
 8 Suetonius, Aug. 93.
 
 22 JOSEPHUS 
 
 no attempt to force this worship on the Jews, but its 
 existence fanned the prejudicejigainst the one nation 
 that refused to participate. \_And the Jews could not 
 but look with distrust on a government that " derived 
 its authority from the deification of might, whereof 
 the Emperor was the incarnate principle.'T 
 
 Marcus. Agrippa, the trusted ministefof Augustus, 
 was also an intimate friend of Herod, and served to 
 link the two courts. But on the death of Herod, in 
 4 c. E., the friendship of Rome for the Idumean royal 
 house was modified. Archelaus, who claimed the 
 whole succession, was appointed simply as ethnarch of 
 Judea, while Herod's two other sons, Philip and Herod 
 Antipas, divided the rest of his dominions. The 
 Zealots, rid of the powerful tyrant who had held them 
 down, sought again to throw off the hated yoke of 
 Idumea, which, not without reason, they identified 
 with the yoke of Borne. With their watchword, " No 
 king but God," they attempted to make Judea inde- 
 pendent, and a fierce struggle, known as the War of 
 Yarus, ensued. Jerusalem was stormed once aeain 
 bv Roman legions before the Zealots were subdued. 
 Archelaus was deposed by his masters after a few 
 years, and the province of Judea was placed under 
 direct Roman administration. The Roman procurator 
 was at first less detested than the Idumean tyrant, since 
 he interfered less with the legal institutions, such as 
 the Sanhedrin and the Bet Din ; but his presence with 
 
 1 Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, p. 108.
 
 THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 23 
 
 the legionaries in the Holy City and his constant, 
 though often involuntary, affronts to the religious sen- 
 timents of the people roused the hostility of the nation- 
 alist party, who looked forward to the day when Israel 
 should " tread on the neck of the Eagle." -Tiw-Phari- 
 sees, who were anxious for the spiritual rather than 
 the political independence of the Jews, counseled sub- 
 mission to Rome, and were willing " to render unto 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's," so long as they 
 were not compelled to give up the Torah. But the 
 7pa.lnt.a flppijrpf? political as wellasreligjous freedom, 
 and the v fomen tedrebell ion. They have been com- 
 pareH byMerivale to the Montagnards of the French 
 Revolution, driven by their own indomitable passion 
 to assert the truths that possessed them with a ferocity 
 that no possession could justify. They were con- 
 tinually rousing the people to expel the foreign rulers, 
 and in the northern province of Galilee, where they 
 found shelter amid the wild tracts of heath and moun- 
 tain, they maintained a constant state of insurrection. 1 
 
 1 It is important to notice that much of our knowledge 
 of the Zealots is derived from Josephus, who, as will be 
 seen, set himself to misrepresent them, and repeated the 
 calumnies of hostile Roman writers against them. The 
 Talmud contains several references to them, describing 
 them as Kannaim (the Hebrew equivalent of Zealots), 
 and it would appear that they were in their outlook 
 successors of the former Hasidim, distinguished as much 
 for their religious rigidity as their patriotic fervor. See 
 Jewish Encyclopedia, s. v. Zealots.
 
 24 JOSEPHUS 
 
 The Eomans, on their side, accustomed to the ready 
 submission of all the peoples under their sway, could 
 not understand or tolerate the Jews. To them this 
 people with its dour manners, its refusal to participate 
 in the religious ideas, the social life, and the pleasures 
 of its neighbors, its eruptions of passion and violence 
 on account of abstract ideas, and its rigid exclusion of 
 the insignia of Koman majesty from the capital, 
 seemed the enemies of the human race. In their own 
 religion they had freely found a place for Greek and 
 Egyptian deities, but the Jewish faith, in its uncom- 
 promising opposition to all pagan worship, seemed, in 
 the words that Anatole France has put into the mouth 
 of one of the Roman procurators, to be rather an 
 a&ligion than a religion, an institution designed rather 
 to sever the bond that united peoples, than bind them 
 together. Every other civilized people had accepted 
 their dominion ; the Jews and the Parthians alone 
 stood m the way of universal peace. The near-Eastern 
 question, which, then as now, continually threatened 
 war and violence, irritated the Romans beyond meas- 
 ure, and they came to feel towards Jerusalem as their 
 ancestors had felt two hundred years before towards 
 Carthage, the great Semitic power of the West, delenda 
 est Hierosolyma. As time went on they realized that 
 this stubborn nation was resolved to dispute with them 
 for the mastery, and every agitation was regarded as 
 an outrage on the Roman power, which must be wiped 
 out in blood. It was the inevitable conflict, not only 
 between the Imperial and the national principle, but
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE ROMAN'S 25 
 
 between the ideas of the kingdom of righteousness and 
 the ideas of the kingdom of might. 
 
 During the reign of Tiberius, however, the Eonian 
 governors were held in check to some extent by strong 
 central control from Rome, and their extortion was 
 comparatively moderate. The worst of them was 
 Pontius Pilate, and the odium theologicum has, per- 
 haps, had its part in blackening his reputation. 
 Xevertheless, the broad religious tolerance initiated 
 by the first Caesar was being continually impaired. 
 The Jewish public worship was prohibited in Rome, 
 and the Jews were expelled from the city in 19 c. E. ; 
 while at Alexandria an anti-Jewish persecution was 
 instigated by Sejanus, the upstart freedman, who be- 
 came the chief minister of Tiberius. In Palestine, 
 though we hear of no definite movement, it is clear 
 from after-events that the bitterness of feeling between 
 the Hellenized Syrians and the Jewish population was 
 steadily fomented. The Romans were naturally on 
 the side of the Greek-speaking people, whom they un- 
 derstood, and whose religion they could appreciate. 
 The situation may best be paralleled by the condition 
 of Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
 when England supported the Protestant population 
 of Ulster against the hated Roman Catholics, who 
 formed the majority of the people. 
 
 It had been the aim of Tiberius to consolidate the 
 unwieldy mass of the Empire by the gradual absorp- 
 tion of the independent kingdoms inclosed within its 
 limits. In pursuance of this policy, Judea, Chalcis,
 
 26 JOSEPHUS 
 
 and Abilene, all parts of Herod's kingdom, had been 
 placed under Eoman governors. But when Gaius Ca- 
 ligula succeeded Tiberius in 32 c. E., and brought to 
 the Imperial throne a capricious irresponsibility, 
 he reverted to the older policy of encouraging client- 
 princes, and doled out territories to his Oriental 
 favorites. Prominent among them was Agrippa, 
 a grandson of Herod, who had passed his youth 
 in the company of the Eoman prince in Italy. He 
 received as the reward of his loyal extravagance not 
 only Judea but Galilee and Perea, together with 
 the title of king. He was not, however, given per- 
 mission to repair to his kingdom, since his patron 
 desired his attentions at Borne. Later he was de- 
 tained by a sterner call. Gaius, who had passed 
 from folly to lunacy, was not content with the custom- 
 ary voluntary worship paid to the Emperors, but im- 
 agined himself the supreme deity, and demanded 
 veneration from all his subjects. He ordered his image 
 to be set up in all temples, and, irritated by the petition 
 of the Jews to be exempted from what would be an 
 offense against the first principle of their religion, he 
 insisted upon their immediate submission. In Alex- 
 andria the Greek population made a violent attempt 
 to carry out the Imperial order ; a sharp conflict took 
 place, and the Jews in their dire need sent a deputa- 
 tion, with Philo at its head, to supplicate the Emperor. 
 In the East the governor of Syria, Petronius, was 
 directed to march on Jerusalem and set up the Impe- 
 rial statue in the Holy of Holies, whatever it might
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE ROMANS 27 
 
 cost. Petronius understood, and it seems respected, 
 the faithfulness of the Jews to their creed, and he hesi- 
 tated to carry out the command. From East and West 
 the Jews gathered to resist the decree ; the multitude, 
 says Philo, covered Phoenicia like a cloud. Meantime 
 King Agrippa at Borne interceded with the Emperor 
 'for his people, and induced him to relent for a little. 
 But the infatuation again came over Gaius ; he ordered 
 Petronius peremptorily to do his will, and, when the 
 legate still dallied, sent to remove him from his office. 
 But, as Philo says, God heard the prayer of His people : 
 Gaius was assassinated by a Roman whom he had 
 wantonly insulted, and the death-struggle with Eome, 
 which had threatened in Judea, was postponed. The 
 year of trial, however, had brought home to the whole 
 of the Jewish people that the incessant moral conflict 
 with Rome might at any moment be resolved into a 
 desperate physical struggle for the preservation of 
 their religion. And the warlike party gained in 
 strength. 
 
 The date of the death of Gaius (Shebat 22) was 
 appointed as a day of memorial in the Jewish calendar; 
 and for a little time the Jews had a respite from tyr- 
 anny. Agrippa, who, after the murder of Gaius, played 
 a large part in securing for Claudius the succession 
 to the Imperial throne, was confirmed in the grant of 
 his kingdom, and, despite his antecedents and his up- 
 bringing, proved himself a model national king. Per- 
 haps he had seen through the rottenness of Rome, 
 perhaps the trial of Gaius' mad escapades had deepened
 
 28 JOSEPHUS 
 
 his nature, and led him to honor the burning faith of 
 the Jews. Whatever the reason, while remaining 
 dutiful to Borne, he devoted himself to the care of his 
 people, to the maintenance of their full religious and 
 national life, and to the strengthening of the Holy City 
 against the struggle he foresaw. To the Jews of the 
 Diaspora, moreover, the succession of Claudius brought 
 a renewal of privileges. An edict of tolerance was pro- 
 mulgated, first to the Alexandrians, and afterwards to 
 the communities in all parts of the habitable globe, by 
 which liberty of conscience and internal autonomy 
 were restored, with a notable caution against Jewish 
 missionary enterprise. ""We think it fitting," runs 
 the decree, " to permit the Jews everywhere under our 
 sway to observe their ancient customs without hin- 
 drance ; and we hereby charge them to use our gracious- 
 ness with moderation and not to show contempt of the 
 religious observances of other people, but to keep their 
 own laws quietly." 1 Nevertheless the tolerant prin- 
 ciple on which Caesar and Augustus had sought to 
 found the Empire was surely giving way to a more 
 tyrannical policy, which viewed with suspicion all 
 bodies that fostered a corporate life separate from that 
 of the State, whether Jewish synagogue, Stoic school, 
 or religious college. 
 
 T]ie conflict between Rome and Jerusalem entered 
 
 ^^WW"^BIIHii^^^"VHiiBHHBB^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M^|^MBBVHWPHHBM 
 
 on a bitterer stage when Agrippa died in 44 c. E. 
 Influenced by his self-seeking band of freedmen-coun- 
 selors, who saw in office in Palestine a golden oppor- 
 
 1 Ant XIX. v. 2.
 
 THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 29 
 
 tunity for spoliation, Claudius placed the vacantking^ 
 tio_m againundeFlEg^dwict admmrstra/tion of Koman 
 rocurators, and appointed to the omce a string oJn 
 basest creatures of the court, who revived 
 
 of the worst days of the Repu 
 From 48-o c. E. Palestine was under the governor- 
 ship of Ventidius Cumanus, who seemed deliberately 
 to egg on the Jews to insurrection. When a Roman sol- 
 dier outraged the Jewish conscience by indecent con- 
 duct in the Temple during the Passover, Cumanus 
 refused all redress, called on the soldiers to put down 
 the clamoring people, and slew thousands of them in 
 the holy precincts. 1 A little later, when an Imperial 
 officer was attacked on the road and robbed, Cumanus 
 set loose the legionaries on the villages around, and 
 ordered a general pillage. When a Galilean Jew was 
 murdered in a Samaritan village, and the Jewish 
 Zealots, failing to get redress, attacked Samaria, Cu- 
 manus fell on them and crucified whomever he cap- 
 tured. Then, indeed, the Roman governor of Syria, 
 not so reckless as his subordinate, or, it may be, cor- 
 rupted by the man anxious to step into the procurator's 
 place, summoned Cumanus before him, and sent him to 
 Rome to stand his trial for maladministration. 
 
 But this act of belated justice brought the Jews 
 small comfort; Cumanus was succeeded by Felix, an 
 even worse creature. He was the brother of the Em- 
 peror's favorite Narcissus, " by badness raised to that 
 proud eminence," and the husband of the Herodian 
 
 1 Ant. XX. v. 3.
 
 30 JOSEPHUS 
 
 princess Brasilia, who had become a pagan in order 
 to marry him. Tacitus, the Eoman historian, says * 
 that "with all manner of cruelty he exercised royal 
 functions in the spirit of a slave." Under his rapacious 
 tyranny the people were goaded to fury. Bands of 
 assassins, Sicarii (so called by both Romans and Jews 
 because of the short dagger, sica, which they used), 
 sprang up over the country. Now they struck down 
 Romans and Romanizers, and now they were employed 
 by the governor himself to put out of the way rich Jew- 
 ish nobles whose possessions he coveted. From time to 
 time there were more serious risings, some purely 
 political, others led by a pseudo-Messiah, and all alike 
 put down with cruelty. Roman governors were habitu- 
 ally corrupt, grasping, and cruel, but Mommsen de- 
 clares that those of Judea in the reigns of Claudius and 
 Nero, who were chosen from the upstart equestrians, 
 exceeded the usual measure of worthlessness and op- 
 pressiveness. The Jews believed that they had drunk 
 to the dregs the cup of misery, and that God must 
 send them a Redeemer. There were no prophets to 
 preach as at the time of the struggle with Babylon 
 and Assyria, that the oppression was God's chastise- 
 ment for their sins. And it was inconceivable to them 
 that the power of wickedness should be allowed to 
 triumph to the end. 
 
 Steadily the party that clamored for war gained in 
 strength, and the apprehensions of the Pharisees who 
 viewed the political struggle with misgiving, lest it 
 
 *Hist. v. 9.
 
 THE JEWS AXD THE ROMANS 31 
 
 should end in the loss of the national center and the 
 destruction of religious independence, were overborne 
 by the fury of the masses. The oppression by Eoman 
 governors and Romanizing high priests did not dimin- 
 ish when Nero succeeded Claudius. For the rest of 
 the Empire the first five years of his reign (the quin- 
 quennium Neronis) were a period of peace and good 
 government, but for the Jews they brought little or no 
 relief. The harsh Roman policy toward the Jews may 
 
 ^^ MMM ^BHMMMMMiMa*faM M MM*H*M M 
 
 have been specially instigated by Seneca, the Stoic 
 philosopher, who was Nero's counselor during his 
 saner years, and who entertained a strong hatred of 
 Judaism. But we need not look for such special 
 causes. It had been the fixed habit of Republican 
 Rome to crush out the national spirit of a subject 
 people, " to war down the proud," as her greatest poet 
 euphemistically expressed it ; and now that spirit was 
 adopted by the Imperial Caesars in dealing with the 
 one and only people resolved to preserve inviolate its 
 national life and its national religion. Nero indeed 
 recalled Felix, and Festus, who was appointed in his 
 place, made an attempt to mend affairs, but he died 
 within a year, and was succeeded by two procurators 
 that were worthy followers of Felix. The first of 
 them was Albinus (62-64), of whom Josephus says 
 that there was no sort of wickedness in which he had 
 not a hand. The same authority says that compared 
 with Gessius Floras, the governor under whom the 
 Rebellion burst out, he was "most just." Florus 
 owed his appointment to Poppaea, the profligate wife
 
 32 JOSEPHUS 
 
 of Xero, and his conduct bears the interpretation that 
 he was deliberately anxious to fill the measure of perse- 
 cution to the brim and drive the nation to war. 
 
 The very forms of privilege which had been left to 
 the Jews were turned to their hurt. The Herodian 
 tetrarchs of Chalcis, to whom the Eomans granted 
 the power of appointing the high priests, true to the 
 tradition of their house, appointed only such as were 
 confirmed Eomanizers, and the most unscrupulous at 
 that. When Felix was governor, the high priest was 
 the notorious Ananias, of whom the Talmud says, 
 " Woe to the House of Ananias ; woe for their cursings, 
 woe for their serpent-like hissings/' Jl Herod Agrippa 
 II, the son of Agrippa, who held the principate from 
 50-100 c. E., and was the faithful creature of Eome 
 throughout the period of his people's stress, proclaim- 
 ing himself on his coins "lover of Caesar and lover 
 of Eome," deposed and created high priests with 
 unparalleled frequency as a means of extorting money 
 and rewarding the leading informers. There were 
 seven holders of the office during the last twenty years 
 of Eoman rule, and " he who carried furthest servility 
 and national abnegation received the prize." The 
 high priests thus formed a kind of anti-national oli- 
 garchy; they robbed the other priests of their dues, 
 - and reduced them to poverty, and were the willing tools 
 ** q^ JRfvmflTj -tyranny. Together with the Herodian 
 princes, who indulged every lust and wicked passion, 
 they undermined the strength of the people like some 
 
 1 Pesahim, 57a.
 
 THE JEWS AND THE KOMANS 33 
 
 fatal canker, much as the priests and nobles had done 
 at the first fall of Jerusalem, or, again, in the days of 
 the Seleucid Emperors. Apart from governors, tax- 
 collectors, and high priests, the Romans had an in- 
 strument of oppression in the Greek-speaking popula- 
 tion of Palestine and Syria, which maintained an in- 
 veterate hostility to the Jews. The immediate cause 
 of the great Eebellion actually arose out of a feud be- 
 tween the Jewish and the Gentile inhabitants of 
 Caesarea. The Hellenistic population outnumbered the 
 Jews in the Herodian foundations of Caesarea, Sep- 
 phoris, Tiberias, Paneas, etc., as well as in the old 
 Greek cities of Doris, Scythopolis, Gerasa, Gadara, and 
 the rest of the Decapolis. This population regarded 
 religion only as the pretext for public ceremonials and 
 entertainments; it was scornful of the Jewish ab- 
 stention from these things, and was aroused to the bit- 
 terest hatred by the social aloofness of their neighbors. 
 Violent riots between Jew and Gentile were constantly 
 taking place, and whether they were the aggressors or 
 merely fighting in self-defense, the Jews were the 
 scapegoats for the breaking of the peace. Stung by con- 
 stant outrage on the part of their neighbors, the Jews 
 turned upon them at Caesarea, and drove them out of 
 the town. Thereupon Floras called them to reckoning, 
 marched on Jerusalem, and plundered the Temple 
 treasury. This event happened on the tenth day of 
 lyar in the year 66 c. E. The war-party determined 
 to force the struggle to a final issue. Hitherto they 
 had only been able to arouse a section to venture 
 3
 
 34 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 desperate sporadic insurrection against the might of 
 Rome. Now they carried the people with them to 
 engage in a national rebellion. 
 
 Agrippa II, who was amusing himself at Alexandria 
 when the first outbreak occurred, hurried back to 
 Jerusalem, and sought to quiet the people by impress- 
 ing upon them the invincible power of Home. But he 
 failed, and the Eomanizing priests' party failed, and 
 the peaceful leaders of the Pharisees failed, to shake 
 their determination. Messianic hopes were, rife among 
 the masses, and were invested with a materialistic in- 
 terpretation. The Zealots, it is alleged by the pagan 
 as well as the Jewish authorities for the period, be- 
 lieved that the destined time was come when the Jews 
 should rule the world. The people looked for the 
 realization of the prophecy of Isaiah (41:2), "He 
 shall raise up the righteous one from the East, give the 
 nations before Israel, and make him rule over kings." 
 
 The belief in the approach of the Messianic king- 
 dom was undoubtedly one of the mainsprings of the 
 revolt. There had been a series of popular leaders 
 claiming to be Messiahs, but in the final struggle it 
 was not the claim of any individual, but the pas- 
 sionate faith of the whole people, that inspired a 
 belief in the coming of a perfect deliverance. Some 
 events appeared to favor the fulfilment of their hopes 
 of temporal sovereignty, bred though they were of 
 despair. Rome under the corrupting influence of 
 Nero seemed to be passing her zenith ; national move- 
 ments were stirring in the West, in Gaul and in Ger-
 
 THE JEWS AND THE EOMANS 35 
 
 many ; in the East the Parthians were again threaten- 
 ing the security of the Koman provinces. The Jewish 
 cause, on the other hand, seemed to be gaining ground 
 everywhere. Its converts, numerous in the West, 
 were still more numerous and important in the East. 
 Among those recently brought over to the true faith 
 as fall proselytes were Helena, the queen of Adiabene, 
 a kingdom situate in Mesopotamia, and her son Izates, 
 who built themselves splendid palaces at Jerusalem. 
 In Babylon the Jews had made themselves almost inde- 
 pendent, and waged open war on the Parthian satraps. 
 A large section of the people cherished a somewhat 
 simple theodicy. How could God allow the wicked 
 and dissolute Eomans to prosper and the chosen people 
 to be oppressed ? The Hellenistic writers of Sibylline 
 oracles and the Hebrew writers of Apocalypses, imitat- 
 ing the doom-songs of Isaiah and Ezekiel, announced 
 the coming overthrow of evil and the triumph of good. 
 Evil had reached its acme in Nero, and the time had 
 come when God would break the " fourth horn " of 
 Daniel's vision (ch. 8), and exalt his chosen people. 
 
 The fight for national independence was bound to 
 have come, for nothing could have prevented the 
 Eomans from their attempt to crush the spirit of the 
 Jews, and nothing could have held back the Jews from 
 making a supreme effort to obtain their freedom from 
 the hated yoke. For one hundred and twenty years 
 Palestine had bejmgpnmj 
 
 Eoman governors and Romanizing tyrants. The con- 
 ditions of the foreign rule had steadily grown more
 
 36 JOSEPHUS 
 
 intolerable. At first the oppression was mainly fiscal ; 
 then it had sought to crush all political liberty, and 
 finally it had come to outrage the deepest religious 
 feeling and menace the Temple-worship. As Graetz 
 says, " The Jewish people was like a captive, who, con- 
 tinually visited by his jailer, rattles at his fetters with 
 the strength of despair, till he wrenches them 
 asunder." It was not only the freedom of the Jew, 
 but the safety of Judaism that was imperiled by the 
 misrule of a Claudius and a Nero. The war against 
 the Romans was then not merely a struggle for 
 national liberty, but, equally with the wars of the Mac- 
 cabees against the Seleucids, an episode in the more 
 vital conflict between HebraisnJ and paganism, be- 
 tween material force and the ardent passion for reli- 
 gious freedom.
 
 II 
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS TO THE FALL OF 
 JOTAPATA 
 
 Josephus was essentially an apologist, and his writ- 
 ings include not only an apology for his people, but an 
 apology for his own life. In contrast with the greater 
 Jewish writers, he was given to vaunting his own 
 deeds. We have therefore abundant, if not always 
 reliable, information about the chief events of his 
 career. It must always be borne in mind that he 
 had to color the narrative of his own as well as his 
 people's history to suit the tastes and prejudices of 
 the Eoman conqueror. He was born in 37 c. E., the 
 first year of the reign of Gaius Caesar, the lunatic 
 Emperor, who nearly provoked the Jews to the final 
 struggle. Though he is known to history as Josephus 
 Flavius, his proper name was Joseph ben Mattathias, 
 Josephus being the Latinized form of the Hebrew 
 p|D1\ and his patronymic being exchanged, when he 
 went over to the Romans, for the family name of 
 his patrons, Flavius. His father was a priest of the 
 first of the twenty-four orders, named Jehoiarib, 
 and on his mother's side he was connected with the 
 royal house of the Hasmoneans. His genealogy, which 
 he traces back to the time of the Maccabean princes, is
 
 38 JOSEPHUS 
 
 a little vague, and we may suspect that he was not 
 above improving it. But his family was without 
 doubt among the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem, 
 and his father, he says, was " eminent not only on 
 account of his nobility, but even more for his virtue." } 
 He was brought up with his brother Matthias to fit 
 himself for the priestly office, and he received the regu- 
 lar course of Jewish education in the Torah and the 
 tradition. He says in the Antiquities that " only those 
 who know the laws and can interpret the practices of 
 our ancestors, are called educated among the Jews ; " 
 and it is likely that he attended in his boyhood one of 
 the numerous schools that existed in Jerusalem at the 
 time. According to the Talmud there were four hun- 
 dred and eighty synagogues each with a Bet Sefer for 
 teaching the written law and a Bet Talmud for the 
 study of the oral law.* From his silence we may infer 
 that he did not study Greek at this period, and Ara- 
 maic was his natural tongue. He was never able to 
 speak Greek fluently or with sufficient exactness, be- 
 cause, as he says in the Antiquities, " Our own nation 
 does not encourage those who learn the language of 
 many peoples, and so color their discourses with the 
 smoothness of their periods : for they look upon this 
 sort of accomplishment as common, not only to free- 
 men, but to any slave that pleases to learn it."* 
 When, in his middle age, he set himself to write the 
 history of his people in Greek, he was compelled to get 
 
 1 Vita, 2. J Yer. Meg. iii. 1. Ant. XX. xi. 2.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 39 
 
 the help of friends to correct his composition and 
 syntax. 
 
 As to his Hebrew accomplishments, he tells us, with 
 his native immodesty, that he acquired marvelous pro- 
 ficiency in learning, and was famous for his great 
 memory and understanding. When he was fourteen 
 years of age, he continues, such was his fame that the 
 high priests and principal men of the city frequently 
 came to consult him about difficult points of the law. 
 His mature works do not show any profound knowl- 
 edge either of the Halakah or of the Haggadah, so 
 that the statement is not to be taken strictly. It is 
 probably nothing more than a grandiloquent way of 
 saying that he was a precocious child, who impressed 
 his elders. Paul, too, claimed that he was " a Phari- 
 see of the Pharisees, and zealous beyond those of his 
 own age in the Jews' religion," and yet he can hardly 
 be regarded as an authority on the tradition. The 
 autobiography of Josephus, it is pertinent to re- 
 member, was designed to impress the Komans with the 
 greatness of the writer, and its readers were not 
 equipped with the means of criticising his Jewish 
 accomplishments. With the same object of impress- 
 ing the Eomans, Josephus recounts that, when about 
 the age of sixteen, he had a mind to imbue himself 
 with the tenets of the three Jewish parties, the Sad- 
 ducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. 
 
 Elsewhere he describes the teaching of these sects for 
 the benefit of his Roman readers according to a tech- 
 nical classification borrowed from his environment,
 
 40 JOSEPHUS 
 
 t. e. he represents them as three philosophical schools 
 of the Greek type, each holding different views about 
 fate and Providence and the nature of the soul and its 
 immortality. But just as this is demonstrably a mis- 
 leading coloring of the difference between the sections 
 of the Jewish people, so is his attempt to represent that 
 he attended, as a cultured Greek or Eoman of the time 
 would have done, three philosophical colleges. Hejscas 
 compelled by the needs of his audience to present 
 Jewish life in the form of Greco-SoTrmn institutions. 
 however ill it fjts_jhe_mould, and his remarks about 
 sects and schools must always be taken with caution. 
 It is as though a modern writer should describe Juda- 
 ism as a Church, and express its ideas and observances 
 in the language of Christian theology. 
 
 There is, however, no reason to doubt that Josephus 
 made himself acquainted with the tenets of the chief 
 teachers of the time, and he may conceivably have sat 
 at the feet of Eabbi Gamaliel, then the chief sage at 
 Jerusalem. But, anxious to exhibit his catholicity, 
 after professing himself a Pharisee, he says that, not 
 content with these studies, he became for three years a 
 faithful disciple of one Banus, who lived in the desert, 
 and used no other clothing than grew upon trees ? _ate 
 no other food than that which grew~wild, and bathed 
 frequently in cold water both night and day. 1 The 
 extreme hermit form of the religious life was more 
 fashionable in the first century of the Christian era 
 among Gentiles than among Jews, and it is not un- 
 
 1 Vita, 2.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 41 
 
 likely that Josephus is embroidering his idea of life 
 in an Essene community, rather than setting down his 
 actual experience. An Essene he never became, fyut he 
 remained throughout his life very partial to certain 
 forms of the Essene belief, more especially those which 
 coincided with the Greco-Eoman superstitions of the 
 time, such as the literal prediction of future events, 
 the meaning of dreams, the significance of omens, 1 
 These ideas, handed down from primitive Israel, had 
 lived on among the masses of the people, though dis- 
 carded by the learned teachers, and Josephus, rinding 
 them in vogue among his masters, readily professed 
 acceptance of them. 
 
 Abandoning apparently the idea of being a hermit, 
 Josephus at the age of nineteen returned to Jerusa- 
 lem, and began to conduct himself according to the 
 rules of the Pharisee sect, which is akin, he says, to 
 the school of the Stoics. The comparison of the 
 Pharisees with the Stoics is again misleading, and 
 based on nothing more than the formal likeness of 
 their doctrines about Providence. The Pharisees were 
 essentially the party that upheld the whole tradition 
 and the separateness of Israel. They numbered in 
 their ranks the most popular teachers, and politically, 
 though opposed to Rome and all its ways, they coun- 
 seled submission so long as religious liberty was not 
 infringed. It may be that Josephus only professed 
 his attachment to them after his surrender, because, 
 
 a Comp. B. J. II. viii. 12; III. viii. 3; VI. r. 4.
 
 42 JOSEPHUS 
 
 as pacifists and believers in moral as against physical 
 force, they were favorably regarded by the Eomans; 
 but even if as a young and ambitious priest he attached 
 himself to their body early in life in order to gain 
 influence among the people, he was not a representa- 
 tive Pharisee. He obtained a certain acquaintance 
 with the teaching of the Pharisees, and partly shared 
 their political views, though not from the same motives 
 as their true leaders. Yet the very next step in his life 
 that he chronicles marks his outlook as fundamentally 
 different. 
 
 At the age of twenty-six, after seven years in Jeru- 
 salem, during which he exercised his priestly func- 
 tions, he journeyed to Eome. The cause of his voyage, 
 on which he was picturesquely wrecked and had to 
 swim for his life through the night, was the deliver- 
 ance from prison of certain priests closely related to 
 him, who had been sent there as prisoners by Felix, 
 the tyrannical Eoman governor. At Eome, through his 
 acquaintance with Aliturius, an actor of plays, a fa- 
 vorite of Nero, and by birth a Jew, he came into touch 
 with the profligate court. To the genuine Pharisee a 
 Jewish play-actor would have been an abomination. 
 Josephus used his acquaintance to obtain an intro- 
 duction to Poppaea Sabina, the Emperor's wife for the 
 time. Though a by-word for shamelessness of life, 
 she was herself one of " the fearers of the Lord " 
 (cre/Sojuevot), who professed adherence to the Jewish 
 creed without accepting the Jewish law. Josephus 
 won her favor, and through it procured the liberation
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 43 
 
 of the priests. The Imperial city was then at the 
 height of its material magnificence, and must have 
 made an immense impression of power upon the young 
 Jewish aristocrat. Having acquired a lasting admira- 
 tion for Eome and a desire to enter her society and a 
 conviction of her invincibility, he returned to Pales- 
 tine in triumph and with the spirit of an opportu- 
 nist. This at least is the picture he draws of himself, 
 but a more- kindly interpretation might see in the 
 moment of his return the indication of a genuine 
 patriotic feeling. 
 
 When he arrived in Jerusalem, in the year 65 c. E., 
 he found his country seething with rebellion. The 
 crisis soon came to a head. Gessius Florus, who owed 
 his governorship, as Josephus owed the success of 
 his errand, to the favor of the " God-fearing " Pop- 
 paea, roused the people to fury by his pillage of the 
 Temple, and the moderates could no longer hold the 
 masses in check. The Zealots seized the fortress of 
 Antonia, which overlooked the Temple, and, having 
 become masters of the city, murdered the high priest 
 Ananias. Eleazar, whom Josephus, perhaps confus- 
 edly, describes as his son, an intense nationalist among 
 the priests, became the leader in counsel, and sealed 
 the rebellion by persuading the people to discontinue 
 the daily sacrifice offered in the name of the Eoman 
 Emperor. 
 
 At the same time the extermination of the Jews in 
 the Hellenistic cities, Caesarea, Scythopolis, and 
 Damascus, by the infuriated Syrians, who organized
 
 44 JOSEPHUS 
 
 a kind of Palestinian Vespers, convinced the people 
 that they were engaged in a war to the death. The 
 Herodian party, as the royal house and its supporters 
 were called, endeavored to preserve peace, by dwelling 
 on the overpowering might of Eome and the inevitable 
 end of the insurrection, but in vain. In fear the 
 priests withdrew to their duties in the Temple, and 
 did not venture out till the Zealots were for a time 
 dislodged. The Eoman legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, 
 after the defeat of the Romanizing party by the 
 Zealots, himself marched on Jerusalem in the autumn 
 of 66 c. E. with two legions. But he failed ignomini- 
 ously to quell the revolt. The Roman garrison in the 
 city was put to the sword, and the legate, while beating 
 a hasty retreat, was routed in the defiles of Beth- 
 Horon, where two centuries before the Syrian hosts 
 had been decimated by Judas the Maccabee. The two 
 legions were cut to pieces. The fierce valor of the un- 
 trained national levies had broken the serried cohorts 
 of the Roman veterans, and in the unexpectedness of 
 this deliverance the party of rebellion for a time was 
 triumphant among all sections of the Jewish people. 
 
 Even those who had been the most determined 
 Romanizers, such as the high-priestly circle, were in- 
 duced, either by a belief in the chances of success or 
 from a desire to protect themselves by a seeming adher- 
 ence to the national cause, to throw in their lot with 
 the war party. It might have been better for their 
 people, had they, like Agrippa, joined the Romans. 
 Half-hearted at best in their support of the struggle,
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 45 
 
 yet by their wealth and position able at first to obtain 
 a commanding part in the conduct of the war, they 
 used it to temporize with the foe and to dull the edge 
 of the popular feeling. Josephus unfortunately does 
 not enlighten us as to the inner movements in Judea 
 at this crisis. He merely relates that the Sanhedrin 
 became a council of war, and Palestine was divided 
 into seven military districts, over most of which com- 
 manders of the Herodian faction were placed. Joseph 
 the son of Gorion and Ananias the high priest, both 
 members of the moderate party, were chosen as gover- 
 nors of Jerusalem, with a particular charge to repair 
 the walls, and the Zealot leader Eleazar the son of 
 Simon was passed over. 
 
 Josephus himself, though he possessed no military 
 experience, and had apparently taken no part in the 
 opening campaign, was made governor of Lower and 
 Upper Galilee, the most important military post of all ; 
 for Galilee was the bulwark of Judea, and if the 
 Romans could be successfully resisted there, the rebel- 
 lion might hope for victory. It lay in a strategic posi- 
 tion between the Eoman outposts, Ptolemais (the 
 modern Acre) on the coast and Agrippa's kingdom in 
 the east. It was a country made for defense, a country 
 of rugged mountains and natural fastnesses, and in- 
 habited by a hardy and warlike population, which, for 
 half a century, had been in constant insurrection. 
 Thence had come the founders of the Zealots and the 
 still more violent band of the Sicarii, and each town in 
 the region had its popular leader. Josephus was ex-
 
 46 JOSEPHUS 
 
 pected to hold it with its own resources, for little help 
 could be spared from the center of Palestine. Guerrilla 
 fighting was the natural resource of an insurgent peo- 
 ple, which had to win its freedom against well-trained 
 and veteran armies. It had been the method of Judas 
 Maccabaeus against Antiochus amid the hills of Ju- 
 dea. Josephus, however, made no attempt to practise 
 it, and showed no vestige of appreciation of the needs 
 of the case. 
 
 It is difficult to gather the reason of his appoint- 
 
 ^T ^M*^M^ M ^^^^" M ""^^MMfi^^BH^ta M ^^ v ^0^VH^^^^^ BMH ^ M ^^M^M^-MCM^'* 
 
 ment, unless it be that in his writings he deliberately 
 kept back from the Eomans the more enthusiastic' part 
 he had played at the outset of the struggle. So far as 
 his own account goes, neither devotion to the national 
 cause, nor experience, nor prestige, nor power of lead- 
 ership, nor knowledge of the country recommended 
 him. His distinguished birth and his friendship for 
 Eome were hardly sufficient qualifications for the post. 
 The influence of his friend, the ex-high priest Joshua 
 ben Gamala, may have prevailed, and one is fain to 
 surmise that those who sent him, as well as he himself, 
 were anxious to pretend resistance to Eome, but really 
 
 ^ to work for resistance to the rebellion. 
 
 At all events, at the end of the autumn of 67, Jose- 
 phus repaired to his command, taking with him two 
 priests, Joazar and Judas, as representatives of the 
 Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. In the record which he gives 
 of his exploits in the Wars, he says that his first care 
 was to gain the good-will of the people, drill his troops, 
 and prepare the country to meet the threatened in-
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 47 
 
 vasion. In the Life, which he wrote some twenty years 
 later, when he had perforce to cultivate a more com- 
 plete servility of mind, and was anxious to convince 
 the Romans that he was a double-dealing traitor to his 
 country, he represents that he set himself from the 
 beginning to betray the province. The record of his 
 actions points to the conclusion that he fell between 
 the stools of covert treachery and half-hearted loyalty, 
 that he was neither as villainous in design nor as heroic 
 in action as he makes himself out to be. He made 
 some show of preparation at the beginning, but from 
 the moment the Roman army arrived under Vespasian, 
 and he realized that Rome was in earnest, he aban- 
 doned all hope of success, and set himself to make his 
 own position secure with the conqueror. 
 
 The chief cities of Galilee were Sepphoris, situated 
 on the lower spurs of the hills near the plain of Es- 
 draelon, which divides the country from Samaria and 
 Judea ; Tiberias, a city founded by Herod Antipas on 
 the western borders of the Lake of Gennesareth, and 
 Tarichea, also an Herodian foundation, situate prob- 
 ably at the southeast corner of the lake. All these 
 Josephus fortified; and he strengthened with walls 
 other smaller towns and natural fortresses, such as 
 Jotapata, Salamis, and Gamala. 1 He says also that he 
 
 1 B. J. II. xx. 6. His account of his actions in Galilee is, 
 however, from beginning to end, open to question; and 
 the contemporary account of Justus has unfortunately 
 disappeared entirely. It is likely that his rival's nar- 
 rative would have shown him in a better light than his 
 own.
 
 48 JOSEPHUS 
 
 appointed a Sanhedrin of seventy members for the 
 province, and in each town established a court of seven 
 judges, as though he were come to exercise a civil gov- 
 ernment. He did, however, get together an army of 
 more than a hundred thousand young men, and armed 
 them with the old weapons which he had collected. 
 Though he despaired of their standing up against the 
 Romans, he ordered them in the Roman style, appoint- 
 ing a large number of subordinate officers and teaching 
 them the use of signals and a few elementary military 
 movements. His army ultimately consisted of 60,000 
 footmen, 4,500 mercenaries, in whom he put greatest 
 trust, and 600 picked men as his body-guard. He had 
 little cavalry, but as Galilee was a country of hills, this 
 deficiency need not have proved fatal, had he been a 
 strategist or even a loyalist. During the eight months' 
 respite that he enjoyed before the appearance of the 
 Roman army, he spent most of his time in civil feud, 
 and succeeded in dividing the population into two 
 hostile parties. He boasts that, though he took up his 
 command at an age when, if a man has happily es- 
 caped sin, he can scarcely guard himself against 
 slander, he was perfectly honest, and refrained from 
 stealing and peculation l ; but he is at pains to prove 
 that he threw every obstacle in the way of the patriotic 
 party, and did all that an open enemy of the Jews 
 could have done to undermine the defense of the 
 province. 
 
 1 Vita, 15.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 49 
 
 Before his arrival in the north, the leader of the 
 national party was John the son of Levi, a man of 
 Gischala, which was one of the mountain fastnesses in 
 Northern Galilee, now known as Jish, near the town of 
 Safed. 1 Josephus heaps every variety of violent abuse 
 upon him in order, no doubt, to please his patrons. 
 When he introduces him on the scene, he describes 
 him as "a very knavish and cunning rogue, out- 
 doing all other rogues, and without his fellow for 
 wicked practices. He was a ready liar, and yet very- 
 sharp in gaining credit for his fictions. He thought it 
 a point of virtue to deceive, and would delude even 
 those nearest to him. He had an aptitude for thiev- 
 ing," and so forth. Whenever the historian mentions 
 the name of his rival, he rattles his box of abusive 
 epithets until the reader is wearied by the image of the 
 monster conjured up before him. But, unfortunately 
 for his credit, Josephus also records John's deeds, and 
 these reveal him as one who, if at times cruel and in- 
 triguing, yet lived and died for his country, while his 
 enemy was thinking of saving himself. 
 
 It is not surprising then that John, having eyes only 
 for the defense of the land, was not blind to the double- 
 dealing of the priestly governor, who had been sent by 
 the Romanizing party to organize resistance. The first 
 event that brought about a collision between them was 
 the suspicious conduct of Josephus in the matter of 
 
 1 The Hebrew name of the fortress was 2?n fcJ'U, mean- 
 ing "clot of cream"; the place was so called because of 
 the fertility of the soil on which it stands. 
 4
 
 50 JOSEPHUS 
 
 some spoil seized from the steward of King Agrippa 
 and brought to Tarichea. Agrippa had entirely 
 turned his back on the national rising, and was the 
 faithful ally of the Eomans. He was therefore an open 
 enemy, and Tiberias, which had been under his domin- 
 ion, had revolted from him. Josephus upbraided the 
 captors for the violence they had offered to the king, 
 and declared his intention to return the spoil to the 
 owner. A little later he prevented John from destroy- 
 ing the corn in the province stored by the Eomans for 
 themselves. The people were naturally indignant at 
 this conduct, and led by John and another Zealot, 
 Jesus the son of Sapphias, the governor of Tiberias, 
 and by Justus of the same city, who was afterwards to 
 be a rival historian, they rose against Josephus. With 
 stratagems worthy of a better cause he evaded this on- 
 slaught. 
 
 More briefly in the Wars, and in the Life at weari- 
 some length, Josephus tells a tale of intrigue and 
 counter-intrigue, mutual attempts at assassination, 
 wiles and stratagems to undermine the power of each 
 other, which took place between him and John. The 
 city of Tarichea was his stronghold, Tiberias the hot- 
 bed of the movement against him. The part he pro- 
 fesses to have played is so extraordinary in its mean- 
 ness that we are fain to believe that it is largely fiction, 
 composed to show that he was only driven in the end 
 by danger of his life to fight against the sacred power 
 of Rome. However that may be, John reported his 
 doings to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, and that body,
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 51 
 
 which was now, it seems, in the control of the Phari- 
 sees and Zealots, sent a deputation to recall him. 
 Simon, the celebrated head of the Sanhedrin and leader 
 of the national party, had pressed for the dismissal of 
 Josephus. 1 Ananias, the ex-high priest and Sadducee, 
 had at first been his champion, but he had been over- 
 borne. The deputation consisted of two Pharisees, 
 Jonathan and Ananias, and two priests, Joazar and 
 Simon. Warned by his friends in Jerusalem of their 
 coming, Josephus had all the passes watched, seized 
 the embassy, and recaptured the four cities that had 
 revolted from him : Sepphoris, Gamala, Gischala, and 
 Tiberias. According to the account in the Wars, the 
 cities revolted again, and were recaptured by similar 
 stratagems; and when the disturbances in Galilee 
 were quieted in this way, the people, ceasing to prose- 
 cute their civil dissensions, betook themselves to make 
 preparations for the war against the Romans. The 
 invasion had begun in earnest, and Josephus, fortified, 
 as he said, by a dream, which told him not to be 
 afraid, because he was to fight with the Romans, and 
 would live happily thereafter, decided for the time not 
 to abandon his post. 
 
 Josephus had displayed his administrative talents 
 in these eight months of peaceful government by losing 
 all that had been gained in the four months of the suc- 
 
 1 It is notable that this is the only reference in the work 
 of Josephus to the great Rabbi; the name of his successor 
 in the headship of the Sanhedrin, Johanan ben Zakkai, 
 does not occur even once.
 
 52 JOSEPHUS 
 
 cessful rebellion at Jerusalem. He now had an oppor- 
 tunity of displaying his military abilities. In the 
 spring of 67 c. E., Flavins Vespasian, the veteran com- 
 mander of the legions in Germany and Britain, who, 
 on the defeat of Cestius Gallus, had been chosen by 
 Xero to conduct the Jewish campaign, brought his 
 army of four legions from Antioch to Ptolemais. He 
 was met there by King Agrippa, who brought a large 
 force of auxiliaries, and by a deputation of citizens 
 from Sepphoris, the chief city of Galilee, who tendered 
 their submission and invited him to send a garrison. 
 Josephus, though he knew of the city's Eomanizing 
 leanings, had negligently or deliberately failed to 
 occupy it, so that the place was lost without a blow. 
 He made a feeble effort to recapture it, for appearance 
 sake it would seem, and then, though he had an un- 
 limited choice of favorable positions, and the Roman 
 forces were not very large at the time, he abandoned 
 the attempt of meeting the enemy in the field. Titus 
 arrived from Alexandria, with two more legions, the 
 fifth and the tenth, and then the Roman army, num- 
 bering with auxiliaries 60,000 men, set out from Ptole- 
 mais, and proceeded to occupy Galilee. 
 
 The Jewish forces were encamped on the hills above 
 Sepphoris. Josephus describes the wonderful array 
 and order of the Roman army on the march. The 
 sight seems to have led a large part of his army to run 
 away. He himself, when he saw that he had not an 
 army sufficient to engage the enemy, despaired of the 
 success of the war, and determined to place himself aa
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 53 
 
 far as he could out of danger. In this inspiring mood 
 he abandoned the rest of the country, sent a dispatch to 
 Jerusalem demanding help, and threw himself into 
 the fortress of Jotapata, situated on the crest of a 
 mountain in Northern Galilee, which he chose as the 
 most fit for his security. Vespasian, hearing of this 
 step, and, as Josephus modestly suggests, " supposing 
 that, could he only get Josephus into his power, he 
 would have conquered all Judea," straightway laid 
 siege to the town (lyar 16). For forty-two days the 
 place was besieged, and during that period every re- 
 source that heroic resistance could suggest, according 
 to the narrative of its commandant, was exhausted. 
 The height of the wall was raised to meet the Eoman 
 embankments, provisions were brought in by soldiers 
 disguised in sheep-skins, the Eoman works were de- 
 stroyed by fire, boiling oil was poured on the assailants, 
 and finally the city was not stormed till the garrison 
 was worn out with famine and fatigue. But, as has 
 been pointed out, the details recorded are "the com- 
 monplaces of poliorcetics," and may have been bor- 
 rowed by Josephus from some military text-book and 
 neatly applied. Jotapata fell on the first day of Tam- 
 muz, and whatever the heroism of his army, the general 
 did not shine in the last days of his command or in the 
 mariner of his surrender. Suspected by his men and 
 threatened by them with death, he was unable to give 
 himself up openly. He took refuge with some of his 
 comrades in a deep pit, where they were discovered 
 by an old woman, who informed the Eomans. Ves-
 
 54 JOSEPHUS 
 
 pasian, who, we are again told, believed that, if he cap- 
 tured Josephus, the greater part of the war would be 
 over, sent one Nicanor, well known to the Jewish com- 
 mandant, to take him. Josephus, professing propheti- 
 cal powers, offered to surrender, and quieted his con- 
 science by a secret prayer to God, which is a sad com- 
 pound of cant and cowardice : 
 
 Since it pleaseth Thee, who hast created the Jewish 
 nation, now to bring them low, and since their good for- 
 tune is gone over to the Romans, and since Thou hast 
 chosen my soul to foretell what is to come to pass here- 
 after, I willingly surrender, and am content to live. I 
 solemnly protest that I do not go over to the Romans as a 
 deserter, but as Thy minister. 
 
 It may be that Josephus really believed he had pro- 
 phetic powers, and thought he was imitating the great 
 prophets of Israel and Judah who had proclaimed the 
 uselessness of resistance to Assyria and Babylon. But 
 they, while denouncing the wickedness of the people, 
 had shared their lot with them. And Josephus, who 
 weakly sought a refuge for himself after defeat, re- 
 sembles rather the prophets whom Jeremiah de- 
 nounced: "They speak a vision of their own heart, 
 and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say still 
 unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said, Ye 
 shall have peace; and they say unto everyone that 
 walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No 
 evil shall come upon you." 1 His comrades however 
 prevented him from giving himself up, and called on 
 him to play a braver part and die with them, each by 
 
 'Jer. 23: 16-17.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 55 
 
 his own hand. He put them off by talking philosoph- 
 ically, as he has it, about the sin of suicide, a euphe- 
 mism for a collection of commonplaces on the duty 
 of preserving their lives. But when this enraged 
 them, he bethought him of another device, and pro- 
 posed that they should cast lots to kill each other. 
 They assented, and by Divine Providence he was left 
 to the last with one other, whom he persuaded to break 
 his oath and live likewise. 1 Having thus escaped, he 
 was led by Nicanor to Vespasian, the whole Eoman 
 army gathering around to gaze on the hero. Continu- 
 ing his prophetical function, when he found that he 
 was like to be sent to Nero, he announced to Vespasian, 
 " Thou art Caesar and Emperor, thou, and this thy 
 son .... thou art not only lord over me, but over 
 the land and the sea and all mankind." The Eoman 
 general was incredulous, till, hearing that his prisoner 
 had foretold the length of the siege of Jotapata a 
 prophecy which, of course, he had the ability to fulfil 
 and further, on the report of the death of Nero, hav- 
 ing conceived the possibility of becoming Emperor, he 
 had regard to the Jewish prophet, and, without setting 
 him at liberty, bestowed favors on him, and made him 
 easy about his future. Such was the end of the mili- 
 tary career of Josephus. 
 
 1 A charitable explanation of this self-debasing account 
 of Josephus is that he was driven to invent some story to 
 extenuate his resistance to the Romans, and had to 
 blacken his reputation as a patriot to save his skin. The 
 fact that he was kept prisoner some time by Vespasian 
 suggests that he was not so big a traitor as he pretends.
 
 56 JOSEPHUS 
 
 The Talmud relates that Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, 
 the head of the Pharisees, was carried in a coffin out- 
 side the walls of Jerusalem by his disciples, and was 
 brought to the Roman camp, where he hailed Vespa- 
 sian as Emperor and Caesar, and thereby gained his 
 favor. If not apocryphal, the event must have hap- 
 pened in 69 c. E., when the Roman commander was 
 generally expected to aim at the Imperial throne, then 
 the object of strife between rival commanders. The 
 rabbi belonged to the peace party, and from the begin- 
 ning had opposed the war. And though his action was 
 disapproved by the later generations, it was justified 
 by his subsequent conduct ; for it was he who, by found- 
 ing the famous college at Jabneh, kept alive the Jewish 
 spirit after the fall of the nation. For him surrender 
 was a valid means to the preservation of the nation. 
 The action of Josephus hardly bears the same justifi- 
 cation. His desire for self-preservation was natural 
 enough, but his manner of effecting it was not honor- 
 able. He was a general who, having taken a lead in the 
 struggle for independence, had seen all his men fall, 
 and had at the end invited the last of his comrades to 
 kill each other, and he saved his life by sacrificing 
 his honor. His mind was from the beginning of the 
 struggle subjugated to Rome, but unhappily he ac- 
 cepted the most responsible post in the national 
 defense and betrayed it. His address to Vespasian was 
 mere flattery, designed to impose on a superstitious 
 man's credulity ; for the ear of Vespasian, says Meri- 
 vale, " was always open to pretenders to supernatural
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 57 
 
 knowledge." Lastly Josephus used his safety, not for 
 the purpose of preserving the Jewish heritage, but for 
 personal ends. He became a flunkey of the Flavian 
 house, and straightway started on the transformation 
 from a Jewish priest and soldier into a Roman court- 
 ier and literary hireling. Hard circumstances com- 
 pelled him to choose between a noble and an ignoble 
 part, between heroic action and weak submission. He 
 was a mediocre man, and chose the way that was not 
 heroic and glorious. Posterity gained something by 
 his choice ; his own reputation was fatally marred by it.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS FROM THE TIME 
 OF HIS SUEEENDEE 
 
 Josephus was little more than thirty years old at the 
 time of his surrender. At an age when men usually 
 begin to realize their ambition and ideal, his whole 
 life's course was changed: he had to abandon all his 
 old associations, and accommodate himself to a differ- 
 ent and indeed a hostile society. Henceforth he was a 
 liege of the Eoman conqueror, and had to submit to 
 be Eomanized not only in name but in spirit. His con- 
 dition was indeed a thinly-disguised servitude. The 
 Romans were an imperious as well as an Imperial 
 people, and though in some circumstances they were 
 ready to spare the lives of those who yielded, they re- 
 quired of them a surrender of opinion and an abase- 
 ment of soul. For the rest of hi a ypjira, wfrich compre- 
 hended the whole of his literary activity, Josephus was 
 not therefore a free man. Ik- acted, spoke, and wrote 
 to order, compelled, whenever called upon, to do the 
 will of his masters. His legal condition was first that 
 of a libertu-s (a freedman) of Vespasian, and as such 
 he owed by law certain definite obligations to his 
 patron's family. But the moral subservience of the 
 favored prisoner of a subjugated people must have been 
 a far profounder thing than the legal obligation aris-
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 59 
 
 ing from his status; and this enforced moral and 
 mental subservience is a cardinal point to be remem- 
 bered in forming a judgment upon Josephus. His 
 expressed opinions are often not the revelation of his 
 own mind, hut the galling tribute which he was com- 
 pelled to pay for his life. And apart from the involun- 
 tary and undeliberate adoption of Eoman standards, 
 which, living isolated from Jewish life in Eome, he 
 could not escape, he had in writing, and no doubt in 
 conversation, deliberately and consciously to assume 
 the deepest-seated of the Eoman prejudices towards 
 his own people. Liberty has been defined as the power 
 of a man to call his soul his own. And in that sense 
 Josephus emphatically did not possess liberty, ^e^ 
 must be on our guard, therefore, against, ye, g"ar diner 
 him as an independent. histor,ia.n T much less as writing 
 from an independent Jewish point of view. From the 
 time of his surrender till his death he lived and wrote 
 as the client oi the Flavian house, and all his works 
 had to pass thejlmperial_cgnsorship. 
 
 His domestic life is characteristic of his subserv- 
 ience. At the bidding of Vespasian, when in the 
 Eoman camp at Caesarea, he divorced his first wife, 
 who was locked up in Jerusalem during the siege. 
 Though by Jewish law it was forbidden to a priest to 
 marry a captive woman, he took as his second wife a 
 Jewess that had been brought into the Eoman camp. 
 Having no children by her, he divorced her after a 
 year, and married again at Alexandria. By his third 
 wife he had three sons, but with a Eoman's carelessness
 
 60 JOSEPHUS 
 
 of the marriage bond he divorced her late in life, and 
 married finally a noble Jewess of Crete, by whom he 
 had two more sons, Justus and Simon Agrippa. His 
 last two wives, be it noted, came from Hellenistic- 
 Jewish communities, and were doubtless able to assist 
 him in acquiring Greek. 
 
 The public as well as the domestic life of Josephus 
 was controlled by the Eoman commander. Till the 
 end of the Jewish struggle it followed the progress of 
 the Eoman arms. He continued to play an active part 
 in the war, not, however, as a leader of the Jews, but 
 as the adviser of their enemies. He was attached to 
 the staff of Titus, and after witnessing the fall of the 
 two fortresses of Galilee, Gamala and Gischala, which 
 held out bravely under John after the capture of Jota- 
 pata, he accompanied the Eoman at the end of the 
 year 68 to Alexandria. There he spent a year, till 
 a change of fortune came to him. 
 
 During the year 68, Vespasian captured the two 
 chief cities which the Jewish national party held to the 
 east side of the Jordan, Gadara and Gerasa. He then 
 prepared to lay siege to Jerusalem. But hearing of 
 the death of Nero and of the chaos at Eome that 
 followed it, he stayed operations to await events in 
 Italy. In the following year, largely by the aid of the 
 Jewish apostate Tiberius Alexander, he secured the 
 allegiance of all the Eastern legions, and was pro- 
 claimed Emperor. Three other generals laid claim 
 to the same dignity, under the same title of armed 
 force, but in the end Vespasian's friends in Italy made
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 61 
 
 themselves masters of Rome, and he repaired himself 
 to the capital and donned the purple. Josephus was re- 
 warded with his complete freedom, and assumed hence- 
 forth the family name of his Imperial patrons. When, 
 at the end of the year 69, Titus was appointed by his 
 father to finish the war, he accompanied him hack to 
 Palestine. In the eighteen months' respite that had 
 been vouchsafed to them, the Jews had spent their 
 energy and undermined their powers of resistance by 
 internecine strife. According to the account in the 
 Wars, which unfortunately is the only full record we 
 have of events, John of Gischala, fleeing to Jerusalem 
 after the fall of the Galilean fortresses, roused the 
 Zealots against the high priest Ananias, who was 
 directing the Jewish policy towards submission to 
 Eome. Ananias, who was of the same party as 
 Josephus, seems to have come to the conclusion that 
 resistance was hopeless, and he was anxious to make 
 terms. John called in to his aid the half-savage Idu- 
 means, who had joined the Jewish rebellion against 
 Eome. They entered the city, and, possessing them- 
 selves of the Temple mount, spread havoc. The Tem- 
 ple itself ran with blood, and 8500 dead bodies, among 
 them that of the high priest, defiled its precincts. 1 
 Josephus, who, to suit the Eoman taste, identifies 
 religion and ritual, declares that the fall of the city 
 and the ruin of the nation are to be dated from that 
 
 B. J. IV.vi. 1.
 
 62 JOSEPHUS 
 
 day, and upon Ananias he passes a eulogy that is 
 likewise written with an eye to Eoman predilections : 
 
 He was a prodigious lover of liberty and of democracy; 
 he ever preferred the public welfare before his own ad- 
 vantage, and he was thoroughly sensible that the Rom- 
 ans were invincible. And I cannot but think that it was 
 because God had doomed the city to destruction on 
 account of its pollution, and was resolved to purge His 
 sanctuary with fire, that He cut off thus its great 
 protector. 
 
 For the better part of a year, according to our his- 
 torian, the Zealots maintained a reign of terror, and 
 the various parties fought against one another in the 
 Holy City as fiercely as the Girondists and Jacobins of 
 the French Ee volution. But on the approach of Titus 
 they abandoned their strife and united to resist the 
 foe. The Eoman general brought with him four 
 legions, the fifth, tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth, be- 
 sides a large following of auxiliaries, and his whole 
 force amounted to 80,000 men. As head of his staff 
 came Tiberius Alexander, the renegade nephew of 
 Philo and formerly procurator of Judea. Josephus 
 also was on the besieger's staff possibly he was an of- 
 ficer of the body-guard (praefectus praetorio) and 
 was employed to bring his countrymen to reason. Him- 
 self convinced, almost from the moment when he took 
 up arms, of the certainty of Eome's ultimate victory, 
 and doubly convinced now, partly from superstitious 
 fatalism, partly from a need for extenuating his own 
 submission, he wasted his eloquence in efforts to make
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 63 
 
 them surrender. He knew that within the besieged 
 city there was a considerable Bomanizing faction (in- 
 cluding his own father), and either he believed, or he 
 had to pretend to believe, that he could bring over the 
 mass to their way of thinking. On various occasions 
 during the siege he was sent to the walls to summon 
 the defenders to lay down their arms. He enlarged 
 each time on the invincible power of Eome, on the 
 hopelessness of resistance, on the clemency of Titus if 
 they would yield, and on the terrible fate which would 
 befall them and the Temple if they fought to the 
 bitter end. What must have specially aroused the fury 
 of the Zealots was his insistence that the Divine Provi- 
 dence was now on the side of the Eomans, and that in 
 resisting they were sinning against God. It is little 
 wonder that on one occasion when making these ha- 
 rangues he was struck by a dart, and that his father 
 was placed in prison by the Zealots. Indeed it says 
 much for the tolerance of those whom he constantly 
 reviles as the most abandoned scoundrels and the most 
 cruel tyrants that they did not do him and his family 
 greater hurt. 
 
 Titus, after beating back desperate attacks by the 
 Jews, fixed his camp on Mount Scopas, by the side of 
 the Mount of Olives, to the north of the city, and, 
 abandoning the idea of taking the city fortress by 
 storm, prepared to beleaguer it in regular form. The 
 Jews were not prepared for a siege. Josephus and 
 the Rabbis * agree that the supplies of corn had been 
 
 1 Comp. Abot de Rabbi Nathan, vi., ed. Schechter, p. 32.
 
 64 JOSEPHUS 
 
 burnt by the Zealots during the civil disturbances ; and 
 as the arrival of Titus coincided with the Passover, 
 myriads of people, who had come up from all parts of 
 the country and the Diaspora to celebrate the festival, 
 were crowded within its walls. It is estimated that 
 their number exceeded two and a half million. The 
 capital was a hard place to capture. Josephus, fol- 
 lowing probably a Eoman authority, gives an account 
 of the fortifications of Jerusalem from the point of 
 view of the besieger, which is confirmed in large part 
 by modern research. 1 On the southeast and west the 
 city was unapproachable by reason of the sheer ravines 
 of Kedron and Hinnom, overlooked by almost perpen- 
 dicular precipices, which surrounded it. It was vul- 
 nerable therefore only on the north, where the two 
 heights on which it was built were connected with the 
 main ridge of the Judean hills ; and here it was forti- 
 fied with three walls. The outermost, which was built 
 by Agrippa I, encompassed the new quarter of Bezetha, 
 which lay outside the Temple mount to the northeast. 
 The second wall encompassed the part of the city on 
 the Temple Mount and reached as far as the Tower 
 of Antonia, which overlooked and protected the 
 Temple. The third or innermost wall was the oldest, 
 and encompassed the whole of the ancient city where 
 it was open, including the hill Acra or Zion on the 
 southeast, which was divided from Mount Moriah by 
 the cleft known as the Tyropoeon, or cheese-market. 
 Beyond this hill there was another eminence sloping 
 
 1 B. J. V. iv. 1.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 65 
 
 gradually to the north, till it dropped into the valley 
 of Jehoshaphat with an escarpment of two hundred 
 feet. 
 
 Thus the rampart surrounded the two hills with a 
 continuous line of defense, and the three quarters of 
 the city were separated from each other by distinct 
 walls, so that each could hold out when the other had 
 fallen. The walls were strengthened with several 
 towers, of which the most important were Psephinus, 
 on the third wall at the northwest corner, Hippicus, 
 on the old wall, which was opposite Phasaelus, and 
 Mariamne. But the strongest, largest, and most beau- 
 tiful fortress in Jerusalem was the Temple itself. It 
 was not merely the visible center of Judaism, it was 
 the citadel of Judea. As each successive court rose 
 higher than the last, the " Mountain of the House " 
 itself stood on the highest point of the inclosure. The 
 Temple was guarded by the tower of Antonia, situated 
 at the corner of the two cloisters, upon a rock fifty 
 cubits high, overlooking a precipice. Like the other 
 towers, Antonia was built by Herod, and manifested 
 his love of largeness and strength. Within these for- 
 tifications there were eleven thousand men under 
 Simon, and not more than thirty thousand trained 
 soldiers under John, to pit against eighty thousand 
 Roman veterans; but of the two and a half million 
 people who, it is calculated, were shut up in the city, 
 thousands were ready at any moment to sally upon the 
 besiegers and lay down their lives for their beloved 
 sanctuary.
 
 66 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 Within the city, however, there were also a number 
 of persons wavering in their desire for resistance and 
 anxious to find a favorable opportunity of going over 
 to the Romans. The leaders of the high-priestly party 
 had been killed by the Zealots, but their followers re- 
 mained to hamper the defense of the city. If Josephus 
 is to be believed, during the respite of the Passover 
 festival at the beginning of the siege, while the Rom- 
 ans were preparing their approaches and siege works, 
 the party strife again broke out. Eleazar opened the 
 gates of the Temple to admit the people for the festival, 
 but John, taking treacherous advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity, led his men in with arms concealed beneath 
 their garments, put his opponents to the sword, and 
 seized the sanctuary. Josephus further represents that 
 throughout the siege Simon and John, while resisting 
 the Romans and defending different parts of the walls, 
 were still engaged in their internecine strife, " and 
 did everything that the besiegers could desire them to 
 do."* 
 
 The story has not the stamp of probability, and it is 
 more likely that Josephus is distorting the jealousies 
 of the two commanders into the dimensions of civil 
 strife. Anyhow, the resistance which the Jews offered 
 to the Romans showed the stubbornness of despair, or 
 what the historian calls " their natural endurance in 
 misfortune." At every step the legionaries were 
 checked : in pitching their camp, in making their 
 earthworks, in bringing up their machines; and fre- 
 
 1 B. J. V. vi.
 
 quently desperate sallies were made by the defenders 
 upon the Roman entrenchments. Xevertheless, after 
 fifteen days the first wall was captured, and in five 
 days more the second was taken. By a desperate sally 
 the besieged recovered it for a little, but were again 
 driven back by superior numbers and force. Josephus 
 is fond of contrasting the different tempers of the two 
 armies : on the one side power and skill, on the other 
 boldness and the courage born of despair; here the 
 habit of conquering, there intense national ardor. 
 
 After the capture of the second wall, he was sent to 
 parley with the besieged, and urged, as he had done be- 
 fore, the invincible power of his masters. 1 " And evi- 
 dent it is," he added with his renegade's theology, 
 " that fortune is on all hands gone over to them, and 
 that God, who has shifted dominion from nation to 
 nation, is now settled in Italy." 5 When his address 
 was received with scorn, he proceeded, according to his 
 account, to lecture the people from their ancient his- 
 tory, in order to prove that they had never been suc- 
 cessful in aggressive warfare. " Arms were never 
 given to our nation, but we are always given up to be 
 fought against and taken." The Zealots' desecration 
 of the Temple deprived them of Divine help, and it 
 
 1 B. J. V. ix. 3. 
 
 2 We are reminded of the saying of Rabbi Akiba some 
 half-century later. When asked where God was to be 
 sought now that the Temple was destroyed, he replied, 
 "In the great city of Rome" (Yer. Taanit, 69a). But 
 the Rabbinical utterance had a very different meaning 
 from the plea of Josephus.
 
 68 JOSEPHUS 
 
 was madness to suppose that God would be well-dis- 
 posed to the wicked. Had He not shown favor to 
 Titus and performed miracles in his aid ? Did not the 
 springs of Siloam run more plentifully for the Eoman 
 general? All his appeals had no effect, and though 
 some faint-hearted persons deserted, the multitude 
 held firm, and the siege was pressed on more vigorously 
 than ever. A wall of circumvallation was built round 
 the city, and the horrors of starvation increased daily. 
 Between the months of Xisan and Tammuz one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand corpses were carried out of the 
 town. 1 Josephus expatiates on the terrible suffering, 
 and again and again he denounces the iniquity of the 
 Zealots, who continued the resistance. " Xo age had a 
 generation more fruitful in wickedness; they con- 
 fessed that they were the slaves, the scum, the spurious 
 and abortive offspring of our nation." John com- 
 mitted the heinous sacrilege of using the oil preserved 
 in the Temple vessels for the starving soldiers. " I 
 suppose," says the ex-priest writing in the Eoman 
 palace, " that had the Romans made any longer delay 
 in attacking these abandoned men, the city would 
 either have been swallowed up by the ground opening 
 on them, or been swept away by a deluge, or de- 
 stroyed as Sodom was destroyed, since it had brought 
 forth a generation even more godless than those that 
 suffered such punishments." 2 
 
 Famine and weariness were breaking down the 
 strength of the Jews, and, after fierce resistance, the 
 
 1 B. J. V. xiii. 7. B. J. V. x. and xiil.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 69 
 
 tower of Antonia was captured and razed to the 
 ground. Josephus adds another chapter to detail the 
 horrors of the famine, in which he recounts the story 
 of the mother eating her child, which occurs also in 
 the Midrash. 1 The Eomans, he tells us, were filled 
 with a religious loathing of their foes on account of 
 their sins in violating the Temple and eating for- 
 bidden food, and Titus excused himself for the suffer- 
 ings he caused, on the gound that, as he had given the 
 Jews the chance of securing peace and liberty, they 
 had brought the evil on themselves. Slowly but surely 
 the Eomans gained a footing within the Temple pre- 
 cinct ; inch by inch John was driven back, and on the 
 Ninth of Ab the sanctuary was stormed. A torch, 
 hurled probably by the hand of Titus (see below, p. 
 128), set the cloisters alight, and the fire spread till 
 the whole house was involved. The crowning catas- 
 trophe, the burning of the Holy of Holies, happened 
 on the following day. 
 
 Josephus remained in the Eoman camp throughout 
 the siege, advising Titus at each step how he might 
 proceed. After the fall of the Temple he witnessed the 
 last desperate struggle, when a half-starved remnant 
 of the defenders " looked straight into death without 
 flinching." A great modern writer sees in this un- 
 quenchable passion of the Zealots for liberty a sub- 
 lime type of steadfastness 2 ; but Josephus, who after 
 
 *Ekah R. 65o. 
 
 "George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such.
 
 70 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the fall of the Temple had made another unavailing 
 effort to persuade them to lay down their arms, again 
 pours forth his abuse upon those who fought against 
 the sacred might of Eome. Over a million had 
 perished in the siege, and less than one hundred thou- 
 sand were captured, of whom only forty thousand were 
 preserved. His favor with Titus enabled him to re- 
 deem from captivity his brother and a large number 
 of his friends and acquaintances and one hundred and 
 ninety women and children. 1 His own estates near 
 Jerusalem having been taken for a military colony, 
 he received liberal compensation in another part of 
 Judea. From the victor he also obtained a scroll 
 of the law. 
 
 It is not certain whether he accompanied " the gen- 
 tle Titus " through Syria after the fall of the city and 
 the razing of its walls. The victor's progress was 
 marked at each stopping-place by the celebration of 
 games, where thousands of young Jewish captives were 
 made to kill each other, " butchered to make a Eoman 
 holiday " and feast the eyes of the conqueror and 
 the Herodian ally and his spouse. But he certainly 
 witnessed at Eome the triumph of the Flavii, father 
 and son, and gazed on the shame of his country, 
 when its most holy monuments were carried by the 
 noblest of the captives through the streets amid the 
 applause and ribald jeers of a Eoman crowd. Josephus 
 
 1 Vita, 75.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 71 
 
 enlarges with apparent apathy on the procession, which 
 is commemorated and made vivid down to our own 
 day by the arch in the Eoman Forum, through which 
 no Jew in the Middle Ages would pass. He records, 
 too, that Vespasian built a Temple of Peace, in which 
 he stored the golden vessels taken from the Jewish 
 sanctuary, and put up the whole of Judea for sale as 
 his private property. 1 Josephus himself was housed 
 in the royal palace, and it does not appear that he ever 
 returned to Palestine. The tenth legion had been 
 left on the site of Jerusalem as a permanent Eoman 
 garrison, and a fortified camp was built for it on the 
 northern hill. " The legions swallowed her up and 
 idolaters possessed her." A clacun selon ses oeuvres 
 is the comment of Salvador, the Franco-Jewish his- 
 torian (fl. 1850), comparing the gilded servitude of 
 Josephus with the fate of the patriots of Jerusalem; 
 and another recent historian, Graetz, has contrasted 
 the picture of Jeremiah uttering his touching laments 
 over the ruins at the fall of the first Temple with the 
 position of Josephus pouring out his fulsome adula- 
 tion of the destroyer at the fall of the second. 
 
 Henceforth Josephus lived, an exile from his coun- 
 try and his countrymen, in the retinue of the Caesars, 
 and entered on his career as his people's historian. 
 But he was never allowed to forget his dependence. 
 His first work was an account of the Eoman war, in 
 
 1 B. J. VII. vi. 6.
 
 72 JOSEPHUS 
 
 which he vilified the patriots to extenuate his own 
 surrender and his master's cruelty. It is true that he 
 afterwards composed an elaborate apology for his 
 people in the form of a history in twenty volumes, 
 which may be considered as a kind of palliation for the 
 evil he had done them in action. It was more pos- 
 sible to refute the Eoman prejudices based on utter 
 ignorance of Jewish history, than the prejudices based 
 on their narrowness of mind. But even here the 
 writer has often to accommodate himself to a pagan 
 standpoint, which could not appreciate Hebrew sub- 
 limity. When he wrote the Antiquities, his mind was 
 already molded in Greco-Eoman form, and where he 
 seeks to glorify, he not seldom contrives to degrade. 
 His works are a striking example of inward slavery in 
 outward freedom, for by dint of breathing the foreign 
 atmosphere and imbibing foreign notions he had be- 
 come incapable of presenting his people's history in its 
 true light. He had been granted full Roman citizen- 
 ship, and received a literary pension. Still he was not 
 loved by other courtiers as worthy as himself, and he 
 had frequently to defend himself against the charges 
 of his enemies. In the reign of Vespasian, after the 
 Zealot rising in Gyrene had been put down, the leader, 
 Jonathan, who was brought as a prisoner to Borne, 
 charged Josephus before the Emperor with having sent 
 him both weapons and money. The story was not be- 
 lieved, and the informer was put to death. After that, 
 Josephus relates, "when they that envied my good
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 73 
 
 fortune did frequently bring censure against me, by 
 God's Providence I escaped them all." 
 
 He remained in favor under Titus and Domitian, 
 who in turn succeeded their father in the purple. 
 Domitian indeed, though he persecuted the Jews, and 
 laid new fiscal burdens upon them, punished the ac- 
 cusers of Josephus, and made his estate in Judea tax- 
 free, and the Emperor's wife, Domitia, also showed 
 him kindness. But perhaps the amazing and pathetic 
 servility of the Life is to be explained by fear of 
 the vainglorious despot, whose hand was heavy on 
 all intellectual work. Historical writers suffered most 
 under his oppression, and it may have been necessary 
 to Josephus to make out that he had been a traitor. It 
 may appear more to his credit as a courtier than as a 
 Jew that the enemy of his people was friendly towards 
 him. But his position must have been perilous during 
 the black reign of the tyrant, who rivaled Nero for 
 maniac cruelty. His chief patron was one Epaphro- 
 ditus, by his name a Greek, perhaps to be identi- 
 fied with a celebrated librarian and scholar, to whom 
 he dedicated his Antiquities and the books Against 
 Apion. He lived on probably 1 till the beginning of 
 
 1 It has, however, been suggested that the date of 
 Agrippa's death, which is recorded in the Life, was 
 really 95 c. E., instead of 103 c. E., as is usually accepted; If 
 that is so, Josephus may not have outlived the black 
 reign of Domitian, which lasted till 97 c. E. See J. H. 
 Hart, s. v. Josephus, in Encycl. Brit, llth ed.
 
 74 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the second century, through the short but tranquil 
 rule of N"erva, when there was a brief interlude of 
 tolerance and intellectual freedom, into the reign of 
 Trajan, who was to deal his people injuries as deep as 
 those Titus had inflicted. It is uncertain whether he 
 survived to witness the horrors of the desperate rising 
 of the Jews, which sealed their national doom through- 
 out the Diaspora. At least he did not survive to de- 
 scribe it. His last work that has come down to us is 
 the Life, whuflT Is an _ap"'"ffflf-^ pi>hlet, perversely 
 self-vilifyiii^. in yrhinh TIP sought to refute the accusa- 
 tion of his rival Justus of Tiberias, that he had taken 
 a commanding part in the war against the Romans in 
 Galilee, and had been the guiding spirit of the Re- 
 bellion. 
 
 /The Life is the least creditable of Josephus' works ; 
 but, as we have seen, it was wrung from him under 
 duress, and cannot be taken as a genuine revelation of 
 his mind. It is not a full autobiography; save for a 
 short Prologue and a short Epilogue, it deals exclu- 
 sively with the author's conduct in Galilee prior to the 
 campaign of Vespasian, and it differs materially in 
 political color as well as in the narrative of facts from 
 the account of the same period in the Wars. In the 
 earlier work his object had been to excuse his country- 
 men for their revolt, and at the same time to show 
 the ability with which he had served their true inter- 
 ests, as the representative of the party that sought 
 to preserve the nation at the sacrifice of its independ-
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 75 
 
 ence. But in the later work he is writing not a parti- 
 san but a personal apology, composed when his life was 
 in danger, and when he no longer was anxious to save 
 appearances with his countrymen. And he devoted his 
 ingenuity to showing that throughout the events in 
 Galilee he was the friend of Rome, seeking under the 
 guise of resistance to smooth the way for the in- 
 vaders and deliver the gates of Palestine into their 
 hands. That he had so to demean himself is the most 
 pathetic commentary on the bitter position which he 
 was called on to endure after twenty years of servile 
 life. The work was published or reissued after the 
 death of King Agrippa, which took place in 103 c. E., 
 and is recorded in it. 1 Agrippa was the last of the 
 Herodians to rule, and with his death the last part of 
 Palestine that had the outward show of independence 
 was absorbed into the Roman Empire. But though the 
 whole of the Jewish temporal sovereignty was shat- 
 tered before his last days, Josephus may have consoled 
 himself with the progressive march of Judaism in the 
 capital city of the conqueror. 
 
 It may be put down to the credit of Josephus that 
 amid the court society at Rome he to the end professed 
 loyalty to his religion, and that he did not complete his 
 political desertion by religious apostasy. His loyalty 
 indeed is less meritorious than might seem at first 
 sight. The Romans generally were tolerant of creeds 
 and cults, and the ceremonial of Judaism, especially its 
 
 1 See note above, p. 73.
 
 76 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Sabbath, appealed to many of them. Within the po- 
 moerium (limits), of the ancient city none but the city 
 gods might be worshiped, but in Greater Eome there 
 were numerous synagogues. In the time of Pompey, an 
 important Jewish community existed in the cosmopoli- 
 tan capital of the Empire, and later we have records of 
 a number of congregations. Philo expressly mentions 
 the religious privileges his brethren enjoyed at the 
 heart of the Empire, 1 and save for an occasional ex- 
 pulsion the Jews appear to have been unmolested. 
 The Flavian Emperors, satisfied with the destruction 
 of the sanctuary and the razing of Jerusalem, did not 
 attempt to persecute the communities of the Diaspora. 
 For the old offering by all Jews to the Temple, they 
 substituted a tax of two drachmas (the equivalent of 
 the shekel voluntarily given hitherto to Jerusalem), 
 which went towards the maintenance of the temple of 
 Jupiter Capitolinus. Later the fiscus Judaicus, to 
 which every Jew and proselyte had to pay, became an 
 instrument of oppression, but in the reigns of Vespa- 
 sian and Titus it was not harshly administered. Domi- 
 tian indeed vented his indignation on the people which 
 he had not had the honor of conquering, and instituted 
 a kind of inquisition, to ferret out the early Maranos. 
 who dissembled their Judaism and sought to evade the 
 tax. But his gentle successor Nerva (96-98) restored 
 the habit of tolerance, and struck special coins, with 
 the legend calumnia Judaica sublata (on the abolition 
 of information against the Jews), in order to mark his 
 
 1 De Leg. 82.
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 77 
 
 clemency. Save, therefore, for the short persecution 
 under Domitian, Judaism remained a Ucita religio 
 (legalized denomination) at Eome. More than that, 
 it became a powerful missionary faith among the lower 
 classes, and in small doses almost fashionable at the 
 court. A near relative of the Emperor, Flavius 
 Clemens, outraged Eoman opinion by adopting its 
 tenets. 1 It has been suggested, and it is likely, that the 
 chief historical work of Josephus was written pri- 
 marily for a group of fashionable proselytes to Juda- 
 ism, to whom he ministered. He mentions members 
 of the royal house that commended his work. 2 Some 
 scholars have sought to associate him with the philoso- 
 pher at Eome that was visited by the four rabbis of 
 the Sanhedrin, the Patriarch Eabban Gamaliel, Eabbi 
 Joshua, Eabbi Eleazar ben Arach, and Eabbi Akiba, 
 when they came to Eome in the reign of Domitian. 3 
 But apart from the fact that he would hardly be de- 
 scribed as a philosopher a term usually reserved in 
 the Talmud for a pagan scholar it is as unlikely that 
 the leaders of the Pharisaic national party would have 
 had interviews with the renegade, as that the renegade 
 would have befriended them. At Jotapata he deserted 
 
 1 It is interesting that the wife of the first Roman 
 governor of Britain was accused, in 57 c. E., of " foreign 
 superstition," and is said to have lived a melancholy life 
 (Tac. Ann. xiii. 32), which may mean that she had 
 adopted Jewish practices. 
 
 2 C. Ap. i. 5. 
 
 8 Sukkah, 22, quoted in Vogelstein and Rieger, Ge- 
 schichte der Juden in Rom, pp. 28 and 29.
 
 78 JOSEPHUS 
 
 his people, and he passed thenceforth out of their life. 
 It is significant that, while the history of the war was 
 originally written in Aramaic for the benefit of the 
 Eastern Jews, none of his later works was either 
 written in his native language or translated into it, 
 nor were they designed to be read by Jews. 
 
 In the palace of the Caesars Josephus became a 
 reputable Greco-Koman chronicler, deliberately ac- 
 commodating himself to the tastes of the conquerors of 
 his people, and deliberately seeking, as Eenan said, 
 " to Hellenize his compatriots," i. e. to describe them 
 from a Hellenized point of view. He achieved his 
 ambition, if such it was, to be the classical authority 
 upon the early history of the Jews. His record of his 
 people survived through the ages, and his works were 
 included in the public libraries of Eome, while among 
 the Christians they had for centuries a place next 
 the Bible. 
 
 As a writer, Josephus has, by the side of some glar- 
 ing defects, considerable merits: immense industry, 
 power of vivid narrative, an ability for using authori- 
 ties, and at times a certain eloquence. But as a man 
 he has few qualities to attract and nothing of the 
 heroic. He was mediocre in character and mind, and 
 for such there is no admiration. It may be admitted 
 that he lived in hard times, when it required great 
 strength of character for a Jew born, as he was, in the 
 aristocratic Romanizing section of the nation, to stand 
 true to the Jewish people and devote his energies to 
 their desperate cause. He may have honestly believed
 
 THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 79 
 
 that submission to Rome was the truest wisdom ; but he 
 placed himself in a false position by associating him- 
 self with the insurrection. And while his national 
 feeling led him later to attempt to defend his people 
 against calumny and ignorance, the conditions under 
 which he labored made against the production of a 
 true and spirited history. Yet if he does not appear 
 worthy of admiration, we must beware of judging him 
 harshly; and there is deep pathos in the fact that he 
 was compelled in writing to be his own worst detractor. 
 The combination, which the autobiographical account 
 reveals, of egoism and self-seeking, of cowardice and 
 vanity, of pious profession and cringing obsequious- 
 ness, of vaunted magnanimity and spiteful malice 
 to his foes, of religious scruples and selfish cunning, 
 points to a meanness of conduct which he was forced 
 to assume by circumstances, but which, it is sug- 
 gested, was not an expression of his true character. 
 The document of shame was wrung from him by his 
 past. He might have been a reliable historian had he 
 not been called on to play a part in action. But the 
 part he played was ignoble in itself, and it blasted 
 the whole of his future life and his literary credit. It 
 made his work take the form of apology, and part of 
 it bear the stamp of deliberate falsehood. His be- 
 setting weakness of egoism led him as a general to 
 betray his countrymen ; as historian of their struggle 
 with Eome, to misrepresent their patriotism and give 
 a false picture of their ideals. Yet, though to the 
 Jews of his own day he was a traitor in life and a tra-
 
 80 JOSEPHUS 
 
 ducer in letters, to the Jews of later generations he 
 appears rather as a tragic figure, struggling to repair 
 his fault of perfidy, and a victim to the forces of a 
 hostile civilization, which in every age assail his people 
 intellectually, and which in his day assailed them with 
 crushing might physically as well as intellectually.
 
 IV 
 
 THE WOEKS OF JOSEPHUS AND HIS EELA- 
 TION TO HIS PEEDECESSOES 
 
 The Jews, though they are the most historical of 
 peoples, and though they have always regarded history 
 as the surest revelation of God's work, have produced 
 remarkably few historians. It is true that a large part 
 of their sacred literature consists of the national an- 
 nals, from the earliest time to the restoration of the 
 nation after its first destruction, i. e. a period of 
 more than two thousand years. The Book of Chron- 
 icles, as its name suggests, is a systematic summary of 
 the whole of that period and proves the existence of the 
 historical spirit. But their very engrossment with 
 the story of their ancestors checked in later gener- 
 ations the impulse to write about their own times. 
 They saw contemporary affairs always in the light of 
 the past, and they were more concerned with revealing 
 the hand of God in events than in depicting the events 
 themselves. Thus, during the whole Persian period, 
 which extended over two hundred years, we have but 
 one historical document, the Book of Esther, to ac- 
 quaint us with the conditions of the main body of the 
 Jewish people. The fortunate find, a few years back, 
 of a hoard of Aramaic papyri at Elephantine has given 
 6
 
 82 JOSEPHUS 
 
 us an unexpected acquaintance with the conditions of 
 the Jewish colony in Upper Egypt during the fifth and 
 fourth centuries, and furnished a new chapter in the 
 history of the Diaspora. But this is an archeological 
 substitute for literary history. 
 
 The conquest of the East by Alexander the Great 
 and the consequent interchange of Hellenic and 
 Oriental culture gave a great impulse to historical 
 writing among all peoples. Moved by a cosmopolitan 
 enthusiasm, each nation was anxious to make its past 
 known to the others, to assert its antiquity, and to 
 prove that, if its present was not very glorious, it had 
 at one time played a brilliant part in civilization. The 
 Greek people, too, with their intense love of knowledge, 
 were eager to learn the ideas and experiences of the 
 various nations and races who had now come into their 
 ken. 
 
 Hence, on the one hand, there appeared works on 
 universal history by Greek polymaths, such as Heca- 
 taeus of Abdera, Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, 
 and Ptolemy, the comrade of Alexander; and, on the 
 other hand, a number of national histories were writ- 
 ten, also in Greek, but by Hellenized natives, such as 
 the Chaldaica of Berosus, the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, 
 and the Phoenician chronicles of Dius and Menander. 
 The people of Israel figured incidentally in several of 
 these works, and Manetho went out of his way to in- 
 clude in the history of his country a lying account of 
 the Exodus, which was designed to hold up the ances- 
 tors of the Jews to opprobrium. From the Hellenic
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 83 
 
 and philosophical writers they received more justice. 
 Their remarkable loyalty to their religion and their 
 exalted conception of the Deity moved partly the ad- 
 miration, partly the amazement of these early encyclo- 
 pedists, who regarded them as a philosophical people 
 devoted to a higher life. The Hellenistic Jews were 
 led later by the sympathetic attitude of Hecataeus to 
 add to his history spurious chapters, in which he was 
 made to deal more eulogistically with their beliefs and 
 history, and they circulated oracles and poems in 
 the names of fabled seers of prehistoric times Or- 
 pheus and the Sibyl which conveyed some of the 
 religious and moral teachings of Judaism. Xor were 
 they slow to adapt their own chronicles for the Greek 
 world or to take their part in the literary movement of 
 the time. In Palestine, indeed, the Jews remained de- 
 voted to religious thought, and never made history a 
 serious interest. But in Alexandria, after translating 
 the Scriptures into Greek in the middle of the third 
 century, they began, in imitation of their neighbors, to 
 embellish their antiquities in the Greek style, and 
 present them more thoroughly according to Greek 
 standards of history. 
 
 A collection of extracts from the works of the Hel- 
 lenistic Jews was made by a Gentile compiler of the 
 first century B. c. E., Alexander, surnamed Polyhistor. 
 Though his book has perished, portions of it with 
 fragments of these extracts have been preserved in the 
 chronicles of the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, who 
 wrote in the fourth century c. E. They prove the exist-
 
 84 JOSEPHUS 
 
 ence of a very considerable array of historical writers, 
 who would seem to have been poor scholars of Greek, 
 but ingenious chronologists and apologists. The 
 earliest of the adapters, of whose work fragments have 
 been thus preserved to us, is one Demetrius, who, in 
 the reign of Ptolemy II, at the end of the third century 
 B. c. E., wrote a book on the Jewish kings. It 
 was rather a chronology than a connected narrative, 
 and Demetrius amended the dates given in the Bible 
 according to a system of his own. This does not 
 appear to have been very exact, but such as it was it 
 appealed to Josephus, who in places follows it without 
 question. Chronology was a matter of deep import in 
 that epoch, because it was one of the most galling and 
 frequent charges against the Jews that their boasted 
 antiquity was fictitious. To rebut this attack, the Jew- 
 ish chroniclers elaborated the chronological indica- 
 tions of their long history, and brought them into rela- 
 tion with the annals of their neighbors. 
 
 Demetrius is followed by Eupolemus and Artapanus, 
 who treated the Bible in a different fashion. They 
 freely handled the Scripture narrative, and methodi- 
 cally embellished it with fictitious additions, for the 
 greater glory, as they intended, of their people. They 
 imitated the ways of their opponents, and as these 
 sought to decry their ancestors by malicious inven- 
 tion, so they contrived to invest them with fictitious 
 greatness. Eupolemus represents Abraham as the 
 discoverer of Chaldean astrology, and identifies Enoch 
 with the Greek hero Atlas, to whom the angel of God
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 85 
 
 revealed the celestial lore. Elsewhere he inserts into 
 the paraphrase of the Book of Kings a correspondence 
 between Solomon and Hiram (king of Tyre), in order 
 to show the Jewish hegemony over the Phoenicians. 
 Artapanus, professing to be a pagan writer, shows how 
 the Egyptians were indebted to the founders of Israel 
 for their scientific knowledge and their most prized 
 institutions: Abraham instructed King Pharethothis 
 in astrology; Joseph taught the Egyptian priests 
 hieroglyphics, and built the Pyramids; Moses (who is 
 identified with the Greek seer Musaeus) not only con- 
 quered the Ethiopians, and invented ship-building 
 and philosophy, but taught the Egyptian priests their 
 deeper wisdom, and was called by them Hermes, be- 
 cause of his skill in interpreting ('E/^m'a) the holy 
 documents. Fiction fostered fiction, and the inven- 
 tions of pagan foes stimulated the exaggerations of 
 Jewish apologists. The fictitious was mixed with the 
 true, and the legendary material which Artapanus 
 added to his history passed into the common stock of 
 Jewish apologetics. 
 
 The great national revival that followed on the 
 Maccabean victories induced both within and without 
 Palestine the composition of works of contemporary 
 national history. For a period the Jews were as proud 
 of their present as of their past. It was not only that 
 their princes, like the kings of other countries, desired 
 to have their great deeds celebrated, but the whole 
 people was conscious of another God-sent deliverance 
 and of a clear manifestation of the Divine Power in
 
 86 JOSEPHUS 
 
 their affairs, which must be recorded for the benefit of 
 posterity. The First Book of the Maccabees, which 
 was originally written in Hebrew, and the Chronicles 
 of King John Hyrcanus * bear witness to this outburst 
 of patriotic self-consciousness in Palestine; and the 
 Talmud* contains a few fragments of history about 
 the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, which may have 
 formed part of a larger chronicle. The story of the 
 Maccabean wars was recorded also at great length by 
 a Hellenistic Jew, Jason of Gyrene, and it is generally 
 assumed that an abridgment of it has come down to us 
 in the Second Book of the Maccabees. 
 
 In Palestine, however, the historical spirit did not 
 nourish for long. The interest in the universal lesson 
 prevailed over that in the particular fact, and the tra- 
 dition that was treasured was not of political events 
 but of ethical and legal teachings. Moral rather than 
 objective truth was the study of the schools, and when 
 contemporary events are described, it is in a poetical, 
 rhapsodical form, such as we find in the Psalms of 
 Solomon, which recount Pompey's invasion of Jerusa- 
 lem." The only historical records that appear to 
 have been regularly kept are the lists of the priests and 
 their genealogy, and a calendar of fasts and of days on 
 which fasting was prohibited because of some happy 
 event to be commemorated. 
 
 1 They are referred to at the end of the book. Comp. 
 I Mace. xvi. 23/. 
 1 Kiddushin, 66a. 
 3 See above, p. 14.
 
 THE WOKKS OF JOSEPHUS 87 
 
 In the Diaspora, on the other hand, and especially at 
 Alexandria, which was the center of Hellenistic Jewry, 
 history was made to serve a practical purpose. It was 
 a weapon in the struggle the Jews were continually 
 waging against their detractors, as well as in their 
 missionary efforts to spread their religion. It became 
 consciously and essentially apologetic, the end being 
 persuasion rather than truth. Fact and fiction were 
 inextricably combined, and the difference between 
 them neglected. 
 
 The story of the translation of the Septuagint by the 
 Jewish sages sent to Alexandria at the invitation of 
 King Ptolemy, which is recounted in the Letter of 
 Aristeas, is an excellent example of this kind of his- 
 tory. It is decked out with digressions about the topo- 
 graphy of Jerusalem and the architecture of the Tem- 
 ple, and an imaginative display of Jewish wit and 
 wisdom at a royal symposium. The Third Book of 
 the Maccabees, which professes to describe a persecu- 
 tion of the Jews in Egypt under one of the Ptolemies, 
 is another early example of didactic fiction that has 
 been preserved to us. The one sober historical work 
 produced by a Jewish writer between the composition 
 of the two Books of the Maccabees and of the Wars of 
 Josephus was the account given by Philo of Alex- 
 andria of the Jewish persecutions that took place in 
 the reigns of Tiberius and Gaius. It was originally 
 contained in five books, of which only the second 
 and third have been preserved. They deal respec- 
 tively with the riots at Alexandria that took place
 
 88 JOSEPHUS 
 
 when Flaccus was governor, and with the Jewish em- 
 bassy to Gams when that Emperor issued his order 
 that his image should be set up in the Temple at Jeru- 
 salem and in the great synagogue of Alexandria. Philo 
 wrote a full account of the events in which he himself 
 had been called upon to play a part. He is always 
 at pains to point the moral and enforce the lesson, 
 but his work has a definite historical value, and con- 
 tains many valuable details about Jewish life in the 
 Diaspora. 
 
 But if the Jews were somewhat careless of the exact 
 record of their history, many of the Greek and Eoman 
 historians paid attention to it, some specifically for the 
 purpose of attacking them, others incidentally in the 
 course of their comprehensive works. The fashion of 
 universal history continued for some centuries, and 
 works of fifty volumes and over were more the rule 
 than the exception. These " elephantine books " were 
 rendered possible because it was the fashion for each 
 succeeding historian to compile the results of his 
 predecessor's labors, and adopt it as part of his own 
 monumental work. Distinguished among this school 
 of writers were Apollodorus of Athens, who in 150 
 B. c. E. wrote Chronicles containing the most impor- 
 tant events of general history down to his own time, 
 and Polybius, who was brought as a prisoner from 
 Greece to Eome in 145 B. c. E., and in his exile wrote 
 a history of the rise of the Eoman Eepublic, in the 
 course of which he dealt with the early Jewish rela- 
 tions with Eome. Then, in the first century, there
 
 THE WOBKS OF JOSEPHTJS 89 
 
 flourished Posidonius of Apamea (90-50 B. c. E.), a 
 Stoic and a bitter enemy of the Jews, who continued 
 the work of Polybius down to the year 90, and, be- 
 sides, wrote a separate diatribe against Judaism, which 
 he regarded as a misanthropic atheism. The succes- 
 sion was carried on by Timagenes of Alexandria, who 
 wrote a very full history of the second and the first 
 part of the first century. 
 
 Among Roman writers of the period that dealt with 
 general affairs were Asinius Pollio, the friend of 
 Herod, and Titus Livius, who, under the name of Livy, 
 has become the standard Latin historian for school- 
 boys. Josephus refers to both of them as well as to 
 Timagenes, Posidonius, and Polybius ; but as there is 
 no reason to think that he ever tried to master the 
 earlier authorities, it is probable that he knew them 
 only so far as they were reproduced in his immediate 
 sources and his immediate predecessors. The two 
 writers whom he quotes repeatedly and must have 
 studied are Strabo of Amasea (in Pontus) and Nich- 
 olas of Damascus. Strabo was an author of remarkable 
 versatility and industry. Besides his geography, the 
 standard work of ancient times on the subject, he 
 wrote in forty-seven books a large historical work on 
 the period between 150 (where Polybius ended) and 
 30 B. c. E. Nearly the whole of it has disappeared, 
 but we can tell from Josephus' excerpts that he ap- 
 preciated the Jews and their religion as did few other 
 pagans of the time. He dealt, too, at considerable 
 length with the wars of the Hasmouean kings against
 
 90 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the Seleucids, and he is one of the authorities cited 
 by Josephus for the period between the accession of 
 John Hyrcanus and the overthrow of Antigonus II 
 by Herod. The Jewish historian follows still more 
 closely, and in many places probably reproduces, Xich- 
 olas, who was the court historian of Herod. Nicholas 
 was a man of remarkable versatility. He played many 
 parts at Herod's court, as diplomatist, advocate, and 
 minister. He was a poet and philosopher of some 
 repute, and he wrote a general history in forty-four 
 books. In the first eight books he dealt with the 
 early annals of the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Medes, 
 and the Persians. Josephus, who took him for his 
 chief guide after the Bible, often reproduces from him 
 comparative passages to the Scripture story which he 
 is paraphrasing. And for the later period of the 
 Antiquities, from the time of Antiochus the Great (ab. 
 200 B. c. E.), he depends on him largely for the com- 
 parative Hellenistic history, which he brings into rela- 
 tion with the story of the Hasmoneans. When he 
 comes to the epoch of Herod, the disproportionate ful- 
 ness, the vivacity, and the dramatic power of the nar- 
 rative in books xiv-xvi of the Antiquities are due 
 in a large measure to the historical virtues of the court 
 chronicler. We can tell how far this is the case by the 
 immediate and marked deterioration of the narrative 
 when Josephus proceeds to the reigns of Archelaus and 
 Agrippa where Xicholas failed him. 
 
 Among Roman writers of his own day whom Jose- 
 phus used was the Emperor Vespasian himself, who,
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 91 
 
 to record his exploits, wrote Commentaries on the 
 Jewish War, which were placed at his client's disposal. 1 
 In the competition of flattery that greeted the new 
 Flavian dynasty, various Roman writers described and 
 celebrated the Jewish campaigns. 2 Among them were 
 Antonius Julianus, who was on the staff of Vespasian 
 and Titus throughout the war, and at the end of it was 
 appointed procurator of Judea ; Valerius Flaccus, who 
 burst into ecstatic hexameters over the burning of the 
 Temple; and Tacitus, the most brilliant of all Latin 
 historians. Besides these writers' works, which have 
 come down to us more or less complete, a number of 
 memoirs and histories of the war appeared, some by 
 those who wrote on hearsay, others by men who had 
 taken some part in the campaigns. It was an age of 
 literary dilettantism, when nearly everybody wrote 
 books who knew how to write ; and in the drab monot- 
 ony of Roman supremacy, the triumph over the Jews, 
 which had placed the Flavian house on the throne, was 
 a happy opportunity for ambitious authors. 
 
 It has been suggested that the Roman point of view 
 that pervades the Wars of Josephus, the frequent ab- 
 sence of sympathy with the Jewish cause, and the in- 
 congruous pagan ideas, which surprise us, can be ex- 
 plained by the fact that the Jewish writer founded his 
 account on that of Antonius Julianus, which is re- 
 ferred to by the Christian apologist Minucius 3 as a 
 standard authority on the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 1 Vita, 68. * C. Ap. 9-10. 3 Epist. ad Octav. 33.
 
 92 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Antonius is mentioned by Josephus as one of the 
 Eoman staff who gave his opinion in favor of the burn- 
 ing of the Temple, and he has also been ingeniously 
 identified with the Eoman general (called DIJ^EIK 
 or Dlt3 H 33N ) who engaged in controversy with Rabbi 
 Johanan ben Zakkai. 1 The evidence in favor of the 
 theory is examined more fully later; but whether or 
 not the history of Antonius was the main source of the 
 Wars, it is certain that Josephus had before him Gen- 
 tile accounts of the struggle, and he often slavishly 
 adopted not only their record of facts but their ex- 
 pressions of opinion. In point of time Tacitus might 
 have derived from Josephus his summary of the Jew- 
 ish Wars, part of which has come down to us, and 
 on some points the Jewish and the Eoman authors 
 agree ; but the correspondence is to be explained more 
 readily by the use of a common source by both writers. 
 It is unlikely that the haughty patrician, who hated 
 and despised the Jews, and who had no love of research, 
 turned to a Jewish chronicle for his information, when 
 he had a number of Eoman and Greek authors to pro- 
 vide him with food for his epigrams. 
 
 One other writer on contemporary Jewish history to 
 whom Josephus refers as an author, not indeed in the 
 Wars, but in his Life, was Justus of Tiberias. Unfor- 
 tunately we have to depend almost entirely on a hostile 
 rival's spitefulness and malice for our knowledge of 
 
 *Yer. Sanhedrin, i. 4. Comp. Schlatter, Zur Topo- 
 graphie und Geschichte Palastinas, pp. 97/f.
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 93 
 
 Justus. He did not produce his work on the wars till 
 after Josephus had established his reputation, and 
 part of his object, it is alleged, was to blacken the char- 
 acter and destroy the repute of his rival. The conduct 
 of Justus in the Galilean campaign had been little 
 more creditable than that of Josephus that is, if the 
 tatter's account may be believed at all. He had been 
 a leader of the Zealot party in Tiberias, and had roused 
 the people of that city against the double-dealing com- 
 mander ; but on the breakdown of the revolt he entered 
 the service of Agrippa II. He fell into disgrace, but 
 was pardoned. Some twenty-four years after the war 
 was over he wrote a History of the Jewish Kings and 
 a History of the War. It is difficult to form any judg- 
 ment of the work, because, apart from the abuse of 
 Josephus, the criticism we have comes merely from 
 ecclesiastical historians, who imbibed Josephus' per- 
 sonal enmity as though it were the pure milk of truth. 
 Eusebius and Jerome 1 accuse him of having distorted 
 Jewish affairs to suit his personal ends and of having 
 been convicted by Josephus of falsehood. His chief 
 crime in their eyes and the reason for the disappear- 
 ance of his work are that he did not mention any of the 
 events connected with the foundation of the Christian 
 Church, and had not the good fortune to be interpo- 
 lated, as Josephus was, with a passage about Jesus. a 
 Hence Photius says that he passed over many of the 
 
 1 Hist. Eccl. III. x. 8; De Viris Illustr. 14. 
 2 See belcw, pp. 241 ff.
 
 94 JOSEPHUS 
 
 most important occurrences. 1 We know of him now 
 only by the charges of Josephus and a few discon- 
 nected fragments. 
 
 Coming now to the work* of Josephus, his prefaces 
 give a full account of his historical motives. He origin- 
 ally wrote seven books on the Wars with Rome in 
 Aramaic for the benefit of his own countrymen. He 
 was induced to translate them into Greek because his 
 predecessors had given false accounts, either out of a 
 desire to flatter the Romans or out of hatred to the 
 Jews. He claims that his own work is a true and 
 careful narrative of the events that he had witnessed 
 with his own eyes and had special opportunities of 
 studying accurately. " The writings of my prede- 
 cessors contain sometimes slanders, sometimes eulo- 
 gies, but nowhere the accurate truth of the facts." He 
 goes on to complain of the way in which they belittle 
 the action of the Jews in order to aggrandize the 
 Romans, which defeats its own purpose ; and he con- 
 trasts the merit of one who composes by his own in- 
 dustry a history of events not hitherto faithfully re- 
 corded, with the more popular and the easier fashion 
 of writing a fresh history of a period already fully 
 treated, by changing the order and disposition of other 
 men's works. He iterates his determination to record 
 only historical facts, and says, " It is superfluous for 
 me to write about the Antiquities [i. e. the early his- 
 tory] of the Jews, because many before me, both 
 among my own people and the Greeks, have composed 
 
 ' Blbl. Cod. 33.
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 95 
 
 the histories of our ancestors very exactly." J By the 
 Antiquities he means the Bible narrative. He proposes 
 therefore to begin where the Bible ends and, after a 
 brief survey of the events before his own age, to give 
 a full account of the great Rebellion. Josephus falls 
 short of his promise. Many of the shortcomings he 
 pointed to in his predecessors are glaringly present 
 in his work. Nor is it probable that his profession of 
 having taken notes on the spot is true. At the time of 
 the siege of Jerusalem he had no literary pretensions, 
 and it is unlikely that he contemplated the writing of 
 a history. It has been pointed out that his account is 
 much more accurate in regard to events in which he 
 did not take part than in regard to those in which he 
 assisted. 
 
 In the first book and the greater part of the second, 
 where he is taken up with the preliminary introduc- 
 tion, he had ample sources before him, and his func- 
 tions were only to abstract and compile ; but when he 
 comes to the final struggle with Rome, he would have 
 us believe that he depended mainly on his independent 
 knowledge. Recent investigation has thrown grave 
 doubts on his claim, and has suggested that with 
 Josephus it is true that "once a compiler, always a 
 compiler." The habit of direct copying from the 
 works of predecessors was fixed in the literary ethics 
 of the day. In company with most of the historians 
 
 1 B. J., Preface. The Greek name Archaeologia is regu- 
 larly rendered by Antiquities, but it means simply the 
 early history.
 
 96 JOSEPHUS 
 
 of antiquity he introduces his general ideas upon the 
 march of events in the form of addresses, which he 
 puts into the mouth of the chief characters at critical 
 moments. Here he is free to invent and intrude his 
 own opinions, and here he almost unfailingly adopts 
 a Roman attitude. The work, in fact, bears the char- 
 acter of official history, and has all the partiality 
 of that form of literature. Titus, as the author 
 proudly recalls, subscribed his own hand to it, and 
 ordered that it should be published, and King Agrippa 
 wrote a glowing testimonial to it in the most ap- 
 proved style. 1 It was accepted in Eome as the stand- 
 ard work upon the Jewish struggle. Patronage may 
 have saved literature at certain epochs, but it always 
 undermines the feeling of truth. It is not improbable 
 that a juster appreciation of events was contained in 
 the original writings of Josephus, but was corrected at 
 the order of the royal traitor or the Imperial master, 
 to whom he perforce submitted them. 
 
 If in the Wars Josephus assumes the air of a scien- 
 tific historian, in the Antiquities he is more openly the 
 apologist. Despite his professions in the preface of 
 the earlier work, he seems to have found it necessary or 
 expedient to give to Greco-Roman society a fresh ac- 
 count of the ancestry and the early history of his 
 people and of the constitution of their government. 
 The Roman Archaeologia of Dionysius of Halicarnas- 
 sus, who fifty years earlier had written in twenty books 
 
 1 C. Ap. 8. See below, p. 221.
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 97 
 
 the early events of Rome, probably suggested the divi- 
 sion and the name of the work. He issued it after 
 the death of his protector, in the thirteenth year of the 
 reign of Domitian and in the fifty-sixth year of his 
 own life. 1 In the preface, inconsistently with the 
 statement in the earlier work, he declares that he 
 intended from the beginning to write this apology of 
 his people, but was deterred for a time by the magni- 
 tude of the labor of translating the history into an un- 
 accustomed tongue. He ascribes the impulse to carry 
 out the task to the encouragement of his patron 
 Epaphroditus and of his other friends at Rome. It 
 probably came also from his circumstances at Rome 
 and the necessity of refuting calumnies made against 
 him on account of his race and religion. And with 
 all his weaknesses and failings he was not lacking in a 
 feeling of national pride, which must have moved him 
 to defend his people. 
 
 Following on the destruction of Jerusalem, a pas- 
 sion of mixed hatred and contempt against the Jews 
 moved the Roman nobility and the Roman masses. 
 The Flavian court, representing the middle classes, 
 by no means shared the feeling, and indeed the infatu- 
 ation of Titus for the Jewish princess Berenice, the 
 sister of Agrippa, was one of the scandals that most 
 stirred the anger of the Romans. But the nobles hated 
 those who had obstinately fought against the Roman 
 armies for four years, and scorned those whose God 
 
 1 Ant. XX. xi. 3. 
 7
 
 98 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 had not saved them from ruin. At the same time 
 Jewish persistence after defeat and the continuance of 
 Jewish missionary activity offended the majesty of 
 Kome, which, though tolerant of foreign religious 
 ideas, was accustomed not merely to the physical sub- 
 mission of her enemies, but to their cultural and intel- 
 lectual abasement. The hatred and scorn were fanned 
 by a tribe of scribblers, who heaped distortion on the 
 history and practices of the Jewish people. On the 
 other hand, the prosefy^tes to Judaism, " the fearers of 
 God," who accepted part of its teaching and in the 
 utter collapse of pagan religion and morality they 
 were many desired to know something of the past 
 grandeur of the nation, and doubtless were anxious 
 to justify themselves to those who regarded their 
 adoption of Jewish customs as an utter degrada- 
 tion. For those who mocked at him as a renegade 
 member of a wretched people, which consisted of the 
 scum of the earth, which harbored all kinds of low 
 superstition, and which fostered inhumanity and mis- 
 anthropy, and for those who looked to him as the ac- 
 credited exponent of Judaism and the writer most 
 able to set it in a favorable light, Josephus wrote the 
 twenty books of his Antiquities. 
 
 The work differed from all previous apologies for 
 Judaism in its completeness and its historical char- 
 acter. Philo had sought to recommend Judaism as a 
 philosophical religion, and had interpreted the Torah 
 as the law of Xature. Josephus was concerned not so 
 much with Judaism as with the Jews. He seeks to
 
 99 
 
 show, by his abstract of historical records, that his 
 people had a long and honorable past, and that they 
 had had intercourse with ancient empires, and had 
 been esteemed even by the Eomans. The Antiquities 
 comprised a summary of the whole of Jewish history, 
 as well that which was set out in the books of the Bible 
 as that which had taken place in the post-Biblical 
 period down to his own day. Some of his predecessors 
 had elaborated only the former part of the story, and 
 that, it is probable, not nearly so fully as Josephus. 
 He claims not to have added to or diminished from 
 the record of Scripture. Though neither part of the 
 claim can be upheld, he does undoubtedly give a toler- 
 able account of the Bible so far as it is an historical 
 narrative. The finer spirit of the Bible, even in its 
 narrative parts, its deep spiritual teaching, its simple 
 grandeur, its arresting sincerity, he was utterly unable 
 to impart. In style, too, his Greek falls immeasurably 
 below the original. We feel as we read his abstract 
 with its omissions and additions 
 
 The little more and how much it is; 
 
 The little less and what miles away. 
 
 His is a mediocre transcription, which replaces the 
 naivete, the rapidity, the unaffected beauty of the 
 Hebrew, with the rhetoric, the sophistication, and the 
 exaggerated overstatement of the Greek writing of his 
 own time. Impressiveness for him is regularly en- 
 hanced by inaccuracy. His own or his assumed mate- 
 rialistic fatalism lowers the God of the Bible to a 
 Power which materially rewards the righteous and
 
 100 JOSEPHUS 
 
 punishes the wicked. In this immediate retribution 
 he finds the surest sign of Divine Providence, and it is 
 this lesson which he is most anxious to assert through- 
 out his work. But he is at pains to dispel the idea 
 of a special Providence for Israel. The material 
 power of Eome made him desert in life the Jewish 
 cause; the material thought of Eome made him dis- 
 simulate in literature the full creed of Judaism. 
 
 The second part of the Antiquities is a more am- 
 bitious piece of work. The compiler brings together 
 all that he could find, in Jewish and Gentile sources, 
 about Jewish history from the time of the Babylonian 
 captivity to the outbreak of the war against Eome. 
 And he was apparently the first of his people to utilize 
 the Greek historians systematically in this fashion. 
 There are long periods as to the incidents of which he 
 was at a loss. Without possessing the ability or desire 
 for research, he is not above confounding the chro- 
 nology and perverting the succession of events to cover 
 up a gap. But he does contrive to produce a con- 
 nected narrative and to provide some kind of continu- 
 ous chronicle. And for this service he is not lightly 
 to be esteemed. Without him we should know scarcely 
 anything of the external history of the Jewish people 
 for three centuries. In style the last ten books vary 
 remarkably. It depends almost entirely on his source 
 whether the narrative is dull and monotonous or lively 
 and dramatic. Where, for example, he is transcribing 
 Xicholas and another historian of the period, he suc- 
 ceeds in presenting a picture of Herod that has a
 
 THE WOBKS OF JOSEPHUS 101 
 
 certain psychological value. Where, on the other 
 hand, he has had to trust largely to scattered notes, 
 as in the record of Herod's successors, his history is 
 little better than a miscellany of disjointed passages. 
 He lacks throughout a true sense of proportion, and 
 for the deeper aspects of history he has no perception. 
 He does not show in spite of his Jewish training the 
 slightest appreciation of the spiritual power of Juda- 
 ism or of the divine purpose illustrating itself in the 
 rise and fall of nations. His conception of history is a 
 biography of might, tempered by occasional manifesta- 
 tions of divine retribution. The concrete event is the 
 important thing, and of culture and literature he says 
 scarcely a word. His occasional moral reflections are 
 on a mediocre plane and not true to the finer spirit 
 of Judaism. He is consciously or unconsciously 
 obsessed by the power of Eome, and makes little at- 
 tempt to inculcate the higher moral outlook of his 
 people. In soul, too, he is Eomanized. He admires 
 above all material power ; he exhibits material concep- 
 tions of Providence; he looks always for material 
 causes. Altogether the Antiquities is a work invalu- 
 able for its material, but a somewhat soulless book. 
 
 Josephus conveys more of the spirit of Judaism in 
 his two books commonly entitled Against Apion, 
 which are professedly apologetic. They were written 
 after the Antiquities, and further emphasize two 
 points on which he had dwelt in that work : the great 
 age of the Jewish people and the excellence of the 
 Jewish law. He was anxious to refute those detractors
 
 102 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 who, despite the publication of his history, still con- 
 tinued to spread grotesquely false accounts of Israel's 
 origin and Israel's religious teachings; and he wrote 
 here with more spirit and with more conviction than 
 in his earlier elaborate works. He has no longer to 
 accommodate himself to the vanity of a Eoman Empe- 
 ror, or to distort events so as to glorify his nation or 
 to excuse his own conduct. He is able for once to set 
 out his idea wholeheartedly, and he shows that, if he 
 had few of the qualities required for a great histo- 
 rian, he had several of the talents of an apologist. His 
 own calculated misrepresentation of his people in their 
 last struggle would have afforded an opponent the best 
 reply to his apology. In itself that apology was an 
 effective summary of Judaism for his own times, and 
 parts of it have a permanent value. For seventeen 
 centuries it remained the sole direct answer from the 
 Jewish side to the calumnies of the enemies of the 
 Jews. 
 
 The last extant work of Josephus was the Life, of 
 which we have already treated, and it were better to 
 say little more. It was provoked by the publication of 
 the History of Justus, which had accused Josephus and 
 the Galileans of having been the authors of the sedition 
 against the Eomans. 1 Josephus retorts that, before he 
 was appointed governor, Justus and the people of Ti- 
 berias had attacked the Greek cities of the Decapolis 
 and the dominions of Agrippa, as was witnessed in the 
 Commentaries of Vespasian. Xot content with this 
 
 , 65.
 
 THE WOEKS OF JOSEPHUS 103 
 
 crime, Justus had failed to surrender to the Romans 
 till they appeared before Tiberias. Having charged his 
 rival with being a better patriot than himself, 1 Jose- 
 phus proceeds to argue that he was a worse historian : 
 Justus could not describe the Galilean campaign, be- 
 cause during the war he was at Berytus; he took no 
 part in the siege of Jerusalem, and, less privileged 
 than his rival, he had not read the Commentaries of 
 Caesar, and in fact often contradicted them. Con- 
 scious of this weakness, he had not ventured to publish 
 his account till the chief actors in the story, Vespasian, 
 Titus, and Agrippa, had died, though his books had 
 been written some twenty years before they were is- 
 sued. But in his pains to gainsay Justus and his own 
 patriotism, such as it was, Josephus, as has been 
 noticed, gives an account of his doings in Galilee that 
 is often at complete variance with his statements in 
 the Wars. The Life, in fact, is untrustworthy history 
 and unsuccessful apology. 
 
 At the end of the Antiquities Josephus declares 
 his intention to write three books concerning the 
 Jewish doctrines "about God and His essence, and 
 concerning the laws, why some things are permitted, 
 and others are prohibited." In the preface to the 
 same work, as well as in various passages in its course, 
 he refers to his intention to write on the philo- 
 sophical meaning of the Mosaic legislation. The 
 
 1 Justus, no doubt, had done the converse, represent- 
 ing himself as a thorough Romanizer and Josephus as an 
 ardent rebel.
 
 104 JOSEPHUS 
 
 books entitled Against Apion correspond neither in 
 number nor in content to this plan, and we must 
 therefore assume that he never carried it out. He 
 may have intended to abstract the commentary of 
 Philo upon the Law, which he had doubtless come to 
 know. Certainly he shows no traces of deeper alle- 
 gorical lore in the extant works, and his mind was 
 hardly given to such speculations. But a humani- 
 tarian and universalistic explanation of the Mosaic 
 code, such as his predecessor had composed, notably in 
 his Life of Moses, would have been quite in his way, 
 and would have rounded off his presentation of the 
 past and present history of the Jews. The need of 
 replying to his personal enemies and the detractors of 
 his nation deterred him perhaps from achieving this 
 part of his scheme. Or, if it was written, the Christ- 
 ian scribes, who preserved his other works, may have 
 suppressed it because it did not harmonize with their 
 ideas. 
 
 Photius ascribes to Josephus a work on The Uni- 
 verse, or The Cause of the Universe^fpi^ToviravTo^ 
 omos), which is extant, but which is demonstrably 
 of Christian origin, and was probably written by 
 Hippolytus, an ecclesiastical writer of the third cen- 
 tury and the author of Philosophumena. Another 
 work attributed to Josephus in the Dark and Middle 
 Ages, and often attached to manuscripts of the An- 
 tiquities, is the sermon on The Sovereignty of Reason, 
 which is commonly known as the Fourth Book of the 
 Maccabees. The book is a remarkable example of the
 
 THE WOEKS OP JOSEPHUS 105 
 
 use of Greek philosophical ideas to confirm the Jewish 
 religion. That the Mosaic law is the rule of written 
 reason is the main theme, and it is illustrated by the 
 story of the martyrs during the persecution of Antio- 
 chus Epiphanes, whence the book takes its title. In 
 particular, the author points to the ethical significance 
 underlying the dietary laws, of which he says in a 
 remarkable passage : 
 
 When we long for fishes and fowls and fourfooted ani- 
 mals and every kind of food that is forbidden to us by 
 the Law, it is through the mastery of pious reason that we 
 abstain from them. For the affections and appetites are 
 restrained and turned into another direction by the 
 sobriety of the mind, and all the movements of the body 
 are kept in check by pious reason. 
 
 Again, of the Law as a whole he says : 
 
 It teaches us temperance, so that we master our pleas- 
 ures and desires, and it exercises us in fortitude, so that 
 we willingly undergo every toil. And it instructs us in 
 justice, so that in all our behavior we give what is due, 
 and it teaches us to be pious, so that we worship the only 
 living God in the manner becoming His greatness. 
 
 Freudenthal has conclusively disposed of the theory 
 that Josephus was the author of this work. 1 Neither 
 in language, nor in style, nor in thought, has it a 
 resemblance to his authentic works. Nor was he the 
 man to write anonymously. It reveals, indeed, a mas- 
 tery of the arts of Greek rhetoric, such as the Palestin- 
 
 1 Freudenthal, Die Flavius Josephus belgelegte Schrift 
 iiber die Herrschaft der Vernunft, 1879.
 
 106 JOSEPHUS 
 
 ian soldier who learnt Greek only late in life, and who 
 required the help of friends to correct his syntax, 
 could never have acquired. It reveals, too, a knowl- 
 edge of the technical terms of the Stoic philosophy and 
 a general grasp of Greek philosophy quite beyond the 
 writer of the Antiquities and the Wars. Lastly, it 
 breathes a wholehearted love for Judaism and a 
 national ardor to which the double-dealing defender 
 of Galilee and the client of the Kornan court could 
 hardly have aspired. 
 
 The genuine works of Josephus reveal him not as 
 a philosopher or sturdy preacher of Judaism, but as an 
 apologetic historian and apologist, distinguished in 
 either field rather for his industry and his ingenuity 
 in using others' works than by any original excellence. 
 He learnt from the Greeks and Eomans the external 
 manner of systematic history, and in this he stood 
 above his Jewish predecessors. He learnt from them 
 also the arts of mixing false with true, of invention, 
 of exaggeration, of the suggestion of the bad and the 
 suppression of the good motive. He was a sophist 
 rather than a sage, and circumstances compelled him 
 to be a court chronicler rather than a national his- 
 torian. And while he acquired something of the art 
 of historical writing from his models, he lost the in- 
 tuitive synthesis of the Jewish attitude, which saw the 
 working of God's moral law in all human affairs. On 
 the other hand, certain defects of his history may be 
 ascribed to lack of training and to the spirit of the age. 
 He had scant notion of accuracy, he made no independ-
 
 THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 107 
 
 ent research into past events, and he was unconscion- 
 able in chronology. In his larger works he is for the 
 most part a translator and compiler of the work of 
 others, but he has some claim to originality of design 
 and independence of mind in the books against Apion. 
 The times were out of joint for a writer of his caliber. 
 For the greater part of his literary life, perhaps for 
 the whole, he was not free to write what he thought 
 and felt, and he wrote for an alien public, which could 
 not rise to an understanding of the deeper ideas of his 
 people's history. But this much at least may be put 
 down to his credit, that he lived to atone for the mis- 
 representation of the heroic struggle of the Jews with 
 the Romans by preserving some record of many dark 
 pages in their history and by refuting the calumnies 
 of the Hellenistic vituperators about their origin and 
 their religious teachings.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 
 
 The first work of Josephus as man of letters was the 
 history of the wars of the Jews against the Romans, for 
 which, according to hia own statement, he prepared 
 from the time of his surrender by taking copious notes 
 of the events which he witnessed. He completed it in 
 the fortieth year of his life and dedicated it to Ves- 
 pasian. 1 He seems_originallj_to. Jjttve jd&igned^the 
 record of the struggle for the purpose of persuading 
 jn the Ensf. t|iqf f Jt Wftfl Tisplpsa fo 
 
 further against the .Eonmns. He desired to prove to 
 them that God was on the side of the big battalions, 
 and that the Jews had forfeited His protection by 
 their manifold transgressions. The Zealots were as 
 wicked as they were misguided, and to follow them was 
 to march to certain ruin. It is not unlikely that 
 Josephus was commissioned by Titus to compose his 
 version of the war for the " Upper Barbarians," whose 
 rising in alliance with the Parthians might have 
 troubled the conqueror of Jerusalem, as it afterwards 
 troubled Trajan. But, save that it was written in 
 Aramaic, we cannot tell the form of the original his- 
 tory, since it has entirely disappeared. 
 
 Josephus says in the preface to the extant Greek 
 books that he translated into Greek the account he had 
 already written. But he certainly did much more than 
 
 1 B. J. VII. xv. 8.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 109 
 
 translate. The whole trend of the narrative and the 
 purpose must have been changed when he came to 
 present the events for a Greco-Roman audience. He 
 was concerned less to insf.il respect for "Rome in his 
 countrymen than to inspire regard for his countrymen 
 in theRomans, and at the same time to show that the 
 Rebellion was not the deliberate work of the whole 
 people, but due to the instigation of a band of desper- 
 ate, unscrupulous fanatics. He was concerned also to 
 sow that God, the vanquished Jewish God, as the 
 Romans would regard Him, had allowed the ruin of 
 His people, not because He was powerless to preserve 
 them, but because they had sinned against His law. 
 Lastly, he was anxious to emphasize the military 
 virtue and the magnanimity of his patrons Vespasian 
 and Titus. He intersperses frequent protests in va- 
 rious parts of the seven books, and repeats them in the 
 preface, to the effect that while his predecessors had 
 written " sophistically," he was aiming only at the 
 exact record of events. But it is obvious that, in the 
 Wars as in his other works, he has a definite purpose 
 to serve, and he colors his account of events to suit 
 this purpose and to please his patrons. 
 
 He sets out to establish, in fact, that it was " a sedi- 
 tion of our own that destroyed Jerusalem, and that the 
 tyrants among the Jews brought upon us the Romans, 
 who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the burn- 
 ing of our Temple." * And he apologizes for the pas- 
 sion he shows against the tyrants and Zealots, which, 
 
 1 B. J., Preface.
 
 110 JOSEPHUS 
 
 he admits, is not consistent with the character of an 
 historian; it was provoked because the unparalleled 
 calamities of the Jews were not caused by strangers 
 but by themselves, and " this makes it impossible for 
 me to contain my lamentations/' 1 The historian, 
 therefore, in the work which has come down to us, is 
 dominated by the conviction, whether sincere or 
 feigned, that the war with Eome was a huge error, that 
 those who fomented it were wicked, self-seeking men, 
 and that the Jews brought their ruin on themselves. 
 This being his temper, it is necessary to look very 
 closely at his representation of events and examine 
 how far partisan feeling and prejudices, and how far 
 servility and the courtier spirit, have colored it. We 
 have also to consider how far his reflections represent 
 his own judgment, and how far they are the slavish 
 adoption of opinions expressed by the victorious 
 enemies of his people. 
 
 The alternative title of the work is On the Destruc- 
 tion of the Temple, but its scope is larger than either 
 name suggests. It is conjectured by the German 
 scholar Xiese that the author called it A History of 
 the Jewish State in Its Relations with the Romans, It 
 is in fact a history of the Jews under the Eomans, be- 
 ginning 1 , as Josephus says, " where the earlier writers 
 on Jewish affairs and our prophets leave off/' 5ej)ro- 
 poses to deal briefly with the events that preceded his 
 own age, hut fully with the events of the wars of his 
 tirne.. The history starts, accordingly, withjhe, 
 
 1 B. J., Preface, 4.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 111 
 
 cution of Antiodms^EpiphangSj _arid, sa ve _that^he 
 expatiates without any sense of .proportion on the ex- 
 ploits of Herod the Great, Josephus is generally faith- 
 ful to his program in the introductory portion of the 
 work. For the Herodian period he found a very full 
 source, and the temptation was too powerful for him, 
 so that the greater part of the first book is taken up 
 with the story of the court intrigues and family 
 murders of the king. Very brief indeed is his treat- 
 ment of the Maccabean brothers, and not very accu- 
 rate. They are dismissed in two chapters, and it is 
 probable that the historian had not before him either 
 of the two good Jewish sources for the period, the 
 First and the Second Book of the Maccabees. In his 
 later work, in which he dealt with the same period at 
 greater length, the account which he had abstracted 
 from a Greek source, probably Nicholas of Damascus, 
 is corrected by the Jewish work. The two records 
 show a number of small discrepancies. Thus, in the 
 Wars he states that Onias, the high priest who drove 
 out the Tobiades from Jerusalem, fled to Ptolemy in 
 Egypt, and founded a city resembling Jerusalem; 
 whereas in the Antiquities he states that the Onias 
 who fled to Egypt because Antiochus deprived him of 
 office was the son of the high priest. Again, in the 
 Wars he makes Mattathias kill the Syrian governor 
 Bacchides; whereas, in the Antiquities, agreeing with 
 the First Book of the Maccabees, he says that the 
 Syrian officer who was slain at Modin was Appelles. 
 
 Josephus in the Wars follows his Hellenistic source 
 for the history of the Hasmonean monarchy without
 
 110 JOSEPHUS 
 
 introducing any Jewish knowledge and without criti- 
 cism. His summary is of incidents, not of movements, 
 and he has a liking for romantic color. The pier- 
 cing of the king's elephant by the Maccabean Eleazar, 
 the prediction by an Essene of the murder of Antigo- 
 nus, the brother of King Aristobulus I, are detailed. 
 The inner Jewish life is passed over in complete 
 silence until he comes to the reign of Alexander. 
 Then he describes the Pharisees as a sect of Jews that 
 are held to be more religious than others and to inter- 
 pret the laws more accurately. 1 The description is 
 clearly derived from a Greek writer, who regards the 
 Jewish people from the outside. It is quite out of 
 harmony with the standpoint which Josephus himself 
 later adopts. In this passage he presents the Pharisees 
 as crafty politicians, insinuating themselves into the 
 favor of the queen, and then ordering the country to 
 suit their own ends. Without describing the other 
 sects, he continues the narration of intrigues and wars 
 till he reaches the intervention of Pompey in the 
 affairs of Palestine. 
 
 From this point the treatment is fuller. No doubt 
 the Hellenistic historians paid more attention to the 
 Jews from the moment when they came within the 
 orbit of the Roman Empire; but while in the Antiqui- 
 ties Josephus refers several times to the statements of 
 two or three of the Greco-Roman writers, in the Wars 
 he quotes no authority. From this it may be inferred 
 that in the earlier work he is following but one guide. 
 
 1 B. J. I. v. 2.
 
 THE JEWISH WABS 113 
 
 He gives an elaborate account of the rise of the Idu- 
 mean family of Antipater, and hence to the end of the 
 book the history passes into a biography of Herod. 
 The first part of Herod's career, when he was building 
 up his power, is related in the most favorable light. 
 His activity in Galilee against the Zealots, his trial by 
 the Sanhedrin, his subsequent service to the Eomans, 
 his flight from Judea upon the invasion of the Par- 
 thians y his reception by Antony, his triumphal return 
 to the kingdom that had been bestowed on him, his 
 valiant exploits against the Arabians of Perea and 
 Xabatea, his capture of Jerusalem, his splendid build- 
 ings, and his magnificence to foreigners all these 
 incidents are set forth so as to enhance his great- 
 ness. The description throughout has a Greek ring. 
 There is scarcely a suggestion of a Jewish point of 
 view towards the semi-savage godless tyrant. And 
 when Josephus comes to the part of Herod's life which 
 even an historian laureate could not misrepresent to 
 his credit, his family relations, he adopts a funda- 
 mentally pagan outlook. 
 
 The foundation of the Greek drama was the idea 
 that the fortunate incurred the envy of the gods, and 
 brought on themselves the "nemesis," the revenge, 
 of the divine powers, which plunged them into ruin. 
 This conception, utterly opposed as it is to the Jewish 
 doctrine of God's goodness, is applied to Herod, on 
 whom, says Josephus, fortune was revenged for his ex- 
 ternal prosperity by raising him up domestic troubles. 1 
 
 1 B. J. I. xxii. 1. 
 8
 
 114 JOSEPHUS 
 
 He introduces another pagan idea, when he suggests 
 that Antipater, the wicked son of the king, returned to 
 Palestine, where he was to meet his doom, at the 
 instigation of the ghosts of his murdered brothers, 
 which stopped the mouths of those who would have 
 warned him against returning. The notion of the 
 avenging spirits of the dead was utterly opposed to 
 Jewish teaching, but it was a commonplace of the Hel- 
 lenistic thought of the time. 
 
 Of Hillel and Shammai, the great sages of the time, 
 we have not a word; but when he recounts how, in the 
 last days of Herod, the people under the lead of the 
 Pharisees rose against the king in indignation at 
 the setting up of a golden eagle over the Temple 
 gate, he speaks of the sophists exhorting their follow- 
 ers, " that it was a glorious thing to die for the 
 laws of their country, because the soul was immor- 
 tal, and an eternal enjoyment of happiness did await 
 such as died on that account ; while the mean-spirited, 
 and those that were not wise enough to show a 
 right love of their souls, preferred death by disease 
 to that which is a sign of virtue." The sentiments 
 here are not so objectionable, but the description of the 
 Pharisees as sophists, and the suggestion of a Valhalla 
 for those who died for their country and for no others 
 
 for which there is no authority in Jewish tradition 
 
 betray again the uncritical copying of a Hellenistic 
 
 Finally, in summing up the character of Herod, all 
 he finds to say is, " Above all other men he enjoyed the
 
 COINS CURRENT IN PALESTINE (34 B. C. E. TO 98 C. E.) 
 
 (Reproduced frnn originals in the Briliik Mwum and in 'Me American Numismatic Society) 
 
 1 and 2. Coins of Harod the Great. 3. Coin of Herod Agrippa I. 4. Coin 
 of Vespasian, with inscription "ludaea Capta. 5 and 6. Coins of Herod 
 Archelaus. 7. Coin of Pontius Pilate.
 
 COINS CURRENT IN PALESTINE (34 B. C. E. TO 98 C. E.) 
 
 (Reproduced from originate in the British Museum and in the American Numismatic Society) 
 
 8. Coin of Nero. 9. Coin of Nero and Brltannicus. 10. Coin of Nerva, with 
 inscription "Fisci ludaici Calumnla Sublata." 11 and 12. Coins of the First 
 Revolt. 13. Coin of Vespasian, with Inscription "ludaea Devicta."
 
 THE JEWISH WAES 115 
 
 favor of fortune, since from a private station he ob- 
 tained a kingdom, and held it many years, and left it 
 to his sons; but yet in his domestic affairs he was a 
 most unfortunate man." Not a word of his wickedness 
 and cruelty, not a breath of the Hebrew spirit, but 
 simply an estimate of his " fortune." This is the way 
 in which the Eomanized Jew continued the historical 
 record of the Bible, substituting foreign superstitions 
 about fate and fortune for the Jewish idea that all 
 human history is a manifestation of God. 
 
 Josephus ends the first book of the Wars with an 
 account of the gorgeous pomp of Herod's funeral, and 
 starts the second book with a description of the costly 
 funeral feast which his son Archelaus gave to the muK 
 titude, adding a note presumably also derived from 
 Nicholas that many of the Jews ruin themselves 
 owing to the need of giving such a feast, because he 
 who omits it is not esteemed pious. As his source 
 fails him for the period following on the banishment 
 of Archelaus, the treatment becomes fragmentary, but 
 at the same time more original and independent. An 
 account of the various Jewish sects interrupts the 
 chronicle of the court intrigues and popular risings. 
 Josephus distinguishes here four sects, the Essenes, 
 the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots, but his 
 account is mainly confined to the first. 1 He describes 
 in some detail their practices, beliefs, and organiza- 
 tions. Indeed, this passage and the account in Philo 
 are our chief Jewish authorities for the tenets of the 
 
 1 B. J. II. viii.
 
 116 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Essenes. He is anxious to establish their claim to 
 be a philosophical community comparable with the 
 Greek schools. In particular he represents that their 
 notions of immortality correspond with the Greek 
 ideas of the Isles of the Blessed and of Hades. " The 
 divine doctrines of the Essenes, as he calls them, which 
 consider the body as corruptible and the soul an im- 
 mortal spirit, which, when released from the bonds of 
 the flesh as from a long slaver} 7 , rejoices and mounts 
 upwards, lay an irresistible bait for such as have once 
 tasted of their philosophy." The ideas which the sect 
 cherished were popular in a certain part of Greco- 
 Eoman society, which, sated with the luxury of the 
 age, turned to the ascetic life and to the pursuit of 
 mysticism. Pliny the Elder, who was on the staff of 
 Titus at Jerusalem, appears to have been especially 
 interested in the Jewish communists, and briefly de- 
 scribed their doctrines in his books ; and the circle for 
 whom Josephus wrote would have been glad to have 
 a fuller account. 
 
 Of the other two sects he says little here, and what 
 he says is superficial. He places the differentiation in 
 their contrasted doctrines of fate and immortality. 
 The Pharisee? ascribe all to fate, but yet allow free- 
 will a Hellenizing version of the paying ascribed to 
 Rabbi Akiba, " All is foreseen, but freedom of will is 
 given" 1 and they say all souls are immortal, but 
 those of the good only pass into other bodies, while 
 those of the bad suffer eternal punishment. This 
 
 J Comp. Abot, iii. 15.
 
 THE JEWISH WAES 117 
 
 attribution of the doctrine of metempsychosis and 
 eternal punishment is another piece of Hellenization, 
 or a reproduction of a Hellenistic misunderstanding; 
 for the Eabbinic records nowhere suggest that such 
 ideas were held by the Pharisees. " The Sadducees, 
 on the other hand, deny fate entirely, and hold that 
 God is not concerned in man's conduct, which is en- 
 tirely in his own choice, and they likewise deny the 
 immortality of the soul or retribution after death." 
 Here the attempt to represent the Sadducees' position 
 as parallel with Epicurean materialism has probably 
 induced an overstatement of their distrust of Provi- 
 dence. Josephus adds that the Pharisees cultivate 
 great friendships among themselves and promote peace 
 among the people ; while the Sadducees are somewhat 
 gruff towards each other, and treat even members of 
 their own party as if they were strangers. 
 
 Of the fourth party, the Zealots, Josephus has only 
 a few words, to the effect that when Coponius was sent 
 as the first procurator of Judea, a Galilean named 
 Judas prevailed on his countrymen to revolt, saying 
 they would be cowards if they would endure to pay 
 any tax to the Eomans or submit to any mortal lord in 
 place of God. This man, he says, was the teacher of a 
 peculiar sect of his own. While the other three sects 
 are treated as philosophical schools, Josephus does not 
 attribute a philosophy to the Zealots, and out of regard 
 to Eoman feelings he says nothing of the Messianic 
 hopes that dominated them.
 
 118 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 After the digression about the sects, Josephus con- 
 tinues his narrative of the Jewish relations with the 
 Romans. He turns aside now and then to detail the 
 complicated family affairs of the Herodian family or to 
 describe some remarkable geographical phenomenon, 
 such as the glassy sands of the Ladder of Tyre. 1 The 
 main theme is the growing irritation of the Jews, and 
 the strengthening of the feeling that led to the out- 
 break of the great war. But Josephus, always under the 
 spell of the Eomans, or writing with a desire to appeal 
 to them, can recognize only material, concrete causes, 
 The deeper spiritual motives of the struggle escape 
 him altogether, as they escaped the Eoman procurators. 
 He recounts the wanton insults of a Pontius Pilate, 
 who brought into Jerusalem Eoman ensigns with the 
 image of Caesar, and spoiled the sacred treasures of 
 the Korban for the purpose of building aqueducts ; and 
 he dwells on the attempt of Gaius to set up his statue in 
 the Temple, which was frustrated only by the Emper- 
 or's murder. But about the attitude of the different 
 sections of the Jewish people to the Eomans, of which 
 his record would have been so valuable, he is silent. 
 
 After the brief interlude of Agrippa's happy reign, 
 the irritation of Eoman procurators is renewed, and 
 under Cumanus tumult follows tumult, as one out- 
 rage after another upon the Jewish feeling is counte- 
 nanced or abetted. The courtier of the Flavian house 
 
 *B. J. II. x. 2. The same phenomenon is recorded In 
 Pliny and Tacitus, and it was a commonplace of the 
 geography of the age.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 119 
 
 takes occasion to recount the Emperor Nero's mis- 
 deeds and family murders; but he resists the desire 
 to treat in detail of these things, because his subject is 
 Jewish history. 1 He must have had before him a 
 source which dealt with general Roman history more 
 fully, and he shows his independence, such as it is, in 
 confining his narrative to the Jewish story. But the 
 reliance on his source for his point of view leads 
 him to write as a good Roman; the national party 
 are dubbed rebels and revolutionaries (oTao-taorai). 
 The Zealots are regularly termed robbers, and the 
 origin of war is attributed to the weakness of the 
 governors in not putting down these turbulent ele- 
 ments. All this was natural enough in a Roman, but 
 it comes strangely from the pen of a soi-disant Jewish 
 apologist, who had himself taken a part in the rebel- 
 lion. Characteristic is his account of the turbulent 
 condition of Palestine in the time of Felix: 
 
 Bands of Sicarii springing up in the chaos caused by 
 the tyranny infested the country, and another body of 
 abandoned men, less villainous in their actions, but more 
 wicked in their designs, deluded the people under pre- 
 tense of divine inspiration, and persuaded them to rise. 
 Felix put down these bands, but, as with a diseased body, 
 straightway the inflammation burst out in another part. 
 And the flame of revolt was blown up every day more and 
 more, till it came to a regular war. 1 
 
 Josephus vents his full power of denunciation on 
 the last procurator, Florus, who goaded the people into 
 
 1 B. J. II. xiii. 1. *B. J. II. xiii. 6.
 
 120 JOSEPHUS 
 
 war, and by his repeated outrages compelled even the 
 aristocratic party, to which the historian belonged, to 
 break their loyalty to Eome : " As though he had been 
 sent as executioner to punish condemned criminals, 
 he omitted no sort of spoliation or extortion. In the 
 most pitiful cases he was most inhuman ; in the great- 
 est turpitudes he was most impudent, nor could any- 
 one outdo him in perversion of the truth, or combine 
 more subtle ways of deceit/' Josephus, not altogether 
 consistently with what he has already said, seeks to 
 exculpate his countrymen for their rising, up to the 
 point in which he himself was involved in it; and 
 though he admits that the high priests and leading 
 men were still anxious for peace at any price, and he 
 puts a long speech into Agrippa's mouth counseling 
 submission, he is yet anxious to show that his people 
 were driven into war by the wickedness of Nero's gov- 
 ernors. His masters allowed him, and probably in- 
 vited him, to denounce the oppression of the ministers 
 of their predecessors, and the Eoman historians Sue- 
 tonius and Tacitus likewise state that the rapacity of 
 the procurators drove the Jews into revolt. He had 
 authority, therefore, for this view in his contemporary 
 sources. 
 
 The die was cast. Menahem, the son of Judas the 
 Galilean and the head of the Zealots, seized Jerusalem, 
 drove the Romans and Eomanizers into the fortress of 
 Antonia, and having armed his bands with the con- 
 tents of Herod's southern stronghold of Masada, over- 
 powered the garrison and put it to the sword. Mena-
 
 THE JEWISH WAES 
 
 121 
 
 hem himself, indeed, was so barbarous that the more 
 moderate leader Eleazar turned against him and put 
 him to death. But Josephus sees in the massarrp of 
 the Eoman garrison the pollution of the citv. which 
 doomed it to destruction. In his belligerent, ethics, 
 massacre of the Romans by the Jews is always a crime 
 against God, requiring His visitation: massacres of 
 the Jews are a visitation of God, revealing that the 
 Eomans were His chosen instrument. 
 
 With the history of the war, so far as the historian 
 was involved in it, we have already dealt. We are here 
 concerned with the character and the reliability of his 
 account. Josephus is somewhat vague and confused 
 about the dispositions of the Jewish leaders, but when 
 he is not justifying his own treachery, or venting his 
 spite on his rivals, he shows many of the parts of a 
 military historian. He surveys with clearness and 
 conciseness the nature ofThe country "thairEneEoinj 
 had to conquer, and lUi l\KSUt llMJH llie Konian armiesjmd 
 Koiiuiii 
 
 greater detail than any Eoman his- 
 torian, his desfgn^Bem'g '"^noT so mur f> fn pr gig * +ho 
 Eomans as to comfort those who have been conquered 
 
 and tO detr r>f hprs fpgrn n'gino-." 1 It has'.' frow^r, bppn 
 
 r/ointed out with p^reat force, in support of the theory 
 thaUie is following closely and almost paraphrasing 
 a Roman authority on the war, +ha* ^jfi orpr>cr rfl p>ii'pg1 
 
 and fnnrrnjpal Inro ^g infrn^nnPfl Tint in its nafn- 
 
 1 B. J. III. v. This remark must clearly have appeared 
 in the original Aramaic.
 
 122 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Tlin 
 
 ' 
 
 the Phnenipinri rmst wh-pfv V^f-fftpinn arrive at Ptole-.. 
 mais, Galilee when, YesjDasian is besieging Tarichea, 
 Jericho when, Ti MJIII linn mill liin mlly * n f,b p -Tprclan 
 
 cities.* 
 
 * 
 
 All this would be natural in a chronicler who was one 
 of Vespasian's staff, but it is odd in the Jewish com- 
 mander of Galilee. Again, he makes certain confus- 
 ions about Hebrew names of places, which are easily 
 explained in a Eoman, but are inexplicable in the 
 learned priest he represents himself to be. He says the 
 town of Gamala was so called because of its supposed 
 resemblance to a camel (in Greek, Kamelos), and the 
 Jews corrupted the name.* A Eoman writer no doubt 
 would have regarded the Hebrew ^>D3 as a corruption 
 of the Greek word : a Jew should have known better. 
 
 Again, he explains Bezetha, the name of the north- 
 eastern quarter of Jerusalem, as meaning the new 
 house or city, 4 a mistake natural to a Eoman who was 
 aware that it was in fact the new part of the city, and 
 alternatively called by the Greek name KcuvoTroAts, 
 but an extraordinary blunder for a Jew, who would 
 surely know that it meant the House of Olives, while 
 the Aramaic or popular name for " new city " would 
 be Bet-Hadta. He does not once refer to Mount Zion, 
 but knows the hill by its Greek name of Acra. Yet 
 again it is significant that he inserts in his geography 
 
 1 Schlatter, Zur Topographic und Geschichte Palastinas, 
 PP. 99 ff. 
 
 2 B. J. III. iii. 1 and x. 7. B. J. III. iv. 2. 
 4 B. J. V. v. 8. 
 
 C v\^
 
 THE JEWISH WAES 123 
 
 pagan touches that are part of the common stock of 
 Greco-Koman notices of Palestine. At Joppa, he says, 
 one may still see on the rock the trace of the chains of 
 Andromeda, 1 who in Hellenistic legend was said to 
 have been rescued there by the fictitious hero Perseus. 
 Describing the Dead Sea, 2 he mentions the destruction 
 of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as a myth, as a 
 Greek or a Eoman would have done. 3 His very accu- 
 racy about some topographical details is suspicious. 
 CoJoneJ CQn^grJ^pjoints^wjth surprise to the fact 
 his description of the fortivs.-; of Masad 
 the Dead Sea,, the siege of which he had not. seen, is 
 absolutely correct, while his account of Jotapata, which 
 he defended, is full of exaggeration. The probable ex- 
 planation is that in the one place he copied a skilled 
 observer ; in the other, he trusted to his own maccura te 
 memory: TVy JfiiRy inter that as in tile Antiquities he 
 mainly compiled the work of predecessors that are 
 known, so in the Wars he compiled the works of prede- 
 cessors that are unknown, adding something from his 
 personal experience and his national pride. 
 
 Apart from his dependence on others' work, his 
 chronicle of the war is marred by the need of justify- 
 ing his own submission, his Eoman standpoint, and 
 his ulterior purpose of pleasing and flattering his 
 patrons. Vespasian and Titus are the righteous min- 
 isters of God's wrath against His people, His vicars on 
 earth, and every action in their ruthless process of ex- 
 
 1 B. J. IV. ix. 3. Pliny says the same thing in Latin. 
 ' B. J. IV. viii. 4. Tac. Hist. v. 7. 
 
 4 Tent Work in Palestine, i. 207.
 
 124 JOSEPHUS 
 
 termination has to be represented as a just retribution 
 required to expiate the sin of Jewish resistance. Titus 
 especially is singled out for his unfailing deeds of brav- 
 ery ; and when anything is amiss with the proceedings 
 of the Komans, the Imperial family is always exculpa- 
 ted. Characteristic is the palliation of Vespasian's 
 brutal treatment of the people of Tarichea. When they 
 surrendered, they were promised their lives, but twelve 
 hundred old men were butchered, and over three thou- 
 sand men and women were sold as slaves. Josephus 
 cannot find the execution of the divine will in this, and 
 so he is driven to explain that Vespasian was over- 
 borne by his council, and gave them an ambiguous 
 liberty to do as seemed good to them. 
 
 It is the pivot of the story of the wars, as has been 
 stated, that the internal strife of the Jews brought 
 about the ruin of the nation, and the testimony of 
 Josephus has perpetuated that conception of the last 
 days of Jerusalem. Our other records of the struggle 
 go to suggest that civil strife did take place. Tacitus * 
 states that there were three leaders, each with his own 
 army in the city, and the Rabbinical authorities* 
 speak of the three councils in Jerusalem. It is further 
 said that the second Temple was destroyed because of 
 the unprovoked hatred among the Jews, which was the 
 equal of the sins of murder, unchastity, and idolatry 
 that brought about the fall of the first Temple.* Yet 
 the fact that the men who were the foremost agitators 
 
 'Hist. v. 12. 'Midr.Kohelet.vii.il. Yoma,9&.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 125 
 
 of the Rebellion -were its leaders to the end suggests 
 that the people had reliance on their leadership; and 
 Josephus probably traded largely on his prejudices for 
 the particulars of the civil conflicts, and he placed all 
 the blame on the party that was least guilty. Adopt- 
 ing the Roman standpoint, he denounced the whole 
 Zealot policy, and for John of Gischala, their leader, 
 he entertained a special loathing. It is therefore his 
 purpose to show that all the sedition was of John's 
 making, while it would seem more probable that the 
 disturbances arose because the Romanizing aristocrats 
 were planning surrender. 
 
 According to Josephus, the Zealots, who were mas- 
 ters of the greater part of Jerusalem during the 
 struggle, established a reign of terror. They trampled 
 upon the laws of man, and laughed at the laws of God. 
 They ridiculed the oracles of the prophets as the tricks 
 of jugglers. " Yet did they occasion the fulfilment of 
 prophecies relating to their country. For there was an 
 ancient oracle that the city should be taken and the 
 sanctuary burnt when sedition should affect the Jews." 
 Josephus shares the pagan outlook of the Roman his- 
 torian Tacitus, who is horrified at the Jewish disre- 
 gard of the omens and portents which betokened the 
 fall of their city, and speaks of them as a people prone 
 to superstition (what we would call faith) and deaf 
 to divine warnings (what we would call superstition). 1 
 Josephus and his friends were looking for signs and 
 
 1 Hist. v. 13. Gens superstitionl prona, religion! ob- 
 noxia.
 
 126 JOSEPHUS 
 
 prophecies of the ruin of the people as an excuse for 
 surrender; the Zealots, men of sterner stuff and of 
 fuller faith, were resolved to resist to the end, and 
 would brook no parleying with the enemy. They were 
 in fact political nationalists of a different school and 
 leaning from the aristocrats and the priests. The 
 latter regarded political life and the Temple service as 
 vital parts of the national life, and believing that the 
 legions were invincible were anxious to keep peace with 
 Eome. The Zealots regarded personal liberty and 
 national independence as vital, and, to vindicate them, 
 fought to the end with Eome. Both the extreme politi- 
 cal parties lacked the spiritual standpoint of the Phar- 
 isees, who believed that the Torah even without politi- 
 cal independence would hold the people together till a 
 better time was granted by Providence. The party 
 conflicts induced violence and civil tumult, and Jose- 
 phus would have us believe that " demoniac discord " 
 was the main cause of the ruin of Jerusalem. Dur- 
 ing the respite which the Jews enjoyed before the 
 final siege of Jerusalem, he alleges that a bitter 
 feud was waged incessantly between Eleazar the son 
 of Simon, who held the Inner Court of the Temple, 
 Simon the son of Gioras, who held the Upper and the 
 greater part of the Lower city, and John of Gischala, 
 who occupied the outer part of the Temple. He de- 
 scribes the situation rhetorically as " sedition beget- 
 ting sedition, like a wild beast gone mad, which, for 
 want of other food, falls to eating its own flesh/' And
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 127 
 
 he bursts into an apostrophe over the fighting that 
 vent on within the Temple precincts : 
 
 Most wretched city! What misery so great as this didst 
 thou suffer from the Romans, when they came to purify 
 thee from thy internecine hatred! Thou couldst no 
 longer be a fit habitation for God, nor couldst thou con- 
 tinue longer in being, after thou hadst been a sepulcher 
 for the corpses of thine own people, and thy holy house 
 itself had been a burial place in their civil strife. 
 
 It is curious that a little later, when he resumes the 
 narrative of the Eoman campaign, and returns pre- 
 sumably to a Eoman source, he says that the Jews, 
 elated by their unexpected success, made incursions on 
 the Greek cities. The success referred to must be the 
 defeat of Cestius Gallus, and it looks as if this lurid 
 account of the .horrors of the civil war in Jerusalem 
 were not known to the Roman guide, and that at the 
 least Josephus has embroidered the story of the feud 
 to suit his thesis. The measure of the Jewish writer's 
 dependence for the main part of his narrative of the 
 siege is singularly illustrated by a small detail. 
 Josephus throughout his account uses the Macedon- 
 ian names of the months, and equates them loosely 
 with those of the Jewish calendar; but it is notable 
 that the three traditional Jewish dates in the siege 
 which he inserts, the fourteenth of Xanthicus (Xisan), 
 when it began, the seventeenth of Panemos (Tammuz), 
 when the daily offering ceased, and the ninth and 
 tenth of Loos (Ab), when the Temple was destroyed, 
 conflict with the other dates he gives in his general
 
 128 JOSEPHUS 
 
 account of the siege. So far from being a proof of his 
 independence, as has been claimed, his Jewish dates 
 show his want of skill in weaving his Jewish informa- 
 tion into his scheme. When he is original, he is apt to 
 be unhistorical. Josephus agrees with the Talmud 
 that the fire lasted to the tenth of the month, 1 but 
 while the Rabbis cursed Titus, who burnt the Holy of 
 Holies and spread fire and slaughter, and Eoman his- 
 torians * declared that Titus had deliberately fired the 
 center of the Jewish cult in order to destroy the na- 
 tional stronghold, Josephus is anxious to preserve his 
 patron's reputation for gentleness and invest him with 
 the appearance of piety and magnanimity. Voicing 
 perhaps the conqueror's later regrets, he declares that 
 he protested against the Eomans' avenging themselves 
 on inanimate things and against the destruction of so 
 beautiful a work, but failed despite all his efforts to stay 
 the conflagration. The historian writes a lurid descrip- 
 tion of the catastrophe, but he omits the simple details 
 that make the account in the Talmud so pathetic. 
 The Temple," runs the Talmudic account, 8 " was de- 
 stroyed on the eve of the ninth day of Ab at the out- 
 going of Sabbath, at the end of the Sabbatic year ; and 
 
 1 Comp. Yer. Taanit, iv. 6. 
 
 2 Comp. Sulpicius Severus, who used Tacitus (Chron. 
 I. xxx. 6.); and the poet Valerius Flaccus acclaims the 
 victor of Solymae, who hurls fiery torches at the Temple. 
 Dion Cassius (Ixvi. 4.) declares that when the Roman 
 soldiers refused to attack the Temple in awe of its holi- 
 ness, Titus himself set fire to it; and this appears to be 
 the true account. 
 
 * Taanit, 29o.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 129 
 
 the watch of Jehoiarib was on service, and the Levites 
 were chanting the hymns and standing at their desks. 
 And the hymn they chanted was, ' And He shall bring 
 upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off 
 with their own wickedness' (Ps. 94:23); and they 
 could not finish to say, 'The Lord our God shall 
 cut them off/ when the heathen came and silenced 
 them/' This account may not be historically true, 
 but it represents the unquenchable spirit of Judaism 
 in face of the disaster. 
 
 Josephus, on the other hand, regards the fall of the 
 Temple as a favorable opportunity to give a list of the 
 prodigies and omens that heralded it. For example, 
 he finds a proof of Providence in the fulfilment of the 
 oracle, that the city and the holy house should be 
 taken when the Temple should become foursquare. 
 By demolishing the tower of Antonia the Jews had 
 made the Temple area foursquare, and so brought the 
 doom upon themselves. He tells, too, the story of 
 a prophet Jesus, who for years had cried, " Woe, woe 
 to Jerusalem," and in the end, struck by a missile, fell, 
 crying, " Woe, woe to me ! " For any reflections, how- 
 ever, on the immortality of the religion or for any 
 utterances of hope for the ultimate restoration of the 
 Temple and the coming of the Messiah, we must not 
 look to the Wars. Such ideas would not have pleased 
 his patrons, had he entertained them himself. He 
 pointed to the fulfilment of prophecy only so far as 
 it predicted and justified the destruction and ruin of 
 his people. The expression of the national agony at 
 9
 
 130 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the destruction of the national center is to be found 
 in the apocryphal book of Esdras II. 
 
 Over his account of the final acts of the tragedy we 
 may pass quickly. Undismayed by the fall of the 
 sanctuary and still hoping for divine intervention, 
 John and Simon withdrew from the Temple to the 
 upper city. Driven from this, they took refuge in the 
 underground caverns and caves to be found every- 
 where beneath Jerusalem, and finally they stood their 
 ground in the towers, until these too were captured, a 
 month after the destruction of the Temple, on the 
 eighth of Elul (Gorpiaeus, as the Greek month was 
 called). 
 
 It was the fifth time that the city was captured; and 
 2179 years passed between its first building and its last 
 destruction. Yet neither its great antiquity, nor its vast 
 riches, nor the diffusion of the nation over the whole 
 earth, nor the greatness of the veneration paid to it on 
 religious grounds, was sufficient to preserve it from de- 
 struction. And thus ended the siege of Jerusalem. 
 
 Though the war was not finished, the crisis of the 
 drama was over, and Josephus, doubtless following his 
 source, relaxes the narrative to digress about affairs in 
 Eome and the East. The last book of the Wars is 
 episodic and disconnected. It is a kind of aftermath, 
 in which the historian gathers up scattered records, 
 but does not preserve the dramatic character of the 
 history. He had apparently here to fall back on his 
 own feeble constructive power, and was hard piit to 
 it to eke out his material to the proportions of a book.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 131 
 
 So careless, too, is he that he abstracts references from 
 his source that are meaningless. In the excursion 
 into general history, he refers to " the German king 
 Alaric, whom we have mentioned before," * though he 
 is brought in for the first time ; and in the account of 
 the siege of the Zealots' fortress Machaerus he records 
 the death of one "Judas whom we have mentioned 
 before," ' though again there was no previous mention 
 of the warrior. In the same chapter he describes some 
 magical plant, " Baaras, possessing power to drive 
 away demons, which are no other than the spirits of the 
 wicked that enter into living men and kill them, unless 
 they obtain some help against them." This appar- 
 ently was a commonplace of Palestinian natural sci- 
 ence, as known to the Greco-Roman world, and Jo- 
 sephus simply copied it. 
 
 The Zealots still maintained resistance in remote 
 parts of the country, and the legate Bassus was sent to 
 take their three fortresses. He died before the 
 capture of Masada, the last stronghold, a natural fast- 
 ness overlooking the Dead Sea, which had been forti- 
 fied by Herod. In this region David and centuries 
 later the Maccabean heroes had found a refuge at 
 their time of distress, and here the Jewish people were 
 to show that desperate heroism of their race which is 
 evoked when all save honor is lost. Masada had been 
 occupied by Eleazar, a grandson of Judas of Galilee, 
 the leader of the most fanatical section of the Zealots ; 
 and it fell to the procurator Flavins Silva to reduce it. 
 
 1 B. J. VII. iv. 4. 2 B. J. VII. vi. 4.
 
 132 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Josephus utters a final outburst against the hated 
 nationalist party and especially its two leaders, Simon 
 of Gioras and John of Gischala, though both had 
 become victims of Roman revenge. " That was a 
 time," he exclaims, " most prolific in wicked practices, 
 nor could anyone devise any new evil, so deeply were 
 they infected, striving with each other individually 
 and collectively who should run to the greatest lengths 
 of impiety towards God and in unjust actions towards 
 their neighbors." The more incongruous is it that 
 after this invective he puts into Eleazar's mouth two 
 long speeches, calling on his men to kill themselves 
 rather than fall into the hands of the Romans, which 
 sum up eloquently the Zealot attitude. 1 Josephus in- 
 deed introduces in the speech the Hellenized doctrine 
 of immortality, which regards the soul as an invisible 
 spirit imprisoned in the mortal body and seeking 
 relief from its prison. He goes on, however, to make 
 the Jewish commander point out how preferable is 
 death to life servitude to the Romans, in a way in 
 which Eleazar might himself have spoken. 
 
 And as for those who have died in the war, we should 
 deem them blessed, for they are dead in defending, and 
 not in betraying, their liberty: but as to the multitude 
 of those that have submitted to the Romans, who would 
 not pity their condition? And who would not make haste 
 to die before he would suffer the same miseries? Where 
 is now that great city, the metropolis of the Jewish 
 nation, which was fortified by so many walls round 
 about, which had so many fortresses and large towers to 
 
 1 B. J. VII. viii.
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 133 
 
 defend it, which could hardly contain the instruments 
 prepared for the war, and which had so many myriads of 
 men to fight for it? Where is this city that God Himself 
 inhabited? It is now demolished to the very foundations; 
 and hath nothing but that monument of it preserved, I 
 mean the camp of those that have destroyed it, which 
 still dwells upon its ruins; some unfortunate old men 
 also lie upon the ashes of the Temple, and a few women 
 are there preserved alive by the enemy for our bitter 
 shame and reproach. Now, who is there that revolves 
 these things in his mind, and yet is able to bear the sight 
 of the sun, though he might live out of danger? Who is 
 there so much his country's enemy, or so unmanly and 
 so desirous of living, as not to repent that he is still 
 alive? And I cannot but wish that we had all died before 
 we had seen that holy city demolished by the hands of 
 our enemies, or the foundations of our holy Temple dug 
 up after so profane a manner. But since we had a gen- 
 erous hope that deluded us, as if we might perhaps have 
 been able to avenge ourselves on our enemies, on that 
 account, though it be now become vanity, and hath left 
 us alone in this distress, let us make haste to die 
 bravely. Let us pity ourselves, our children, and our 
 wives, while it is in our power to show pity to them; for 
 we are born to die, as well as those whom we have 
 begotten; nor is it in the power of the most happy of our 
 race to avoid it. But for abuses and slavery and the sight 
 of our wives led away after an ignominious manner with 
 their children, these are not such evils as are natural and 
 necessary among men; although such as do not prefer 
 death before those miseries, when it is in their power to 
 do so, must undergo even them on account of their 
 own cowardice. 
 
 Responding to their leader's call, the defenders put 
 their wives and children to the sword, and then turned
 
 134 JOSEPHUS 
 
 their hands on themselves: and when the Eomans 
 entered the place, to their amazement and horror they 
 found not a living soul. 
 
 Eleazar!s>speech is one of the few patriotic outbursts 
 in the seven booT\- I n-adslitte a 
 
 cgr^pf-^jtter regret wrong from the unhappy author 
 at the end of las work. __ Like Balaam he set out to 
 curse, and stayed to bless, his enemies, and cursed him- 
 self. Perhaps this apostrophe hides the tragedy of 
 Josephus' life. Perhaps he inwardly repented of his 
 cowardice, and rued the uneasy protection he had se- 
 cured for himself. Perhaps he had denounced the 
 Zealots throughout the history perforce, to please his 
 taskmasters, and in his heart of hearts envied the party 
 that had preferred death to surrender. We could wish 
 he had ended with the story of Ma sa da's noble fall, 
 and left us at this pathetic doubt. But he had not the 
 dramatic sense, and he rounds off the story of the wars 
 with an account of the futile Jewish rising in Alex- 
 andria and Cyrene, fomented by the surviving renir 
 nants of the Zealots. The first led to the closing in 
 Egypt ^ ^ ie Temple of Onias, the last sanctuary of 
 the Jews ; the second to slanderous attacks on the his- 
 torian. Jonathan, who had stirred up the Cyrenaic 
 rising and started the slanders, was tortured and burnt 
 alive. As to Catullus, the Eoman governor, who ad- 
 mitted the calumnies, though the Emperor spared him, 
 he fell into a terrible distemper and died miserably. 
 " Thus he became a signal instance of Divine Provi- 
 dence, and demonstrated that God punishes the 
 wicked."
 
 THE JEWISH WARS 135 
 
 Instead of concluding upon some national reflection, 
 Josephus, pathetically enough, disfigures the end of 
 his work with a final revelation of personal vanity and 
 materialistic views of a Providence intervening on his 
 behalf. Egoism and incapacity to attain to the noble 
 and sublime either in action or thought were the two 
 defects that lowered Josephus as a man, and which 
 mar him as an historian. In the last paragraph of the 
 work he insists that he has aimed alone at agreement 
 with the facts; but industrious as is the record of 
 events, the claim is shallow. His history of the Jewish 
 wars lacks authority because it is palpably designed 
 to please the Eoman taste, and because also it has to 
 serve as a personal apology for one who, when heroism 
 was called for, had failed to respond to the call, and 
 who was thus rendered incapable in letters as in life 
 of being a faithful champion of his people.
 
 VI 
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 
 
 In the preface to the Antiquities Josephus draws a 
 distinction between his motives for the composition of 
 that work and of the Wars. He wrote the latter be- 
 cause he himself had played a large part in the war, 
 and he desired to correct the errors of other historians, 
 who had perverted the truth. On the other hand, he 
 undertook to write the earlier history of his people 
 because of the great importance of the events them- 
 selves and of his desire to reveal for the common bene- 
 fit things that were buried in ignorance. He was 
 stimulated to the task by the fact that his forefathers 
 had been willing to communicate their antiquity to the 
 Greeks, and, moreover, several of the Greeks had been 
 at pains to learn of the affairs of the Jewish nation. 
 
 It would appear that he is here referring to the 
 Septuagint translation of the Bible, since he proceeds 
 to summarize the well-known story of King Ptolemy 
 recounted in the Letter of Aristeas, which he after- 
 wards sets out more fully. 1 Josephus shares the aim 
 of the Hellenistic-Jewish writers to make the Jewish 
 Scriptures known to the Gentile world, and he inherits 
 
 1 See below, p. 175.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 137 
 
 also, but in a much smaller degree, their method of 
 presenting Judaism to suit Greek or Greco-Eoman 
 tastes, as a philosophical, i. e. an ethical-philosophical, 
 religion. Perhaps he had become acquainted, either 
 at Alexandria or at Eome, with Philo's Life of Moses, 
 which was a popular text-book, so to speak, of uni- 
 versal Judaism. Certain it is that the prelude to 
 the Antiquities is reminiscent of the earlier treatise. 
 Josephus reproduces Philo's idea that Moses began his 
 legislation not as other lawgivers, " with the detailed 
 enactments, contracts, and other rites between one 
 man and another, but by raising men's minds upwards 
 to regard God and His creation." For Moses life was 
 to be an imitation of the divine. Contemplation of 
 God's work is the best of all patterns for man to fol- 
 low. With Philo again, he points out the superiority 
 of Moses over other legislators in his attack upon false 
 ideas of the divine nature; "for there is nothing in 
 the Scriptures inconsistent with the majesty of God or 
 with His love of mankind : and all things in it have 
 reference to the nature of the universe." He claims, 
 too, that Moses explains some things clearly and 
 directly, but that he hints at others philosophically 
 under the form of allegory. And to these common- 
 places of Alexandrian exegesis he adds as the lesson 
 of the history of his people that " it goes well with 
 those who follow God's will and observe His laws, and 
 ill with those who rebel against Him and neglect His 
 laws." To exhibit to the Greco-Eoman world the 
 power and majesty of the Jewish God and the excel-
 
 138 JOSEPHUS 
 
 lence of the Jewish law these are the two main pur- 
 poses which he professes to set before himself in his 
 rendering of the Bible story, which occupies the first 
 half of the Antiquities. No Jewish writer before him 
 had treated the Bible to suit Roman predilections, 
 which attached supreme importance to material 
 strength and the concrete manifestation of authority, 
 and Josephus in order to carry out his aim had there- 
 fore to proceed on new lines. 
 
 In effect, he rarely attempts to ethicize the Bible 
 story. For the most part he paraphrases it, cuts out 
 its poetry, and reduces it to a prosaic chronicle of facts. 
 The exordium in fact has little relation to the book, 
 and looks as if it were borrowed without discrimina- 
 tion. Josephus next, indeed, professes that he will 
 accurately set out in chronological order the incidents 
 in the Jewish annals, " without adding anything to 
 what is therein contained or taking anything away 
 from it." It may be that he regarded the oral tradi- 
 tion as an inherent part of the law, and therefore in- 
 serts selections of it in the narrative, but anyhow he 
 does not observe strictly the command of Deuteronomy 
 (4:2) that prompted his profession, " Ye shall not add 
 unto the word I have spoken, neither shall ye diminish 
 aught from it." Xot only does he freely paraphrase 
 the Septuagint version of the Bible, but, more espe- 
 cially in the earlier part of the work, he incorporates 
 pieces of Palestinian Haggadah and to a smaller extent 
 of Alexandrian interpretation, and he omits many 
 episodes that did not seem to him to redound to the
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 139 
 
 glory of his people. He seeks to improve the Bible, 
 and though he did not invent new legends, he accepted 
 uncritically those which he found in Hellenistic 
 sources or in the. oral tradition of his people. His 
 work is, therefore, valuable as a storehouse of early 
 Haggadah. It is unnecessary to accept his description 
 of himself as one who had a profound knowledge of 
 tradition, but he was acquainted with the popular exe- 
 gesis of the Palestinian teachers; and twenty years 
 of life at the Koman court had not entirely eliminated 
 his knowledge. 
 
 In the very first section of the first book, he notes 
 that Moses sums up the first day of Creation with the 
 words, "and it was one day"; whereas afterwards it 
 is said, " it was the second, the third day, etc." He 
 does not indeed supply the interpretation, saying that 
 he will give the reason in a separate treatise which he 
 proposes to write ; but the same point is discussed in 
 the Rabbinic commentary. He gives the traditional 
 interpretation of the four rivers of the Garden of 
 Eden. 1 He derives the name Adam from the Hebrew 
 word for red, because the first man was formed out 
 of red earth. 2 He states that the animals in the 
 Garden of Eden had one language, a piece of Midrash 
 which occurs also in the Book of Jubilees. He relates 
 that Cain, after the murder of his brother, was afraid 
 
 1 Gen. R. ii. and iii., quoted in Bloch, Die Quellen des 
 Flavius Josephus, 1879. The rivers are the Ganges, Eu- 
 phrates, Tigris, and Nile. 
 
 2 Yalkut Gen. 21, 22.
 
 140 JOSEPHUS 
 
 of falling among wild beasts, agreeing with the Mid- 
 rash that all the animals assembled to avenge the 
 blood of Abel, 1 but God forbade them to destroy Cain 
 on pain of their own destruction. Seth he describes 
 as the model of the virtuous, and of him the Eabbis 
 likewise say, " From Seth dates the stock of all genera- 
 tions of the virtuous." He pictures him also as a great 
 inventor and the discoverer of astronomy, and tells 
 how he set up pillars of brick and stone recording 
 these inventions, so that they might not be forgotten 
 if the world was destroyed either by fire or water ; here 
 again agreeing with the Book of Jubilees, which re- 
 lates that Cainan found an inscription in which his 
 forefathers had described their inventions. Examples 
 might be multiplied from the first chapters of the 
 Antiquities of the way in which Josephus weaves into 
 the Bible account traditional Midrashim, but these in- 
 stances will suffice. 
 
 Besides embroidering the Bible text with Haggadic 
 legends, Josephus is prone to place in the mouths of 
 the characters rhetorical speeches in the Greek style, 
 either expanding a verse or two in the Bible or com- 
 posing them entirely. Thus God says to Adam and 
 Eve in the Garden of Eden after the fall : 
 
 I had before determined about you that you might lead 
 a happy life without affliction and care and vexation of 
 soul; and that all things which might contribute to your 
 enjoyment and pleasure should grow up by My Provi- 
 dence of their own accord. And death would not overtake 
 
 1 Gen. R. xxii.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 141 
 
 you at any period. But now you have abused My good- 
 will and disobeyed My commands, for your silence is not 
 the sign of your virtue but of your guilty conscience. 
 
 Anticipating, moreover, tlie methods of latter-day 
 Biblical apologists, he loses no opportunity of adding 
 any confirmation he can find for the Bible story in 
 pagan historians. He cites for the truth of the story 
 of the flood Berosus the Chaldean, Hieronymus the 
 Egyptian, Menander the Phoenician, and a great many 
 others 1 ; and he finds confirmation of the early chap- 
 ters of Genesis in general in Manetho, who wrote a 
 famous Egyptian history, and Mochus, and Hestiaeus, 
 and in some of the earliest Greek chroniclers, Hesiod 
 and Hecataeus and Hellanicus and Acesilaus. In later 
 years he was to deal more elaborately with the question 
 of the authority of the Scriptural history, 2 and then he 
 set out the pagan testimony more accurately. In the 
 Antiquities he is usually content to refer to it. It is 
 significant that in the passages in which he adduces 
 pagan corroboration he refers to Xicholas of Damas- 
 cus, and in the first of them repeats his words about the 
 remains of the Ark lying on a mountain in Armenia. 
 It is well-nigh certain that Josephus did not study 
 the writings of any of these chroniclers and historians 
 at first hand, for he shows no acquaintance with the 
 substance of their works. They were quoted by 
 Xicholas, and where his source had given excerpts 
 from their writings that threw any light, or might 
 be taken to throw light, on the Hebrew text, Josephus, 
 
 'Ant. I. iii. 3. 2 Comp. below, p. 223.
 
 142 JOSEPHUS 
 
 following the literary ethics of his day, inserts them. 
 His archeology extended only to the reading of one or 
 more writers of universal ancient history and taking 
 from them whatever bore upon his own subject. He 
 finds authority for the story of the tower of Babel in 
 the oracles of the Sibyl, which we now know to be 
 Jewish forgeries, but which professed to be and were 
 regarded by the less educated of his day as being the 
 utterances of an ancient seeress. Josephus para- 
 phrases the hexameters which described how, when all 
 men were of one tongue, some of them built a high 
 tower, as if they would thereby ascend to heaven ; but 
 the deity sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, 
 and gave everyone his peculiar language. 
 
 Josephus sets considerable store by the exact 
 chronology of the Bible, stopping continually to 
 enumerate the number of years that had passed from 
 the Creation to some other point of reckoning. His 
 habit in this respect is marred by a singular inaccu- 
 racy in dealing with dates and figures, varying as 
 he often does from chapter to chapter, sometimes 
 from paragraph to paragraph, according to the source 
 he happens to be following. He gives the year of the 
 flood as 2656, though the sum of the years of the 
 Patriarchs who lived before it in his reckoning totals 
 only 2256. It has been conjectured 1 that he followed 
 the Septuagint chronology from the Creation to the 
 flood and that of the Hebrew Bible from Abraham on- 
 
 J Comp. Destinon, Die Chronologic des Josephus, 1880.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 143 
 
 wards, and for the intermediate period he has his own 
 reckoning. The result is that his calculations are often 
 inconsistent. In his desire to impress the Greco- 
 Roman reader, he dates an event by the Macedonian 
 as well as the Jewish month, whenever he knows it, 
 i. e. when he found it in his source. Thus the flood is 
 said to have taken place " in the month Dius, which is 
 called by the Hebrews Marheshwan." From the same 
 motive he dwells on the table of the descendants of 
 Xoah, identifying the various families mentioned in 
 the Bible with peoples known to the Greek world. The 
 sons of Xoah inhabited first the mountains Taurus 
 and Amanus, and proceeded along Asia to the river 
 Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz, giving their names 
 to nations in the lands they inhabited. 
 
 What Josephus then insists on in his paraphrase of 
 Scripture is the fact and not the lesson, the letter and 
 not the spirit ; while Philo, who is the true type of Jew- 
 ish Hellenist, was always looking for deeper mean- 
 ings beneath the literal text. The Eomans had no bent 
 for such interpretations, and Josephus Eomanizes. 
 He treats, for example, the genealogies, the chronol- 
 ogy, and the ethnology of Genesis as things of 
 supreme value, and though he occasionally inserts 
 Haggadic tradition, he misses the Haggadic spirit, 
 which sought to draw new morals and new spiritual 
 value from the narrative. In his account of Abram, 
 indeed, he touches upon the patriarch's higher idea of 
 God, which led him to leave Chaldea. But here, too,
 
 144 JOSEPHUS 
 
 he distorts the genuine Hebraic conception, and pre- 
 sents Abram as a kind of Stoic philosopher. 1 
 
 He was the first that ventured to publish this notion, 
 that there was but one God, the Creator of the Universe, 
 and that, as to the other gods, if they contributed to the 
 happiness of men, they afforded it according to their 
 appointment and not according to their own power. His 
 opinion was derived from the study of the heavenly 
 bodies and the phenomena of the terrestrial world. If, 
 said he, these bodies had power of their own, they would 
 certainly have regular motions. But since they do not 
 preserve such regularity, they show that in so far as they 
 work for our good, they do it not of their own strength 
 but as they are subservient to Him who commands them. 
 
 This is one of the few pieces of theology in the 
 Antiquities, and we are fain to believe that he bor- 
 rowed it from Nicholas, who is quoted immediately 
 afterwards, or from pseudo-Hecataeus, a Jewish 
 pseudepigraphic historian, to whom a book on the 
 patriarch was ascribed. So, later, following the Hel- 
 lenistic tradition, he represents Abraham as the teacher 
 of astronomy to the Egyptians. 
 
 Josephus was a wavering rationalist, as is shown by 
 his acceptance of the story of Lot's wife being turned 
 into a pillar of salt. " I have seen the pillar," he adds 
 (though again he may be blindly copying), "and it 
 remains to this day." It is not the place here to enter 
 into the details of his version of the story of the patri- 
 archs. He gives the facts, and loses much of the spirit, 
 often spoiling the beauty of the Biblical narrative by 
 a prosy paraphrase. Thus God assures Abraham after 
 
 'Ant. I. vil. 1,
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 145 
 
 the offering of Isaac, 1 that it was not out of desire for 
 human blood that he was commanded to slay his son ; 
 and Isaac says to Jacob, who comes to receive the bless- 
 ing : " Thy voice is like the voice of Jacob, yet because 
 of the thickness of thy hair thou seemest to be Esau." 
 One is reminded of Bowdler's improvements of Shakes- 
 peare in the eighteenth century. 
 
 The first book of the Antiquities ends with the death 
 of Isaac. The second deals with the story of Joseph 
 and of the Exodus from Egypt. The method is the 
 same: partly Midrashic and partly rhetorical embel- 
 lishment of the Biblical text, conversion of the poetry 
 into prose, and, where occasion offers, correlation of 
 the Scripture with Hellenistic history. The chapters 
 dealing with the life of Moses are particularly rich in 
 legendary additions : Amram is told in a vision that 
 his son shall be the savior of Israel; 8 the name of 
 Pharaoh's daughter is given as Thermuthis, in accord- 
 ance with Hellenistic, but not Talmudic, tradition. 
 Moses in his childhood dons Pharaoh's crown, and is 
 only saved from death by the king's daughter.* 
 Finally a whole chapter is devoted to an account of the 
 wars of Moses, as an Egyptian general fighting against 
 the Ethiopians, which is taken from the histories of 
 pseudo-Artapanus.* Josephus makes no attempt to 
 
 1 Ant. I. xiii. 4. 
 
 3 Comp. Mekilta, ed. Weiss, p. 52. This and the follow- 
 ing Rabbinic parallels are collected by Bloch, op. cit. 
 3 Comp. Tanhuma, xii. 4. 
 * Comp. Eusebius, Praep. vii. 2. 
 10
 
 146 JOSEPHUS 
 
 rationalize the account of the plagues, hut on the con- 
 trary dilates on them, " both because no such plagues 
 did ever happen to any other nation, and because it is 
 for the good of mankind, that they may learn by this 
 warning not to do anything which may displease God, 
 lest He be provoked to wrath and avenge their iniquity 
 upon them." At the same time, following a tradition 
 reflected in the Apocalyptic and Rabbinic literature, 
 he modifies the Biblical statement, that the Jews 
 spoiled the Egyptians before leaving the country, by 
 explaining that they took their fair hire for their 
 labor. 1 And after describing the drowning of the 
 Egyptians in the Red Sea which Moses celebrates 
 with a thanksgiving song in hexameter verse* he 
 apologizes for the strangeness of the narrative and its 
 miraculous incidents. He explains that he has re- 
 counted every part of the history as he found it in the 
 sacred books, and people are not to wonder " if such 
 things happened, whether by God's will or by chance, 
 to the men of old, who were free from the wickedness 
 of modern times, seeing that even for those who accom- 
 panied Alexander the Greek, who lived recently, when 
 it was God's will to destroy the Persian monarchy, the 
 Pamphylian sea retired and afforded a passage." This 
 homily smacks of some Hellenistic-Jewish rationalist, 
 whom he copied. But he concludes the whole with a 
 
 1 Comp. Book of Jubilees, xlvlii. 18, and Sanhedrin, 91a. 
 
 2 He probably had in mind the Greek version of the 
 Song of Moses made by the Jewish-Alexandrian dramatic 
 poet Ezekiel, which was written in hexameter verse.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 147 
 
 formula, which is regular when he has stated some- 
 thing which he fears will be difficult of belief for his 
 audience, " As to these things, let everyone determine 
 as he thinks best." He treats the account of the Deca- 
 logue in a similar way. "I am bound," he says, " to re- 
 late the history as it is described in the Holy Writ, but 
 my readers may accept or reject the story as they 
 please." Josephus therein applied the rule, " When 
 at Rome, do as Rome does." For it is noteworthy that 
 the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote a little later 
 than Josephus, manifests the same indecision about 
 the interference of the divine agency in human affairs, 
 the relation of chance to human freedom, and the 
 necessity of fate ; and in many cases he likewise places 
 the rational and transcendental explanations of an 
 event side by side, without any attempt to reconcile 
 them. 
 
 Josephus deals summarily with the Mosaic Code in 
 the Antiquities, but announces his intention to com- 
 pose " another work concerning our laws." This work 
 is, perhaps, represented by the second book Against 
 Apion; or possibly the intention was never fulfilled. 
 He does not set out the ten commandments at length, 
 explaining that it was against tradition to translate 
 them directly. 1 He refers probably to the rule that 
 they were not to be recited in any language but 
 Hebrew, though, of course, the Septuagint contained 
 a full version. On the other hand, he describes the 
 
 'Ant. III. vi. 4.
 
 148 JOSEPHUS 
 
 construction of the Tabernacle with some fulness, and 
 dwells particularly on the robes of the priests and the 
 pomp of the high priest. Eitual and ceremonial ap- 
 pealed to his public ; and his account, which was based 
 on the practice of his own day, supplements in some 
 particulars the account in the Talmud. But unfortu- 
 nately he does not describe the Temple service. He 
 attaches marked importance to the Urim and Thum- 
 mim, which formed a sort of oracle parallel with pagan 
 institutions, and says that the breastplate and sar- 
 donyx, with which he identifies them, ceased to shine 
 two hundred years before he wrote his book 1 (i. e. at 
 the time of John Hyrcanus). The Talmud under- 
 stands the mystic names of the Bible in a similar 
 way, 2 but represents that the oracle ceased with the 
 destruction of the first Temple, and was not known in 
 the second Temple. Josephus enlarges, in a way com- 
 mon to the Hellenistic- Jewish apologists,* on the sym- 
 bolism of the Temple service and furniture. 
 
 One may wonder at the contempt men bear us, or which 
 they profess to bear, on the ground that we despise the 
 Deity, whom they pretend to honor: for if anyone do but 
 consider the construction of the Temple, the Tabernacle, 
 and the garments of the high priest, and the vessels we 
 use in our service, he will find our lawgiver was inspired 
 by God .... For if he regard these things without 
 prejudice, he will find that everyone is made by way of 
 imitation and representation of the Universe." 
 
 *Ant. III. vii. 7. 2 Yer. Sotah, ix. 13. 
 
 'Cornp. Philo, De V. Mos. iii. 6. 4 Ant. III. vii. 7.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 149 
 
 The ritual, in brief, typifies the universal character 
 of Judaism, which Josephus was anxious to empha- 
 size in reply to the charge of Jewish aloofness and par- 
 ticularism. The three divisions of the Tabernacle 
 symbolize heaven, earth, and sea; the twelve loaves 
 stand for the twelve months of the year; the seventy 
 parts of the candlestick for the seventy planets; the 
 veils, which were composed of four materials, for the 
 four elements ; the linen of the high priest's vestment 
 signified the earth, the blue betokened the sky; the 
 breastplate resembled the shape of the earth, and so 
 forth. We find similar reflections in Philo, but in his 
 work they are part of a continuous allegorical exegesis, 
 and in the other they are a sudden incursion of the 
 symbolical into the long narrative of facts. 
 
 Following the acount of the Tabernacle and the 
 priestly vestments, Josephus describes the manner of 
 offering sacrifices, the observance of the festivals, and 
 the Levitical laws of cleanliness. In his account of 
 these laws Josephus makes no attempt either to derive 
 a universal value from the Biblical commands or to 
 read a philosophical meaning into them by allegorical 
 interpretation. He normally states the law as it stands 
 in the text, and in the selection he makes he gives the 
 preference, not to general ethical precepts, but to regu- 
 lations about the priests. He had a pride of caste and 
 a love of the pomp and circumstance of the Temple 
 service; and the national ceremony could be more 
 easily conveyed to the Gentile than an understanding 
 of the spiritual value of Judaism. The Hellenistic
 
 150 JOSEPHUS 
 
 apologists enlarged on the humanitarian character of 
 the Mosaic social legislation ; Josephus mentions with- 
 out comment the laws of the seventh year release and 
 the Jubilee, though in his later apology, which was 
 addressed to the Greeks, in the books Against Apion* 
 he dwelt more carefully on them. His interpretation 
 of the laws, so far as it goes, in places agrees with the 
 Rabbinic Halakah, but he admits some modification 
 of the accepted tradition. Thus he states that the 
 high priest was forbidden to marry a slave, or a captive, 
 or a woman who kept an inn. He translates the 
 Hebrew fW1T which probably here means a prostitute, 
 by innkeeper, a meaning the word has in other pas- 
 sages ; 2 but the Aramaic version of the Bible supports 
 him. He gives, too, a rationalizing reason for the 
 observance of Tabernacles, saying, " The Law enjoins 
 us to pitch tabernacles so that we may preserve our- 
 selves from the cold of the season of the year." ' The 
 Feast of Weeks he calls Asartha, perhaps a Grecized 
 form of the Hebrew rpVl?, which was its old name, and 
 he does not regard it as the anniversary of the giving 
 of the Law. He promises to explain afterwards why 
 some animals are forbidden for food and some per- 
 mitted, but he fails to fulfil his promise. Since, how- 
 ever, the interpretation of the dietary laws as a disci- 
 pline of temperance was a commonplace of Hellenistic 
 
 1 See below, p. 234. 
 
 * Judges, 4:1; Josh. 2; and Ezek. 23: 44. 
 
 1 Ant IV. viii. 4.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 151 
 
 Judaism, which is very fully set forth in the so-called 
 Fourth Book of the Maccabees/ the absence of his com- 
 ments is not a great loss. 
 
 In the next book of the Antiquities, Josephus deals 
 with other parts of the Mosaic Law, especially such as 
 might appear striking to Roman readers. Thus he 
 gives in detail the law as to the Xazarites, the Korban 
 offering, and the red heifer, and he completes his ac- 
 count of the Mosaic Code by a summary description of 
 the Jewish polity, in which he abstracts a large part 
 of the laws of Deuteronomy together with some of the 
 traditional amplifications.* Moses prefaces his fare- 
 well address with a number of moral platitudes. 
 " Virtue is its own principal reward, and, besides, it 
 bestows abundance of others." " The practice of 
 virtue towards other men will make your own lives 
 happy," and so forth. Josephus again proclaims that 
 he sets out the laws in the words of Moses, his only 
 innovation being to arrange them in a regular system, 
 " for they were left by him in writing as they were 
 accidentally scattered." The influence of Roman law 
 may have suggested the arranging and digesting of 
 the Mosaic Code, as well as several of his variations 
 from the letter of the Bible. 
 
 A few of his interpretations are noteworthy as com- 
 prising either Palestinian or Hellenistic tradition. He 
 understands the command not to curse those in au- 
 
 1 See above, p. 105. 2 Ant. IV. viii.
 
 152 JOSEPHUS 
 
 thority ( Dv6. Exod. 22:28) as referring to the 
 gods worshiped in other cities, following Philo and a 
 Hellenistic tradition based on a mistranslation of the 
 Septuagint. A late passage in the Talmud, on the 
 other hand, says that all abuse is forbidden save of 
 idolatry. 1 With Philo again, he inserts into the code a 
 law prohibiting the possession of poison on pain of 
 death/ which is based on an erroneous interpretation 
 of the law against witchcraft. Josephus follows the 
 Hellenistic school also when he deduces from the 
 prohibition against removing boundary stones the 
 lesson that no infraction of the law and tradition * is 
 to be permitted. Xothing is to be allowed the imita- 
 tion of which might lead to the subversion of the con- 
 stitution. He introduces a law about evidence, to the 
 effect that the testimony of women should not be ad- 
 mitted " on account of the levity and boldness of their 
 sex."* The rule has no place in the Code of the Pen- 
 tateuch, but is supported in the oral law. He adopts 
 another traditional interpretation when he limits the 
 commands against women wearing men's habits to the 
 donning of armor in times of war. 5 He misrepresents, 
 on the other hand, the law of PiD'Dt? (seventh year 
 release), stating that if a servant have a child by a 
 
 1 Sanhedrin, 636. 
 
 1 Comp. Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii. 315. 
 'Comp. Deut. 22:5, and Nazir, 59a, with Ant. IV. viii. 
 43. 
 
 4 Shebuot, 30a. Comp. Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 153 
 
 bondwoman in his master's house, and if, on account 
 of his good-will to his master, he prefers to remain a 
 slave, he shall be set free only in the year of jubilee. 
 The Bible says he shall be branded if he refuse the 
 proffered liberty in the seventh year, and Philo in his 
 interpretation has drawn a fine homily about the re- 
 gard set on liberty. But Josephus may have thought 
 that the institution would appear ridiculous to the 
 legal minds of Eomans. To accommodate the Jew- 
 ish law again to the Roman standard, he moderates 
 the lex taUonis (the rule of an eye for an eye), by 
 adding that it is applied only if he that is maimed will 
 not accept money in compensation for his injury, a 
 half-way position between the Sadducean doctrine, 
 which understood the Biblical law literally, and the 
 Pharisaic rule, which abrogated it. But in several in- 
 stances he makes offenses punishable with death, 
 which were not so according to the tradition, e. g. the 
 insulting of parents by their children and the taking 
 of bribes by judges. 1 Summing up the version of 
 Deuteronomy, it may be said that Josephus, by omit- 
 ting a law here, adding one there, now softening, now 
 modifying, in some places broadening, in others nar- 
 rowing the scope of the command, presents a code 
 which lacks both the ruggedness of the Torah and the 
 
 1 Comp. C. Ap. ii. 27. It has been suggested by Judge 
 Mayer Sulzberger that he falsely interpreted the Hebrew 
 "THN (cursed be!) to mean death punishment. Comp. 
 J. Q. R., n. s., iii. 315.
 
 JOSEPHUS 
 
 maturer humaneness of the Babbinical Halakah, but 
 was designed to show the reasonableness of the Jewish 
 system according to Eoman notions. 
 
 Josephus, from a different motive, is silent about the 
 golden calf and the breaking of the tablets of stone. 
 Those incidents, to his mind, did not reflect credit on 
 his people ; therefore they were not to be disclosed to 
 Greek and Eoman readers. He omits, for other rea- 
 sons, the Messianic prophecies of Balaam, which would 
 not be pleasing to the Flavians. At the same time 
 one of the blessings in the prophecies of Balaam gives 
 him the opportunity of asserting some universal 
 humanitarian doctrines, to which Philo affords a 
 parallel. The Moabite seer talks like a Hellenistic 
 apologist of the second century B. c. E. or a Sibylline 
 oracle : " Every land and ever} 7 sea will be full of the 
 praise of your name. Your offspring will dwell in 
 every clime, and the whole world will be your dwell- 
 ing-place for eternity/' 1 He is at pains to extol Moses 
 as of superhuman excellence, as is proved by the en- 
 during force of his laws, which is such that " there is 
 no Jew who does not act as if Moses were present and 
 ready to punish him if he should offend in any way." 5 
 He quotes examples of the Jewish steadfastness in the 
 Law, which would have impressed a Eoman : the regu- 
 lar pilgrimage from Babylon to the Temple, the ab- 
 stention of the Jewish priests from touching a crumb 
 
 'Comp. Orac. Sib. iii. 271: vaaa tie yaia otOfv TrXijpijs 
 5ffa 8d\a.ffffa, and Philo, De V. Mos. ii. 126. 
 * Ant. IV. vi. 4.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 155 
 
 of flour during the Feast of Passover, at a time Avhen, 
 during a severe famine, abundance of wheat was 
 brought to the Temple. But he somewhat mars the 
 effect of his praise by adding a not very exalted motive 
 for the piety of his people the dread of the Law and 
 of the wrath which God manifests against trans- 
 gressors, even when no man can accuse the actor. 
 Josephus is in a way a loyal supporter of the Law, and 
 he had a sincere admiration for its hold on the people, 
 but he was led by the conditions of his appeal to 
 materialize the idea of Jewish religious intensity and 
 to present it as a fear of punishment. Xor is it the 
 humanity, the inherent excellence of the Law which he 
 emphasizes, but its endurance and the widespread al- 
 legiance it commands. Looking at Judaism through 
 Roman spectacles, he treats it as a positive force com- 
 parable with the sway of the Eoman Emperor. 
 
 In the description of the death of Moses the same 
 habit of enfeebling the majesty of the Biblical text to 
 suit the current taste is manifested. Moses weeps be- 
 fore he ascends the mountain to die. He exhorts the 
 people not to lament over his departure. As he is about 
 to embrace Joshua and Eleazar, he is covered with a 
 cloud and disappears in a valley, although he 
 piously wrote in the holy books that he died lest the 
 people should say that, because of his marvelous 
 virtue, he was taken up to God. For the last state- 
 ment Josephus has the authority of some sages, who
 
 156 JOSEPHUS 
 
 discussed whether the last verses of Deuteronomy were 
 written by Moses himself. 1 
 
 Josephus continues the Biblical narrative in less 
 detail in the fifth book, which covers the period of 
 Joshua and the Judges and the first part of Samuel. 
 The Book of Joshua is compressed into the limits of 
 one chapter, but the exploits of each of the judges of 
 Israel, with one or two omissions, are recounted in 
 order, and the episode of Euth is inserted after the 
 story of Samson. He substitutes for the famous 
 declaration of Euth to Xaomi the prosy statement: 
 " Xaomi took Euth along with her, as she was not to be 
 persuaded to stay behind, but was resolved to share her 
 fortune with her mother-in-law, whatsoever it should 
 prove." And he justifies his insertion of the episode 
 by the reflection that he desires to demonstrate the 
 power of God, who can raise those that are of common 
 parentage to dignity and splendor, even as He ad- 
 vanced David, though he was born of mean parents. 
 
 With his fondness for royal history, and no doubt 
 with an eye to his noble audience, he devotes a whole 
 book to the account of Saul's reign, adhering closely 
 to the narrative in Samuel, but occasionally adding a 
 passage from the Book of Chronicles, or softening 
 what seemed an asperity in Scripture. Samuel, for 
 example, orders Agag to be killed, whereas in the Bible 
 he puts him to death with his own hand.* The inci- 
 dent of Saul and the Witch of Endor is expanded and 
 
 1 Baba Batra, 15a. ! Ant. VI. viii. 5.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 157 
 
 invested with further pathos. 1 The Witch devotes her 
 only possession, a calf, for the king's meal, and the 
 historian expatiates first on her kindness and then on 
 Saul's courage in fighting, though he knew his ap- 
 proaching doom. We may suspect that this digression 
 was induced by a supposed analogy in the king of 
 Israel's lot to the author's conduct in Galilee, when, 
 as he claimed, he fought on though knowing the hope- 
 lessness of resistance. 
 
 The next book is taken up entirely with the reign 
 of David, and contains little that is noteworthy. On 
 one point Josephus cites the authority of Xicholas of 
 Damascus to support the Bible, and here and there he 
 adopts a traditional interpretation. David's son by 
 Abigail is said to be Daniel, 2 whereas the Book of 
 Samuel gives the name as Kitab. Absalom's hair was 
 so thick that it could be cut with difficulty every eight 
 days. 3 David chose a pestilence as the punishment for 
 his sin in numbering his people, because it was an 
 affliction common to kings and their subjects. 4 The 
 historian ascribes the Psalms to David, and says they 
 were in several (Greek) meters, some in hexameters 
 and others in pentameters. Lastly he enlarges on the 
 wonderful wealth of David, which was greater than 
 that of any other king either of the Hebrews or of 
 
 1 Ant. VI. viii. 14. 
 
 2 Comp. Ant. VII. I. 4; Berakot, 4a. 
 
 s Ant. VII. viii.; comp. Nazir, 4&. 
 
 4 Ant. VII. xiii.; comp. Yalkut, ii. 165.
 
 158 JOSEPHUS 
 
 other nations. Benjamin of Tudela relates, and the 
 Mohammedans believe to this day, that vast treasure is 
 buried with the king, and lies in his reputed sepulcher. 
 The story must have been accepted in the days of 
 Josephus, for he records how Hyrcanus, the son of 
 Simon the Maccabee, being in straits for money to buy 
 off the Seleucid invader, opened a room of David's 
 sepulcher and took out three thousand talents, and 
 how, many years later, King Herod opened another 
 room, and took out great store of money ; yet neither 
 lighted on the body of the king. Such romantic tales 
 pleased the readers of the Jewish historian, who lived 
 amid the wonderful material splendor of Borne, and 
 prized, above all things, material wealth. 
 
 When he comes to the history of Solomon, he speaks 
 of his proverbial writings, and inserts a long account 
 of his miraculous magical powers, based no doubt on 
 popular legend. 1 
 
 He composed books of odes and songs one thousand 
 and five [here he follows Chronicles] and of parables and 
 similitudes three thousand. For he spoke a parable on 
 every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar, and in 
 like manner about every sort of living creature, whether 
 on the earth or in the air or in the seas. He was not 
 unacquainted with any of their natures, nor did he omit 
 to study them, but he described them all in the manner of 
 a philosopher. God also endowed him with skill in ex- 
 pelling demons, which is a science useful and health- 
 giving to men. 2 
 
 Yalkut, ii. 177. The apocryphal Wisdom of 
 Solomon similarly credits the king with power over 
 spirits (vii. 20). 
 'Ant VIII. ii. 5.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 159 
 
 Josephus goes on to describe how, in the presence of 
 Vespasian, a compatriot cured soldiers who were de- 
 moniacal. We know from the New Testament that the 
 belief in possession by demons was widespread among 
 the vulgar in the first century of the common era, and 
 the Essenes specialized in the science of exorcism. 
 As the belief was invested with respectability by the 
 patronage which the Flavian court extended to all 
 sorts of magic and witchcraft, Josephus enlarges on 
 it. Solomon is therefore represented as a thaumatur- 
 gist, and while not a single example is given of the 
 proverbs ascribed to him, his exploits as a miracle- 
 monger are extolled. Josephus sets out at length the 
 story of the building of the Temple, and dwells on 
 Solomon's missions to King Hiram, of which, he says, 
 copies remained in his day, and may be seen in the 
 public records of Tyre. This he claims to be a signal 
 testimony to the truthfulness of his history. 1 He 
 modernizes elaborately Solomon's speech at the dedi- 
 cation of the sanctuary, and converts it into an apol- 
 ogy for the Jews of his own day. Again he follows an 
 Alexandrian model, and describes God in Platonic 
 fashion : " Thou possessest an eternal house, and we 
 know how, from what Thou hast created for Thy- 
 self, Heaven and Air and Earth and Sea have sprung, 
 and how Thou fillest all things and yet canst not 
 be contained by any of them." 2 Solomon is here a 
 
 1 Comp. below, p. 223. 
 
 2 Ant. VIII. iv. 2. Comp. Philo, De Confus. Ling. i. 425.
 
 160 JOSEPHUS 
 
 preacher of universalism ; he prays that God shall 
 help not the Hebrews alone when they are in distress, 
 " but when any shall come hither from the ends of the 
 earth and repent of their sins and implore Thy forgive- 
 ness, do Thou pardon them and hear their prayer. For 
 thereby all shall know that Thou wast pleased with 
 the building of this house, and that we are not of an 
 unsociable nature, nor do we behave with enmity to 
 such as are not of our people, but are willing that Thou 
 shouldst bestow Thy help on all men in common, and 
 that all alike may enjoy Thy benefits." Solomon's 
 dream after the dedication service provides another 
 occasion for pointing to the Jewish disaster of the 
 historian's day. For he foresees that if Israel will 
 transgress the Law, his miseries shall become a prov- 
 erb, and his neighbors, when they hear of them, shall 
 be amazed at their magnitude. 
 
 The description of the Temple is followed by a 
 glowing account of the king's palace, of which the roof 
 was "according to the Corinthian order, and the 
 decorations so vivid that the leaves seemed to be in 
 motion." We are told, too, of the great cities which 
 the king built, Tadmor in the wilderness of Syria, and 
 Gezer, the Bible narrative being supplemented here 
 with passages from Xicholas. The Queen of Sheba is 
 represented as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and 
 it is to her gift that Josephus attributes " the root of 
 balsam which our country still bears." Reveling in 
 the material greatness of the Jewish court during the 
 golden age of the old kingdom, Josephus catalogues
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 161 
 
 the wealth of Solomon, the number of his horses and 
 chariots. He reproaches him not only for marrying 
 foreign wives, but for making images of brazen oxen, 
 which supported the brazen sea, and the images of 
 lions about his throne. For these sins against the 
 second commandment he died ingloriously. 
 
 With the death of Solomon the legendary and 
 romancing character of this part of the Antiquities 
 comes to an end. In the summary of the fortunes of 
 the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Josephus adheres 
 almost exclusively to the Biblical text, and allows him- 
 self few digressions. He moralizes a little about the 
 decay of the people under Behoboam, reflecting that 
 the aggrandizement of a kingdom and its sudden at- 
 tainment of prosperity often are the occasion of mis- 
 chief : and he controverts Herodotus, who confused 
 Sesostris with Shishak when relating the Egyptian 
 king's conquests. It is, he claims, really Shishak's 
 invasion of Jerusalem which the Greek historian nar- 
 rates, as is proved by the fact that he speaks of cir- 
 cumcised Syrians, who can be no other than Jews. 
 The fate of Omri and Zimri * moves him to moralize 
 again about God's Providence in rewarding the good 
 and punishing the wicked: and Ahab's death evokes 
 some platitudes concerning fate, "which creeps on 
 human souls and flatters them with pleasing hopes, 
 till it brings them to the place where it will be too 
 hard for them." 3 Artapanus. or one of the Jewish 
 
 1 Ant. IX. xii. 6. 3 Ant. IX. xv. 6. 
 
 11
 
 162 JOSBPHUS 
 
 Hellenists masking as a pagan historian, may have 
 provided him with this reflection. 
 
 He spoils the grandeur of the scene on Mount Car- 
 mel, when Elijah turned the people from Baal-worship 
 back to the service of God. In place of the dramatic 
 description in the Book of Kings he states that the 
 Israelites worshiped one God, and called Him the 
 great and the only true God, while the other deities 
 were names. He omits altogether the account of 
 Elijah's ascent to Heaven, probably from a desire 
 not to appear to entertain any Messianic ideas with 
 which the prophet was associated. He says simply that 
 Elijah disappeared from among men. But he gives 
 in detail the miraculous stories of Elisha, which were 
 not subject to the same objection. Occasionally his 
 statements seem in direct conflict with the Hebrew 
 Bible, as when he says that Jehu drove slowly and in 
 good order, whereas the Hebrew is that " he driveth 
 furiously." 1 Or that Joash, king of Israel, was a 
 good man, whereas in the Book of Kings it is written, 
 " he did evil in the sight of the Lord." * But these 
 discrepancies may be due, not to a different Bible text, 
 but to aberrations of the copyists. 
 
 The story of dynastic struggles and foreign wars 
 is varied with a short summary of the life of Jonah, 
 introduced at what, according to the Bible, is its 
 proper chronological place/ in the reign of Jeroboam 
 
 IX. vi. 3; II Kings, 9: 20. 
 II Kings, 13: 11. 'Ant. IX. x. 1.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 163 
 
 II, king of Israel. The picturesque and miraculous 
 character of the prophet's adventures secured him this 
 distinction, for in general Josephus does not pay much 
 regard to the lives or writings of the prophets. It is 
 only where they foretold concrete events that their 
 testimony is deemed worthy of mention. Of the other 
 minor prophets he mentions Nahuin, and paraphrases 
 part of his prophecy of the fall of Nineveh, cutting it 
 short with the remark that he does not think it neces- 
 sary to repeat the rest, 1 so that he may not appear 
 troublesome to his readers. In the account of Heze- 
 kiah he mentions that the king depended on Isaiah 
 the prophet, by whom he inquired and knew of all 
 future events, 2 and he recounts also the miracle of 
 putting back the sun-dial. For the rest, he says that, 
 by common consent, Isaiah was a divine and wonderful 
 man in foretelling the truth, "and in the assurance 
 that he had never written what was false, he wrote 
 down his prophecies and left them in books, that their 
 accomplishment might be judged of by posterity from 
 the events. 3 Nor was he alone, but the other prophets 
 [i. e. the minor prophets presumably], who were 
 twelve in number, did the same." It is notable that 
 this phrase of the Antiquities about the prophets bears 
 a resemblance to the " praise of famous men " con- 
 tained in the apocryphal book of Ben Sira, which 
 Josephus probably used in the Greek translation. 
 
 1 Ant. IX. xi. ?,. Ant. IX. xiii. 
 
 'Ant. X, ii. 2. Comp. Is. 30 :8/.
 
 164 JOSEPHUS 
 
 While he thus cursorily disposes of the prophetical 
 writers, he seizes on any scrap of Hellenistic authors 
 which he could find to confirm the Bible story, or 
 rather to confirm the existence of the personages men- 
 tioned in the Bible. Thus he quotes the Phoenician 
 historian Menander, who confirms the existence and 
 exploits of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser. So, too, 
 he brings forward Herodotus and Berosus to confirm 
 the existence and doings of Sennacherib. 1 He refutes 
 Herodotus again, doubtless on the authority of a 
 predecessor, for saying that Sennacherib was king of 
 the Arabs instead of king of the Assyrians. 
 
 As with Ahab, so with Josiah, Josephus sees the 
 power of fate impelling him to his death, and substi- 
 tutes the Hellenistic conception of a blind and jealous 
 power for the Hebrew idea of a just Providence. He 
 ascribes to Jeremiah " an elegy on the death of the 
 king, which is still extant," 2 apparently following a 
 statement in the Book of Chronicles, which does not 
 refer to our Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is 
 treated rather more fully than Isaiah. Besides a 
 notice of his writings we have an account of his im- 
 prisonment. He ascribes to Ezekiel two books foretell- 
 ing the Babylonian captivity. Possibly the difference 
 between the last nine and the first forty chapters of 
 the exile prophet suggested the idea of the two books, 
 unless these words apply rather to Jeremiah. 
 
 1 Ant. X. ii. 4. 
 
 3 Ant. X. v. 2. Comp. II Chron. 35:25.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 165 
 
 The two prophets agreed [he remarks] on all other 
 things as to the capture of the city and King Zedekiah, 
 but Ezekiel declared that Zedekiah should not see Baby- 
 lon, while Jeremiah said the king of Babylon should carry 
 him thither in bonds. Because of this discrepancy, the 
 Jewish prince disbelieved them both, and condemned 
 them for false tidings. 1 Both prophets, however, were 
 justified, because Zedekiah came to Babylon, but he came 
 blind, so that, as Ezekiel had predicted, he did not see 
 the city. 
 
 The episode is possibly based on some apocryphal 
 book that has disappeared, and the historian extracts 
 from it the lesson, which he is never weary of repeat- 
 ing, that God's nature is various and acts in diverse 
 ways, and men are blind and cannot see the future, so 
 that they are exposed to calamities and cannot avoid 
 their incidence. 2 
 
 Following on the account of the fall of the last of 
 the Davidic line and the destruction of the Temple, 
 Josephus gives a chronological summary of the history 
 of Israel from the Creation, together with an incom- 
 plete list of all the high priests who held office. The 
 latter may be compared with the list of high priests 
 with which he closes the Antiquities. 3 These chrono- 
 logical calculations were dear to him, but perhaps he 
 borrowed them from one of the earlier Hellenistic 
 Jewish chroniclers. He takes an especial pride 
 throughout the Antiquities as well as in the Wars in 
 recording the priestly succession, which served to em- 
 
 1 Ant. X. vii. 2. J Ant. X. vlil. 3. 
 
 3 See below, p. 202.
 
 166 JOSEPHUS 
 
 phasize the antiquity not only of his people, hut of 
 his own personal lineage, and was moreover congenial 
 to the ideas of the Romans, who paid great heed to the 
 records of their priests. 
 
 As might he expected, he dwells at some length on 
 Daniel, 1 whose book was full of the miraculous legends 
 and exact prophecies loved by his audience, and he 
 recommends his book to those who are anxious about 
 the future. He elaborates the interpretation of the 
 vision of the image (ch. 3:7), but finds himself in 
 a difficulty when he comes to the explanation of the 
 stone broken off from the mountain that fell on the 
 image and shattered it. According to the traditional 
 interpretation, it portended the downfall of Rome, 
 or maybe the coming of the Messiah, an idea equally 
 hateful to the Roman conquerors. He excuses him- 
 self by saying that he has only undertaken to de- 
 scribe things past and present, and not things that 
 are future. Later he disclaims responsibility for the 
 story of Xebuchadnezzar's madness, on the plea that 
 he has translated what was in the Hebrew book, and 
 has neither added nor taken away. The story probably 
 looked too much like an implied reproach on a mad 
 Caesar. He adds a new chapter to the Biblical account 
 of the prophet : Daniel is carried by Darius to Persia, 
 and is there signally honored by the king. He builds 
 a tower at Ecbatana, 2 which is still extant, says the his- 
 torian, " and seems to be but lately built. Here the 
 
 1 Ant. X. x. * Ant. X. xi. 7.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD THE BIBLE 167 
 
 kings of Persia and Media are buried, and a Jewish 
 priest is the custodian." Josephus borrowed this ad- 
 dition from some apocalyptic book recounting Daniel's 
 deeds, and he speaks of "several books the prophet 
 wrote and left behind him, which are still read by 
 us." The short story in the Apocrypha of Bel and 
 the Dragon, with its apologue about Susannah, af- 
 fords an example of the post-Biblical additions to 
 Daniel, and in the first century, when Messianic hopes 
 were rife among the people, such apocryphal books 
 had a great vogue. Daniel is in fact elevated to the 
 rank of one of the greatest of the prophets, because he 
 not only prophesied generally of future events like 
 the others, but fixed the actual time of their accom- 
 plishment. It is claimed for him that he foretold ex- 
 plicitly the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and 
 the Eoman conquest of Judea. Anticipating the 
 theological controversialists of later times, Josephus 
 sets special store on the Bible book that is most 
 miraculous, because miracle and exact prognostication 
 of the future are for his audience the clearest testi- 
 mony of God. Hence the predictions of Daniel are 
 the best refutation of the Epicureans, who cast Provi- 
 dence out of life, and do not believe that God has care 
 of human affairs, but say that things move of their 
 own accord, without a ruler and guide. 
 
 When he comes to the history of the "Restoration 
 from Babylon, Josephus follows what is now known 
 as the apocryphal Book of Esdras, in preference to the 
 Biblical Ezra and Xehemiah, probably because a Hel-
 
 168 JOSEPHUS 
 
 lenistic guide whom he had before him did likewise. 
 It is clear that he based his paraphrase on the Greek 
 text. His chronicle therefore differs considerably 
 from that given in our Scripture, and on one point he 
 differs from his guide. For while Esdras represents 
 Artaxerxes as the king under whom the Temple was 
 rebuilt, Josephus, relying on a fuller knowledge of 
 Persian history, derived probably from Nicholas of 
 Damascus, substitutes Cambyses. 1 Our Greek version 
 of Esdras I is unfortunately not complete, but the 
 book, differing from that included in the Bible, must 
 have originally comprised an account of Xehemiah. 
 According to Josephus, Ezra dies before Xehemiah* 
 arrives in Judea, whereas in the canonical books they 
 appear for a time together. He states also that Nehe- 
 miah built houses for the poor in Jerusalem out of his 
 own means, an incident which has not the authority of 
 the Bible, but which may well have reposed on an 
 ancient tradition. The account of the marriage of 
 Sanballat with the daughter of Manasseh the high 
 Driest, which is touched on in our Book of Xehe- 
 miah, is described more fully by Josephus, 8 who based 
 this account on some uncanonical source. And fol- 
 lowing the Rabbis, who shortened the Persian epoch 
 in order to eke out the Jewish history over the whole 
 period of the Persian kingdom till the conquest of 
 Alexander, he makes the marriage synchronize with 
 the reign of Philip of Macedon. Josephus was anxious 
 
 1 Ant. XI. ii. 2 Ant. XI. v. ' Ant XI. vii. 2.
 
 JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE 169 
 
 to avoid a vacuum, and by a little vague chronology 
 and the aid of the fragmentary records of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah and a priestly chronicle, the few Jewish 
 incidents known in that tranquil, unruffled epoch 
 are spread over three centuries. 
 
 The episode of Esther is treated elaborately, and, 
 following the apocryphal version, is placed in the 
 reign of Artaxerxes. The Greek Book of Esther, which 
 embroidered the Hebrew story, and is generally at- 
 tributed to the second century B. c. E., is laid under 
 contribution as well as the Canonical book; from it 
 Josephus extracted long decrees of the king and elabo- 
 rate anti - Semitic denunciations of a Hellenized 
 Haman. He omits the incident of casting lots, and 
 contrives to explain Purim, by means of a Greek ety- 
 mology, as derived from <j>povpeai, which denotes pro- 
 tection. Here and there the Biblical simplicity is 
 elaborated : Mordecai moves from Babylon to Shushan 
 in order to be near Esther, and soldiers with bared axes 
 stand round the king to secure the observance of the 
 law that he shall not be approached. We have some 
 moralizing on Haman's fall and the working of Provi- 
 dence (TO 0tov), which teaches that "what mischief 
 anyone prepares against another, he unconsciously 
 contrives against himself." Less edifying is the addi- 
 tion that " God laughed to scorn the wicked expecta- 
 tions of Haman, and as He knew what the event would 
 be, He was pleased at it, and that night He took away 
 the king's sleep." The Book of Esther does not men-
 
 170 JOSEPHUS 
 
 tion God: Josephus calls in directly the operation of 
 the Divine Power, but represents it unworthily. 
 
 With the completion of the eleventh book of the 
 Antiquities, we definitely pass away from the region 
 of sacred history and miracles, and find ourselves in 
 ' the more spacious but more misty area of the Hellen- 
 istic kingdom, in which Jewish affairs are only a detail 
 set in a larger background. Though Josephus himself 
 does not explicitly mark the break, the character of his 
 work materially changes. He has come to the end of 
 the period when the Bible was his chief guide ; he has 
 now to depend for the main thread on Hellenistic 
 sources, filling in the details when he can from some 
 Jewish record. His function becomes henceforth more 
 completely that of compiler, less of translator, and 
 his work becomes much more valuable for us, because 
 in great part he has the field to himself. Although, 
 however, the Bible paraphrase, with the embroidery 
 of a little tradition and comparative history and its 
 Romanizing reflections, which constitutes the first 
 part of the Antiquities, had not a great permanent 
 value, for a very long period it was accepted as the 
 standard history of the Jewish people; and in the 
 pagan Greco-Eoman world it appealed to a public to 
 which both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint 
 translation were sealed books. It was written for a 
 special purpose and served it, doing for the Jewish 
 early history what Livy did for the hoary past of the 
 Romans. If it was not a worthy record in many 
 parts, it was yet of great value as an antidote to
 
 JOSEPIIUS AND THE BIBLE 171 
 
 the crude fictions of the anti-Semites about the origin 
 arid the institutions of the people of Israel, which 
 had for some two centuries been allowed to poison the 
 minds of the Greek-speaking world, and had fanned 
 the prejudices of the Roman people against a nation- 
 ality of whose history they were ignorant and of whoso 
 laws they were contemptuous.
 
 JOSEPHUS AXD POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH 
 HISTORY 
 
 (THE ANTIQUITIES, BOOKS xn-xx) 
 
 Josephus is the sole writer of the ancient world who 
 has left a connected account of the Jewish people 
 during the post-Biblical period, and the meagerness of 
 his historical information is not due so much to his 
 own deficiencies as to the difficulty of the material. 
 From the period when the Scriptures closed, the affairs 
 of the Jews had to be extracted, for the most part, out 
 of works dealing with the annals of the whole of civil- 
 ized humanity. With the conquest of Alexander the 
 Great, the Jewish people enter into the Hellenistic 
 world, and begin to command the attention of Hellen- 
 istic historians. They are an element in the cos- 
 mopolis which was the ideal of the world-conqueror. 
 At the same time the nature of the history of their 
 affairs vitally changes. The continuous chronicle of 
 their doings, which had been kept from the Exodus 
 out of Egypt to the Eestoration from Babylon, and 
 which was designed to impress a religious lesson and 
 illustrate God's working, comes to an end ; and their 
 scribes are concerned to draw fresh lessons from that 
 chronicle. The religious philosophy of history is not
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTOEY 173 
 
 extended to the present. The Jews, on the other 
 hand, chiefly engage the interest of the Gentiles when 
 they come into violent collision with the governing 
 power, or when they are involved in some war between 
 rival Hellenistic sovereigns. Hence their history dur- 
 ing the two centuries following Alexander's conquests, 
 i. e. until the time when we again have adequate 
 Jewish sources, is singularly shadowy and incoherent. 
 Josephus was not the man to pierce the obscurity by 
 his intuition or by his research. Yet we must not be too 
 critical of the want of proportion in his writing when 
 we remember that he was a pioneer; for it was an 
 original idea to piece together the stray fragments of 
 history that referred to his people. It has been 
 shown that in his attempt to stretch out the Biblical 
 history till it can join on to the Hellenistic sources, 
 Josephus interposes between the account of Esther and 
 the fall of the Persian Empire a story of intrigue 
 among the high priests. He there describes the crime 
 of the high priest John in killing his brother in the 
 Temple as more cruel and impious than anything done 
 by the Greeks or Barbarians an expression which 
 must have originated in a Jewish, probably a Pales- 
 tinian, authority, to whom Greek connoted cruelty. 
 And in the next chapter Josephus inserts the story of 
 the Samaritan Sanballat and the building of the 
 Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim, 1 as though 
 these events happened at the time of Alexander's in- 
 
 'Comp. Neh. 13: 23.
 
 174 JOSEPHUS 
 
 vasion of Persia. Rabbinical chronology interposes 
 only one generation between Cyrus and Alexander. 
 The Sanballat who appears in the Book of Xehemiah is 
 represented as anticipating the part played by the Hel- 
 lenists of a later century, and calling in the foreign 
 invader against Judea and Jerusalem in order to set 
 up his own son-in-law Manasseh as high priest. 
 Probably, in the fashion of Jewish history, the events 
 of a later time were placed in the popular Midrash a 
 few generations back and repeated. Jewish legendary 
 tradition is more certainly the basis of the account of 
 Alexander's treatment of the Jews. The Talmud has 
 preserved similar stories. 1 According to both records, 
 the Macedonian conqueror did obeisance before the 
 high priest, who came out to ask for mercy, because 
 he recognized in the Jewish dignitary a figure that 
 had appeared to him in a dream. And when Alexander 
 is made to revere the prophecies of Daniel and to pre- 
 fer the Jews to the Samaritans and bestow on them 
 equal rights with the Macedonians, the historian is 
 simply crystallizing the floating stories of his nation, 
 which are parallel with those invented by every other 
 nation of antiquity about the Greek hero. 
 
 Passing on to Alexander's successors, he has scarcely 
 fuller or more reliable sources. For Ptolemy's capture 
 of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. when the Jews 
 would not resist, he calls in the confirmation of a Greek 
 authority, Agatharchides of Cnidus. But he has to 
 
 1 Comp. Megillat Taanit, 3, and Yoma, 69n.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY ITS 
 
 gloss over a period of nearly a hundred years, till he 
 can introduce the story of the translation of the Scrip- 
 tures into Greek, 1 for which he found a copious source 
 in the romantic history, or rather the historical 
 romance, now known as the Letter of Aristeas. This 
 Hellenistic production has come down to us intact, and 
 therefore we can gather how closely Josephus para- 
 phrases his authorities. Xot that he refrained alto- 
 gether from embellishment and improvement. The 
 Aristeas of his version, as of the original, professes 
 that he is not a Jew, hut he adds that nevertheless he 
 desires favor to be done to the Jews, because all men 
 are the work of God, and " I am sensible that He is 
 well pleased with all those that do good." Josephus 
 states a large part of the story as if it were his own 
 narrative, but in fact it is a paraphrase throughout. 
 He reproduces less than half of the Letter, omitting the 
 account of the visit of the royal envoy to Jerusalem and 
 the discourse of Eleazar the high priest. For the sev- 
 enty-two questions and answers, which form the last 
 part, he refers curious readers to his source. But he 
 sets out at length the description of the presents which 
 Ptolemy sent to Jerusalem, rejoicing in the oppor- 
 tunity of showiner at once the splendor of the Temple 
 vessels and the honor paid by a Hellenistic monarch 
 to his people. 
 
 From his own knowledge also, he adds a glowing 
 eulogy, which Menedemus, the Greek philosopher, 
 
 1 Ant. XII. ii.
 
 1TG JOSEPHUS 
 
 passed on the Jewish faith. The Letter of Aristeas 
 says that the authors of" the Septuagint translation 
 uttered an imprecation on any one who should alter 
 a word of their work; Josephus makes them invite 
 correction, 1 adding inconsequently if our text is 
 correct that this was a wise action, " so that, when 
 the thing was judged to have been well done, it might 
 continue forever." 
 
 Having disposed of the Aristeas incident, Josephus 
 has to fill in the blank between the time of Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus (250 B. c. E.) and the Maccabean revolt 
 against Antiochus Epiphanes, nearly one hundred 
 3'ears later, which was the next period for which he had 
 Jewish authority. He returns then to his Hellenistic 
 guides and extracts the few scattered incidents which 
 he could find there referring to the Jewish people. 
 But until he comes to the reign of Antiochus, he can 
 only snatch up some " unconsidered trifles " of doubt- 
 ful validity. Seleucus !NTicator, he says, made the Jew? 
 citizens of the cities which he built in Asia, and gave 
 them equal rights with the Macedonians and Greeks 
 in Antioch. This information he would seem to have 
 derived from the petition which the Jews of Antioch 
 presented to Titus when, after the fall of Jerusalem, 
 the victor made his progress through Syria. The 
 people of Antioch then sought to obtain the curtail- 
 
 1 Josephus may have used a different text of Aristeas 
 from that which has come down to us. Or the passage in 
 our Aristeas may be a later insertion Introduced as a 
 protest against Christian Interpolations in the LXX.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 177 
 
 nient of Jewish rights in the town, but Titus refused 
 their suit. 1 Josephus takes this opportunity of extol- 
 ling the magnanimity of the Roman conqueror, and 
 likewise of inserting a reference to the friendliness of 
 Marcus Agrippa, who, on his progress through Asia a 
 hundred years before, had upheld the Jewish privi- 
 leges. 2 He derived this incident from Nicholas' his- 
 tory, and thus contrived to eke out the obscurity of the 
 third century B. c. E. with a few irrelevancies. 
 
 His material becomes a little ampler from the reign 
 of Antioclms the Great, because from this point the 
 Greek historians serve him better. Several of the 
 modern commentators of Josephus have thought that 
 his authorities were Polybius and Posidonius, who 
 wrote in Greek on the events of the period. He cites 
 Polybius explicitly as the author of the statement 
 about Ptolemy's conquest of Judea, and then repro- 
 duces two letters of Autiochus to his generals, direct- 
 ing them to grant certain privileges to his Jewish sub- 
 jects as a reward for their loyal service. We know 
 that Polybius gave in his history an account of 
 Jerusalem and its Temple, and his character-sketch 
 of Antiochus Epiphanes has been preserved in an 
 epitome. Josephus, however, be it noted, has only 
 these scanty extracts from his work. The letters are 
 clearly derived, not from him, but from some Hellen- 
 istic-Jewish apologist, and the passages from Polybius, 
 it is very probable, are extracted from some larger 
 
 'Comp. B. J. VII. v. 3. ; Ant. XIII. iii. 2. 
 
 12
 
 178 JOSEPHUS 
 
 work. 1 Here, as elsewhere, both facts and authorities 
 were found in Nicholas of Damascus. 
 
 We know from Josephus himself that Nicholas had 
 included a history of the Seleucid Empire in his mag- 
 num opus. He is quoted in reference to the sacking of 
 the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes and the victory 
 of Ptolemy Lathy rus. over Alexander Jannaeus.* 
 Josephus, indeed, several times appends to his para- 
 graphs about the general history a note, " as we have 
 elsewhere described." Some have inferred from this 
 that he had himself written a general history of the 
 Seleucid epoch, but a more critical study has shown 
 that the tag belongs to the note of his authority, which 
 he embodied carelessly in his paraphrase.* 
 
 Josephus supplements the Jewish references in the 
 Seleucid history of Nicholas by an account of the in- 
 trigues of the Tobiades and Oniades, which reveals a 
 Hellenistic-Jewish origin. 4 Possibly he found it in 
 a special chronicle of the high-priestly family, which 
 was written by one friendly to it, for Joseph ben 
 Tobias is praised as " a good man and of great mag- 
 nanimity, who brought the Jews out of poverty and 
 low condition to one that was more splendid." The 
 chronology here is at fault, since at the time at which 
 
 'Dr. Buchler (J. Q. R. iv. and R. E. J. xxxii. 179) has 
 argued convincingly that Josephus had not gone far afield. 
 For the genuineness of the Letter, comp. Willrich, 
 Judaica, p. 51, and Buchler, Oniaden und Tobiaden, p. 143. 
 
 1 Ant. XIII. xii. 6. 
 
 'Comp. Ant. XIV. i. 2-3; xi. 1. 4 Ant. XII. iv.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 179 
 
 the incidents are placed both Syria and Palestine were 
 included in the dominion of the Seleucids ; yet Tobias 
 is represented at the court of the Ptolemies. Josephus 
 follows the story of these exploits with the letters 
 which passed between Areas, king of the Lacedemon- 
 ians, and the high priest Onias, as recorded in the First 
 Book of the Maccabees (ch. 12). The letters are 
 taken out of their true place, in order to bridge 
 the gap between the fall of the Tobiad house and 
 the Maccabean rising. Areas reigned from 307-265, 
 so that he must have corresponded to Onias I, but 
 Josephus places him in the time of Onias III. 
 
 For his account of the Maccabean struggle he de- 
 pends here primarily upon the First Book of the Mac- 
 cabees, which in many parts he does little more than 
 paraphrase. Neither the Second Book of the Macca- 
 bees nor the larger work of Jason of Cyrene, of which 
 it is an epitome, appears to have been known to him. 
 It is well-nigh certain that in writing the Wars he had 
 no acquaintance with the Jewish historical book, but 
 was dependent on the less accurate and complete state- 
 ment of a Hellenistic chronicle ; and in the later work, 
 though he bases his narrative on the Greek version of 
 the Maccabees, and says he will give a fresh account 
 with great accuracy, he yet incorporates pieces of non- 
 Jewish history from the Greek guide without much 
 art or skill or consistency. Thus, in the Wars he says 
 that Antiochus Epiphanes captured Jerusalem by as- 
 sault, while in the Antiquities he speaks of two cap- 
 tures : the first time the city fell without fighting, the
 
 180 JOSEPHUS 
 
 second by treachery. And while in the Book of the 
 Maccabees the year given for the fall of the city is 143 
 of the Seleucid era, in the Antiquities the final cap- 
 ture is dated 145 a of the era. He no doubt found this 
 date in the Greek authority he was following for the 
 general history of Antiochus he gives the corre- 
 sponding Greek Olympiad and applied it to the pil- 
 lage of Jerusalem. For the story of Mattathias at 
 Modin, which is much more detailed than in the Wars, 
 he closely follows the Book of the Maccabees, though 
 in the speeches he takes certain liberties, inserting, for 
 example, an appeal to the hope of immortality in Mat- 
 tathias' address to his sons. 2 He turns to his Greek au- 
 thority for the death of Antiochus, and controverts 
 Polybius, who ascribes the king's distemper to his sac- 
 rilegious desire to plunder a temple of Diana in Persia. 
 Josephus, with a touch of patriotism and an unusual 
 disregard of the feelings of his patrons, who can 
 hardly have liked the implied parallel, says it is surely 
 more probable that he lost his life because of his 
 pillage of the Jewish Temple. In confirmation of 
 his theory he appeals to the materialistic morality of 
 his audience, arguing that the king surely would not 
 be punished for a wicked intention that was not suc- 
 cessful. He states also that Judas was high priest for 
 three years, which is not supported by the Jewish 
 record ; * and he passes over the miracle of the oil 
 
 1 Ant. XII. v. 3. * Ant. XIII. vi. 3. 
 
 3 In his own list of high priests at the end of the work, 
 the name of Judas does not appear.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 181 
 
 at the dedication of the Temple, and ascribes the name 
 of the feast to the fact that light appeared to the 
 Jews. The celebration of Hanukkah as the feast of 
 lights is of Babylonian-Jewish origin, and was only in- 
 stituted shortly before the destruction of the Temple. 1 
 His use of the Book of the Maccabees stops short at 
 the end of chapter xii. He presumably did not know 
 of the last two chapters of our text, which contain the 
 history of Simon, and probably were translated later. 
 Otherwise we cannot explain his dismissal, in one line, 
 of the league that Simon made with the Romans. 2 The 
 incident is dwelt on in the extant version of the First 
 Book of the Maccabees, and Josephus would surely not 
 have omitted a syllable of so propitious an event, had 
 he possessed knowledge of it. On the other hand, he 
 inserts into the history of the Maccabean brothers an 
 account of the foundation of a Temple by Onias V in 
 Leontopolis, 3 in the Delta of Egypt, and describes at 
 length the negotiations that led up to it ; 4 and in the 
 same connection he narrates a feud between the Jewish 
 and Samaritan communities at Alexandria in the days 
 of Ptolemy Philometor. From these indications it has 
 been inferred that he had before him the work of a 
 Hellenistic-Jewish historian interested in Egypt the 
 
 1 Comp. Krauss, R. E. J. xxx. 32. 
 
 2 Ant. XIII. vii. 3. 
 
 3 Ant. XII. ix. 7. The ruins of the Temple were un- 
 earthed a few years ago by Professor Flinders Petrie. 
 
 4 Ant. XIII. iii.
 
 182 JOSEPHUS 
 
 collection of Alexander Polyhistor suggest, 1 ? that there 
 were several such at the time while for the exploits 
 of the later Maccabees he relied on the chronicle of 
 John Hyrcanus the son of Simon, which is referred to 
 in the Book of the Maccabees/ but has not come down 
 to us. 
 
 From this period onwards till the end of the An- 
 tiquities, Josephus had no longer any considerable 
 Jewish document to guide him, nor have we any Jew- 
 ish history by which to check him. For an era of two 
 hundred years he was more completely dependent on 
 Greek sources, and it is just in this part of the work 
 where he is most valuable or, we should rather say, 
 indispensable. Save for a few scattered references in 
 pagan historians, orators, and poets, he is our only 
 authority for Jewish history at the time. It is, there- 
 fore, the more unfortunate that he makes no independ- 
 ent research, and takes up no independent attitude. 
 For the most part he transcribes the pagan writer be- 
 fore him, unable or unwilling to look any deeper. And 
 he tells us only of the outward events of Jewish his- 
 tory, of the court intrigues and murders, of the wars 
 against the tottering empires of Egypt and Syria, of 
 the ignoble feuds within the palace. Of the more vital 
 and, did we but know it, the profoundly interesting 
 social and religious history of the time, of the develop- 
 ment of the Pharisee and Sadducee sects, we hear little, 
 and that little is unreliable and superficial. Josephus 
 
 1 1 Mace. xvi. 23/.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 183 
 
 reproduces the deficiencies of his sources in their deal- 
 ings with Jewish events. He brings no original virtue 
 compensating for the careful study which they made 
 of the larger history in which the affairs of Judea were 
 a small incident. 
 
 The foundation of his work in the latter half of 
 book xiii and throughout books xiv-xvii is Nicholas, 
 who had devoted two special books to the life of Herod, 
 and by way of introduction to this had dealt more fully 
 with the preceding Jewish princes. 1 We must there- 
 fore be wary of imputing to Josephus the opinions 
 he expresses upon the different Jewish sects in this 
 part of the Antiquities. He introduces them first dur- 
 ing the reign of Jonathan, with the classification 
 which had already been made in the Wars:* the 
 Pharisees as the upholders of Providence or fate and 
 freewill, the Essenes as absolute determinists, the 
 Sadducees as absolute deniers of the influence of fate 
 on human affairs. 3 The next mention of the Pharisees 
 occurs in the reign of Hyrcanus, 4 when he states that 
 they were the king's worst enemies. 
 
 They are one of the sects of the Jews, and they have 
 so great a power over the multitude that, when they say 
 anything against the king or against the high priest, they 
 are presently believed Hyrcanus had been a dis- 
 
 1 Biichler, Sources of Josephus for the History of Syria, 
 J. Q. R. ix. 311. 
 J B. J. II. viii. * Ant. XIII. v. 9. " Ant. XIII. x. 5.
 
 184 JOSEPHUS 
 
 ciple of their teaching; but he was angered when one of 
 them, Eleazar, a man of ill temper and prone to seditious 
 practices, reproached him for holding the priesthood, be- 
 cause, it was alleged, his mother had been a captive in 
 the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and he, therefore, was 
 disqualified. 
 
 This account is taken from a source unfriendly to 
 the Pharisees. Though the story is based apparently 
 on an old Jewish tradition, since we find it told of 
 Alexander Jannaeus in the Talmud, 1 it looks as if 
 Josephus obtained his version from some author that 
 shared the aristocratic prejudices against the demo- 
 cratic leaders. The reign of Hyrcanus had been 
 described by a Hellenistic-Jewish chronicler or a non- 
 Jewish Hellenist, from whom Josephus borrowed a 
 glowing eulogy, 2 with which he sums it up : " He lived 
 happily, administered the government in an excellent 
 way for thirty-one years, and was esteemed by God 
 worthy of the three greatest privileges, the principate, 
 the high priesthood, and prophecy." To the account 
 of the Pharisees is appended a paragraph, seemingly 
 the historian's own work, where he explains that " the 
 Pharisees have delivered to the people the tradition of 
 the fathers, while the Sadducees have rejected it and 
 claim that only the written word is binding. And 
 concerning these things great disputes have arisen 
 among them ; the Sadducees are able to persuade none 
 
 'Comp. I. Le"vi, Talmudic Sources of Jewish History, 
 R. E. J. xxxv. 219; I. Friedlaender, J. Q. R., n. s., iv. 
 
 "Ant. XIII. x. 7.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 185 
 
 but the rich, while the Pharisees have the multitude on 
 their side." Again, in the account of the reign of 
 Queen Alexandra, he represents the Pharisees as pow- 
 erful but seditious, and causing constant friction, and 
 ascribes the fall of the royal house to the queen's 
 compliance with those who bore ill-will to the family. 
 
 Whenever the opportunity offers, Josephus brings in 
 references to Jewish history from pagan sources. He 
 quotes Timagenes' estimate of Aristobulus as a good 
 man who was of great service to the Jews and gained 
 them the country of Iturea; and he notes Strabo's 
 agreement with Xicholas upon the invasion of Judea 
 by Ptolemy Lathyrus. 1 General history takes an in- 
 creasingly larger part in the account of the warlike 
 Alexander Jannaeus and the queen Alexandra, and 
 reference is made to the consuls of Rome contemporary 
 with the reigns of Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, in order 
 to bring Jewish affairs into relation with those of the 
 Power which henceforth played a critical part in 
 them. 
 
 Josephus marks the new era on which he was en- 
 tering by a fresh preface to book xiv. His aim, he 
 says, is " to omit no facts either through ignorance or 
 laziness, because we are dealing with a history of events 
 with which most people are unacquainted on account 
 of their distance from our times; and we purpose to 
 do it with appropriate beauty of style, so that our 
 readers may entertain the knowledge of what we write 
 
 'Ant. XIII. xii. 6.
 
 186 JOSEPHUS 
 
 with some agreeable satisfaction and pleasure. But 
 the principal thing to aim at is to speak truly." * It is 
 not impossible that the prelude is based on something 
 in Nicholas ; but it is turned against him ; for in the 
 same chapter Josephus controverts his predecessor for 
 the statement that " the Idumean Antipater [the 
 father of Herod] was sprung from the principal Jews 
 who returned to Judea from Babylon." The asser- 
 tion, he says, was made to gratify Herod, who by the 
 revolution of fortune came to be king of the Jews. He 
 shows here some national feeling, but in general he ac- 
 cepts Nicholas, and borrows doubtless from him the 
 details of Pompey's invasion of Judea and of the siege 
 of Jerusalem. He appeals as well to Strabo and the 
 Latin historian Titus Livius.* But though it is likely 
 that he had made an independent study of parts of 
 Strabo, since he drags in several extracts from his 
 history that are not quite in place, 3 there is no reason 
 to think he read Livy or any other Latin author. He 
 would have found reference to the work in the diligent 
 Nicholas. We may discern the hand of Nicholas, too, 
 in the praise of Pompey for his piety in not spoiling 
 the Temple of the holy vessels. 4 Josephus writes alto- 
 gether in the tone of an admirer of Rome's occupation, 
 attributing the misery which came upon Jerusalem to 
 Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. 
 
 1 Ant. XIV. i. 1. - Ant. XIV. iv. 3; vl. 4. 
 
 3 Comp. Ant. XIV. vli. 2; viii. 3. 4 Ant. XIV. iv. 5.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 187 
 
 Thanks to his copious sources, he is able to give a 
 detailed account of the relation of the Jews to Julius 
 Caesar and of the decrees which were made in their 
 favor at his instance. It has been conjectured with 
 much probability that Josephus obtained his series of 
 documents from Nicholas, who had collected them for 
 the purpose of defending the Jews of Asia Minor in 
 the inquiry which Marcus Agrippa conducted during 
 the reign of Herod. 1 He says that he will set down the 
 decrees that are treasured in the public places of 
 the cities, and those which are still extant in the Capi- 
 tol of Rome, " so that all the rest of mankind may 
 know what regard the kings of Asia and Europe have 
 had for the Jewish people." In a subsequent book, 
 when he is recounting the events of Herod's reign, 2 
 Josephus sets forth a further series of decrees in favor 
 of the Jews, issued by Caesar Augustus and his lieu- 
 tenant Marcus Agrippa. These likewise he probably 
 derived from Nicholas, who was the court advocate and 
 court chronicler at the time they were promulgated. 
 But he enlarges on his motive for giving them at 
 length, pointing to them with pride as a proof of the 
 high respect in which the Jews were held by the heads 
 of the Roman Empire before the disaster of the war. 
 Though in his own day they were fallen to a low 
 estate, at one time they had enjoyed special favor : 
 
 And I frequently mention these decrees in order to 
 reconcile other peoples to us and to take away the causes 
 
 1 Comp. Bloch, Die Quellen des Flavius Josephus. 
 
 2 Ant. XVI. ii.
 
 1W JOSEPHUS 
 
 of that hatred which unreasonable men bear us. As for 
 our customs, he continues, each nation has its own, and 
 in almost every city we meet with differences; but 
 natural justice is most agreeable to the advantage of all 
 men equally, and to this our laws have the greatest re- 
 gard, and thereby render us benevolent and friendly to 
 all men, so that we may expect the like return from 
 others, and we may remind them that they should not 
 esteem difference of institutions a sufficient cause of 
 alienation, but join with us in the pursuit of virtue and 
 righteousness, for this belongs to all men in common. 1 
 
 The Jewish rising and defeat had increased the 
 odium of the Greco-Roman world towards the pecu- 
 liar people, and the captive in the gilded prison was 
 fain to dwell on their past glory in order to cover 
 the wretchedness of their present. 
 
 Josephus claims to have copied some of the de- 
 crees from the archives in the Roman Capitol. 2 The 
 library was destroyed with the Capitol itself during the 
 civil war in 69.* It was restored, it is true, during the 
 reign of Vespasian, and it is not impossible that the 
 old decrees were saved. But Josephus might have col- 
 lected from the Jewish communities those documents 
 which he did not find ready to hand in Xicholas, if 
 they formed part of an apology for the Jews of 
 Antioch in 70 c. E. At least there is no good reason to 
 doubt their authenticity, and they are in quite a differ- 
 ent class from the letters and decrees attributed to the 
 Hellenistic sovereigns, which lack all authority. 
 
 1 Comp. below, p. 234. 
 
 'Ant. XIV. x. 20. *Comp. Tac. Hist. iii. 71.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 189 
 
 The story of Herod's life, which is set out in great 
 detail in these books, has more dramatic unity than 
 any other part of the Antiquities. It bears to thewhole 
 work the relation which the story of the siege of Jeru- 
 salem bears to the rest of the Wars. Josephus seems 
 to manifest suddenly a power of vivid narrative and 
 psychological analysis, to which he is elsewhere a 
 stranger. But at the same time, where the story is 
 most vivid and dramatic, its framework is most pagan. 
 The Greco-Roman ideas of fate and nemesis, which 
 dominate the shorter account of the king's life in the 
 Wars, are still the underlying motives. The reason 
 for the dramatic power and the pagan frame are one 
 and the same: Josephus uses here a full source, and 
 that source is a pagan writer. 
 
 It is apparent at the same time that Josephus had a 
 better acquaintance with the historical literature about 
 Herod than when he wrote the Wars, and that he com- 
 pared his various authorities and exercised some judg- 
 ment in composing his picture. For example, in relat- 
 ing the murder of the Hasmonean Hyrcanus, he first 
 gives the account which he found in Herod's memoirs, 
 designed of course to exculpate the king, and then sets 
 out the version of other historians, who allege that 
 Herod laid a snare for the last of the Maccabean 
 princes. Josephus proudly contrasts his own critical 
 attitude towards Herod with the studied partisanship 
 of Xicholas, 1 who wrote in Herod's lifetime, and in 
 order to please him and his courtiers, 
 
 1 Ant. XIV. xvi. 7.
 
 190 JOSEPHUS 
 
 touching on nothing but what tended to his glory, and 
 openly excusing many of his notorious crimes and dili- 
 gently concealing them. We may, indeed, say much by 
 way of excuse for Nicholas, because he was not so much 
 writing a history for others as doing a service for the 
 king. But we, who come of a family closely connected 
 with the Hasmonean kings, and have an honorable rank, 
 think it unbecoming to say anything that is false about 
 them, and have described their actions in an upright and 
 unvarnished manner. And though we reverence many of 
 Herod's descendants, who still bear rule, yet we pay 
 greater regard to truth, though we may incur their dis- 
 pleasure by so doing. 
 
 It was not so difficult for the historian to write im- 
 partially of Herod as to write impartially of Vespasian 
 and Titus. At the same time Josephus, though in 
 these books more critical, seldom escapes the yoke of 
 facts, and says little of the inner conditions of the 
 people. Of Hillel we do not hear the name, and 
 Shammai is only mentioned, if indeed he, and not 
 Shemaya, is disguised under the name of Sameas, as 
 the member of the Sanhedrin who denounced Herod. 1 
 
 The speeches, which are put into the mouth of the 
 king on various occasions, are rhetorical declamations 
 in the Greek style, which must be derived either from 
 Nicholas or from Herod's Memoirs, to which the his- 
 
 1 Ant. XV. i. 1. Schlatter ingeniously conjectures that 
 Pollio, who is mentioned as predicting to the Sanhedrin 
 that this Herod would be their enemy if they acquitted 
 him, is identical with Abtalion, of whom the Talmud tells 
 a similar story. n-oXXiW may be an error for Evda\iwi>, 
 as the Hebrew name would be transcribed in Greek.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 191 
 
 torian had access through his intimacy with the royal 
 family. Yet, prosaic as the treatment is, it has pro- 
 vided the picture of the " magnificent barbarian '' 
 which has inspired many writers and artists of later 
 ages. It is from the Jewish point of view that it is 
 most wanting. He does indeed say that Herod trans- 
 gressed the laws of his country, and violated the an- 
 cient tradition by the introduction of foreign prac- 
 tices, which fostered great sins, through the neglect of 
 the observances that used to lead the multitude to 
 piety. By the games, the theater, and the amphi- 
 theater, which he instituted at Jerusalem, he offended 
 Jewish sentiment ; " for while foreigners were amazed 
 and delighted at the vastness of his displays, to the 
 native Jews all this amounted to a dissolution of the 
 traditions for which they had so great a veneration." ' 
 And he points out that the Jewish conspiracy against 
 him in the middle of his reign arose because " in the 
 eyes of the Jewish leaders, he merely pretended to he 
 their king, but was in fact the manifest enemy of their 
 nation." It has been suggested that Justus of Tiberias 
 supplied him with this Jewish view of Herod, which 
 is unparalleled in the Wars. But in another passage, 
 where he must be following an Herodian and anti- 
 Pharisaic source, he makes some remarks in quite an 
 opposite spirit, as if the Pharisees were in the wrong, 
 and provoked the king. He says of them : " They 
 were prone to offend princes ; 2 they claimed to foresee 
 
 1 Ant. XV. viii. 1. - Ant. XVII. ii. 8.
 
 192 JOSEPHUS 
 
 things, and were suddenly elated to break out into 
 open war." He calls them also Sophists/ the scornful 
 name which the Greeks gave to their popular lecturers 
 of morality. 
 
 In dealing with Herod's character, Josephus is more 
 discriminating than in the Wars. He sums him up 
 as "cruel towards all men equally, a slave to his 
 passions, and claiming to be above the righteous 
 law : yet was he favored by fortune more than any man, 
 for from a private station he was raised to be a king." ' 
 One piece of characterization may be quoted, 3 which is 
 not the less interesting because we may suspect that it 
 is stolen : 
 
 But this magnificent temper and that submissive be- 
 havior and liberality which he exercised towards Caesar 
 and the most powerful men at Rome, obliged him to trans- 
 gress the customs of his nation and to set aside many of 
 their laws, by building cities after an extravagant man- 
 ner, and erecting Temples, not in Judea indeed, for that 
 would not have been borne, since it is forbidden to pay 
 any honors to images or representations of animals after 
 the manner of the Greeks, but in the country beyond our 
 boundaries and in the cities thereof. The apology which 
 he made to the Jews was this, that all was done not of 
 his own inclination, but at the bidding of others, in order 
 to please Caesar and the Romans, as though he set more 
 store on the honor of the Romans than the Jewish cus- 
 toms; while in fact he was considering his own glory, 
 
 'Ant. XVII. vi. 2. 
 
 2 Ant. XVII. viii. 1. * Ant. XV. ix. 5.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 193 
 
 and was very ambitious to leave great monuments of his 
 government to posterity: whence he was so zealous in 
 building such splendid cities, and spent vast sums of 
 money in them. 
 
 He bursts out, too, with unusual passion against 
 Herod for his law condemning thieves to exile, because 
 it was a violation of the Biblical law, " and involved 
 the dissolution of our ancestral traditions." 
 
 If the account of the Jewish spiritual movement 
 at a time of great spiritual awakening is meager, the 
 picture of Herod's great buildings, despite occas- 
 ional confusion and vagueness, is full and valuable. 
 He gives us an excellent description of Caesarea and 
 Sebaste, the two cities which the king established as 
 a compliment to the Roman Emperor, and an account 
 of the Temple and the fortress of Antonia, which he 
 himself knew so well. Of the Temple we have another 
 description, in the Mishnah, which in the main agrees 
 with Josephus. Where the two differ, however, the 
 preference cannot be given to the writer who had 
 grown up in the shadow of the building, and might 
 have been expected to know its every corner. 1 As we 
 have seen in the Wars, he was in topography as in other 
 things under the influence of Greco-Roman models. 
 
 Josephus did not enjoy the advantage of a full 
 chronicle to guide him much beyond the death of 
 Herod. Nicholas died, or ceased to write, in the reign 
 of Antipater, who succeeded his father. Apparently 
 he had no successor who devoted himself to recording 
 
 1 Comp. George A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 495 ff. 
 13
 
 194 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the affairs of the Je\rish court. Hence, though the 
 events of the troubled beginning of Antipater's reign 
 are dealt with at the same length as those of Herod, 
 and we have a vivid story of the Jewish embassy that 
 went to Borne to petition for the deposition of the king, 
 the history afterwards becomes fragmentary. Such as 
 it is, it manifests a Roman flavor. The nationalists 
 are termed robbers, and the pseudo-Messiahs are 
 branded as self-seeking impostors. 1 After an enumer- 
 ation of various pretenders that sought to make them- 
 selves independent rulers, there is a sudden jump from 
 the first to the tenth year of Archelaus, who was ac- 
 cused of barbarous and tyrannical practices and ban- 
 ished by the Roman Emperor to Gaul. His kingdom 
 was then added to the province of Syria. Josephus 
 dwells on the story of two dreams which occurred to 
 the king and his wife Glaphyra, and justifies himself 
 because his discourse is concerning kings, and also be- 
 cause of the advantage to be drawn from it for the 
 assurance both of the immortality of the soul and the 
 Providence of God in human affairs. " And if any- 
 body does not believe such stories, let him keep his 
 own opinion, but let him not stand in the way of 
 another who finds in them an encouragement to vir- 
 tue." 
 
 The last three books of the Antiquities reveal the 
 weaknesses of Josephus as an historian : his disregard 
 of accuracy, his tendency to exaggeration, his lack 
 of proportion, and his mental subservience. He had 
 
 1 Ant. XVII. xiil. 2.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 195 
 
 no longer either the Scriptures or a Greek chroni- 
 cler to guide him. He depended in large part for his 
 material on oral sources and scattered memoirs, and 
 he is not very successful in eking it out so as to produce 
 the semblance of a connected narrative. His chapters 
 are in part a miscellany of notes, and the construction 
 is clumsy. The writer confesses that he was weary of 
 his task, but felt impelled to wind it up. Yet, just 
 because we are so ignorant of the events of Jewish 
 history at the period, and because the period itself is so 
 critical and momentous, these books (xviii-xx) are 
 among the most important which he has left, and on 
 the whole they deal rather more closely than their 
 predecessors with the affairs of the Jewish people. 
 The palace intrigues do not fill the stage so exclusively, 
 and some of the digressions carry us into byways of 
 Jewish history. 
 
 At the very outset 1 Josephus devotes a chapter to a 
 fuller delineation than he has given in any other place 
 of the various sects that flourished at the time. The 
 account, ampler though it is than the others, does 
 not reveal the true inwardness of the different reli- 
 gious positions. He repeats here what he says else- 
 where about the Pharisaic doctrine of predestination 
 tempered by freewill, but he enlarges especially on 
 the difference between the parties in their ideas about 
 the future life.* The Pharisees believe that souls have 
 
 'Ant. XVIII. i. 1. ! Comp. B. J. II. vili.
 
 196 JOSEPHUS 
 
 an immortal vigor, and that they will be rewarded 
 or punished in the next world accordingly as they 
 have lived virtuously or wickedly in this life; the 
 wicked being bound in everlasting prisons, while the 
 good have power to live again. The Sadducees, on 
 the other hand, assert that the souls die with the 
 bodies, and the Essenes teach the immortality of 
 souls and set great store on the rewards of right- 
 eousness. Their various ideas are wrapped up in 
 Greco-Roman dress, to suit his readers, and the doc- 
 trine of resurrection ascribed to the Pharisees is almost 
 identical with that held by the neo-Pythagoreans of 
 Borne. 1 But Josephus' account is more reliable when 
 he refers to the divergent attitudes of the sects to the 
 tradition. 
 
 The Pharisees strive to observe reason's dictates in 
 their conduct, and at the same time they pay great respect 
 to their ancestors; and they have such influence over 
 the people because of their virtuous lives and their dis- 
 courses that they are their friends in divine worship, 
 prayers, and sacrifice. The Sadducees do not regard the 
 observance of anything beyond what the law enjoins 
 them, but since their doctrine is held by the few, when 
 they hold the judicial office, they are compelled to addict 
 themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the 
 mass would not otherwise tolerate them. The Essenes 
 live apart from the people in communistic groups, and 
 exceed all other men in virtue and righteousness. They 
 send gifts to the Temple, but do not sacrifice, on which 
 account they are excluded from the common court of the 
 Temple. 
 
 1 Comp. Vergil, Aeneid, vi.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 197 
 
 Lastly, Josephus turns to the fourth sect, the Zea- 
 lots, whose founder was Judas the Galilean : 
 
 These men agree in all other things with the Pharisees, 
 but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and 
 they say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. 
 Moreover they do not fear any kind of death, nor do they 
 heed the death of their kinsmen and friends, nor can any 
 fear of the kind make them acknowledge anybody as 
 sovereign. 
 
 Josephus, however, cannot refrain from imputing 
 low motives to those who belonged to the party opposed 
 to himself and hated of the Romans. " They planned 
 robberies and murders of our principal men," he says, 
 " in pretense for the public welfare, but in reality in 
 hopes of gain for themselves." And he saddles them 
 with the responsibility for all the calamities that were 
 to come. About the Messianic hope, which appears to 
 have inspired them, he is compulsorily silent. 
 
 The historical record that follows is very sketchy. 
 We have a bare list of procurators and high priests 
 down to the time of Pontius Pilate, a notice of the 
 foundation of Tiberias by the tetrarch Herod, and an 
 irrelevant account of the death of Phraates, the king 
 of the Parthians, and of Antiochus of Commagene, 
 who was connected by marriage with the Herodian 
 house. Still there is rather more detail than in the 
 corresponding summary in the second book of the 
 "Wars, and Josephus must in the interval have lighted 
 on a fuller source than he had possessed in his first his- 
 torical essay. It is not impossible that the new au-
 
 198 JOSEPHUS 
 
 thority was again Justus of Tiberias. Of the unrest in 
 the governorship of Pontius Pilate he has more to say, 
 but the genuineness of the passage referring to the 
 trial and death of Jesus, which is dealt with else- 
 where, 1 has been doubted by modern critics. It is fol- 
 lowed in the text by a long account of a scandal 
 connected with the Isis worship at Eome, which led to 
 the expulsion of Jews from the capital. In this way 
 the chronicler wanders on between bare chronology 
 and digression, until he reaches the reign of Agrippa, 
 when he again finds written sources to help him. The 
 romance of Agrippa's rise from a bankrupt courtier to 
 the ruler of a kingdom is treated with something of the 
 same full detail as the events of Herod's career, and 
 probably the historian enjoyed here the use of royal 
 memoirs. He may have obtained material also from 
 the historical works of Philo of Alexandria, which 
 were partly concerned with the same epoch. He refers 
 explicitly to the embassy which the Alexandrian Jews 
 sent to the Roman Emperor to appeal for the rescis- 
 sion of the order to set up in the synagogue the Impe- 
 rial image, at the head of which went Philo, " a man 
 eminent on all accounts, brother to Alexander the Ala- 
 barch, and not unskilled in philosophy." Bloch * in- 
 deed is of the opinion that the later historian did not 
 use his Alexandrian predecessor, either in this or any 
 other part of his writings, and points out certain dif- 
 
 1 Ant. XVIII. iii. Comp. below, p. 241. 
 
 2 Die Quellen des Flavius Josephus.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTOEY 199 
 
 f erences of fact between the two accounts ; but in view 
 of the references to Philo and the fact that Josephus 
 subsequently wrote two books of apology, one of which 
 was expressly directed in answer to Philo's bitter op- 
 ponent Apion, it is at least probable that he was ac- 
 quainted with Philo's narrative. He may, however, 
 have used it only to supplement the memoirs of the 
 Herodian house, which served him as a chief source. 
 Josephus devotes less attention to the Alexandrian em- 
 bassy than to the efforts of the Palestinian Jews to 
 obtain a rescission of the similar decree which Petro- 
 nius, the governor of Syria, was sent to enforce in 
 Jerusalem. His account is devised to glorify the part 
 which Agrippa played. The prince appears as a kind 
 of male Esther, endangering his own life to save his 
 people; and indeed higher critics have been found to 
 suggest that the Biblical book of Esther was written 
 around the events of the reign of Gaius. 
 
 The story of Agrippa is interrupted by a chapter 
 about the Jews of Babylon, which has the air of a 
 moral tale on the evils of intermarriage, and may have 
 formed part of the popular Jewish literature of the 
 day. Another long digression marks the beginning of 
 the nineteenth book of the Antiquities, where Josephus 
 leaves Jewish scenes and inserts an account of Caligu- 
 la's murder and the election of Claudius as Emperor. 
 This narrative, while of great interest for students of 
 the Roman constitution, is out of all proportion to its 
 place in the Jewish chronicle. Josephus, it has been 
 surmised, based it on the work of one Cluvius (re-
 
 200 JOSEPHUS 
 
 ferred to in the book as an intimate friend of Claud- 
 ius), who wrote a history about 70 c. E. ; he may be- 
 sides have received hitherto unpublished information 
 from Agrippa II, whose father had been an important 
 actor in the drama, or from his friend Aliturius, the 
 actor at Rome, who had mixed in affairs of state. Any- 
 how, he took advantage of this chance of making a 
 literary sensation. Doubtless also, the recital, which 
 threw not a little discredit on the house of the earlier 
 Caesars, was for that reason not unwelcome to the up- 
 start Flavians, and may have been inserted at the 
 Imperial wish. 
 
 Agrippa I is the most attractive figure in the second 
 part of the Antiquities. He is contrasted with Herod, 
 
 who was cruel and severe in his punishments, and had 
 no mercy on those he hated, and everyone perceived that 
 
 he had more love for the Greeks than for the Jews 
 
 But Agrippa's temper was mild and equally liberal to all 
 men. He was kind to foreigners and was of agreeable 
 and compassionate feeling. He loved to reside at Jeru- 
 salem, and was scrupulously careful in his observance of 
 the Law of his people. On his death he expressed his 
 submission to Providence; for that he had by no means 
 lived ill, but in a splendid and happy manner. 
 
 His peaceful reign, however, was only the lull before 
 the storm, and the last book of the Antiquities is 
 mainly taken up with the succession of wicked procu- 
 rators, who, by their extortions and cruelties and 
 flagrant disregard of the Jewish Law and Jewish feel- 
 ing, goaded the Jews into the final rebellion. It con- 
 tains, however, a digression on the conversion of the
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 201 
 
 royal house of Adiabene to Judaism, which is tricked 
 out with examples of God's Providence. Yet another 
 digression records the villainies of Nero (which no 
 doubt was pleasing to his patrons) and the amours of 
 Drusilla, the daughter of Agrippa I. But of the rising 
 discontent of the Jewish people in Palestine we have 
 no clear picture. Josephus fails as in the Wars to 
 bring out the inner incompatibility of the Roman 
 and the Jewish outlook, and represents, in an unim- 
 aginative, matter-of-fact, Romanizing way, that it was 
 simply particular excesses the rapacity of a Felix, the 
 knavery of a Florus which were the cause of the 
 Rebellion. This is just what a Roman would have 
 said, and when the Jewish writer deals at all with 
 the Jewish position, it is usually to drag in his political 
 feud. He especially singles out the sacrilege of the 
 Zealots in assassinating their opponents within the 
 Temple precincts as the reason of God's rejecting the 
 city ; " and as for the Temple, He no longer deemed 
 it sufficiently pure to be His habitation, but brought 
 the Romans upon us and threw a fire on the city to 
 purge it, and brought slavery on us, our wives, and 
 our children, to make us wiser bv our calamities." 
 Thus the priestly apologist, accepting Roman canons, 
 finds in the ritual offense of a section of the people 
 the ground for the destruction of the national center. 
 He is torn, indeed, between two conflicting views about 
 the orisrin of the rebellion : whether he shall lay the 
 whole blame on the Jewish irreconcilable?, or whether 
 he shall divide it between them and the wicked Roman
 
 202 JOSEPHUS 
 
 governors; and in the end he exaggerates both these 
 motives, and leaves out the deeper causes. 
 
 The penultimate chapter contains a list of the high 
 priests, about whom the historian had throughout 
 made great pretensions of accuracy. He enumerates 
 but eighty-three from the time of Aaron to the end 
 of the line, of whom no less than twenty-eight were 
 appointed after Herod's accession to his kingdom; 
 whereas the Talmud records that three hundred held 
 office during the existence of the second Temple alone. 1 
 That number is probably hyperbolical, but the state- 
 ment in other parts of the Eabbinical literature, that 
 there were eighty high priests in that period,* throws 
 doubt on this list, which besides is manifestly patched 
 in several places. 
 
 With the procuratorship of Floras, Josephus brings 
 his chronicle to an end, the later events having been 
 treated in detail in the Wars; and in conclusion he 
 commends himself for his accuracy in giving the suc- 
 cession of priests and kings and political adminis- 
 trators : 
 
 And I make bold to say, now I have so completely per- 
 fected the work which I set out to do, that no other per- 
 son, be he Jew or foreigner, and had he ever so great an 
 inclination to it, could so accurately deliver these ac- 
 counts to the Greeks as is done in these books. For 
 members of my own people acknowledge that I far ex- 
 ceed them in Jewish learning, and I have taken great 
 pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks and under- 
 
 1 Yoma, 9a. * Yer. Yoma, ix., and Lev. R. xx.
 
 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY 203 
 
 stand the elements of the Greek language, though I have 
 so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue that 
 I cannot speak Greek with exactness. 
 
 He makes explicit his standpoint with this envoi, 
 which shows that he was writing for a Greek-speaking 
 public and in competition with Greeks, and this helps 
 to explain why he sets special store on the record of 
 priests and kings and political changes, and why he 
 so often disguises the genuine Jewish outlook. As an 
 account of the Jewish people for the prejudiced society 
 of Rome, the Antiquities undoubtedly possessed merit. 
 History, indeed, at the time, was far from being an 
 exact science, nor was accuracy esteemed necessary to 
 it. Cicero had said a hundred years earlier, that it was 
 legitimate to lie in narratives ; and this was the char- 
 acteristic outlook of the Greco-Roman writers. The 
 most brilliant literary documents of the age, the An- 
 nals and Histories of Tacitus, are rather pieces of 
 sparkling journalism than sober and philosophical 
 records of facts ; and therefore we must not judge Jose- 
 phus by too high a standard. 
 
 "Weighed in his own balance, he had done a great 
 service to his people by setting out the main heads of 
 their history over three thousand years, so that it 
 should be intelligible to the cultured Roman society ; 
 and had he been reproached with misrepresenting and 
 distorting many of their religious ideas, he would have 
 replied, with some justice, that it was necessary to do 
 so in order to make the Romans understand. On the 
 same ground he would have justified the omission of
 
 204 JOSEPHUS 
 
 much that was characteristic and the exaggeration of 
 much that was normal. He shows throughout some 
 measure of national pride. To-day, however, we can- 
 not but regret that he weakly adopted much of the 
 spiritual outlook of his Gentile contemporaries, and 
 that he did not seek to convey to his readers the funda- 
 mental spiritual conceptions of the Jews, which might 
 have endowed his history with an unique distinction. 
 His record of two thousand years of Israel's history 
 gives but the shadow of the glory of his people.
 
 VIII 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 
 
 In every age since the dispersion began, the Jews 
 have appeared to their neighbors as a curious anomaly. 
 Their abstract idea o_f_God, their peculiar religious ob- 
 servances, their refusal to intermarry with their neigh- 
 bors, their serious habits of life all have served to 
 mark them out and attract the wonder of the philoso- 
 phical, the vituperation of the vulgar, and the dislike 
 of the ignorant. Their enemies in every epoch have 
 repeated with slight variation the charge which 
 Haman brought in his petition to King Ahasuerus, 
 " There is a people scattered abroad and dispersed 
 among the peoples in all the provinces of thy king- 
 dom; and their laws are diverse from those of every 
 people, neither keep they the king's laws" (Esther 
 3:8). In the cosmopolitan society that arose in the 
 Hellenistic kingdoms, it was their especial offense that 
 they retained a national cohesion, and refused to in- 
 dulge in the free trade in religious ideas and social 
 habits adop^3Ty_ciyjlizedj)eoplei. The popular feel- 
 ing was fanned by a party that had a more particular 
 grievance against them. Though certain philosophi- 
 cal sects, notably the schools of Pythagoras and Aris- 
 totle, were struck with admiration for the lofty spirit- 
 ual ideas and the strict discipline of Judaism, another
 
 206 JOSEPHUS 
 
 school, and that the most powerful of the time, was 
 smitten with envy and hatred. 
 
 The Stoics, who aspired to establish a religious 
 / ^philosophy for all mankind, and pursued a vigorous 
 missionary propaganda, particularly in the East, saw 
 in the Jews not only obstinate opponents but danger- 
 ous rivals, who carried on a competing mission with 
 provoking success. The children of Israel were spread 
 over the whole of the civilized world, and everywhere 
 they vigorously propagated their teaching. Of all 
 enmities, the enmity of contending creeds is the bit- 
 terest. The Stoics became the first professional Jew- 
 haters, and set themselves at the head of those who re- 
 sented Jewish particularism, either from jealousy or 
 from that unreasoning dislike which is universally 
 felt against minorities that live differently from the 
 mass about them. 
 
 The ill-will and sectarian hatred were most preva- 
 lent at Alexandria, where the powerful Jewish com- 
 munity excited the attacks of the half-Hellenized 
 natives. The campaign was fought mainly as a battle 
 of books. The Hebrew Scriptures represented the 
 early Egyptians in no favorable light. The Greco- 
 Egyptian historians retaliated by a malevolent account 
 of the origin and history of the Hebrew people, of 
 which Manetho's story is the prototype. In this work 
 of the third century B. c. E. the children of Israel were 
 represented as sprung from a pack of lepers, who were 
 expelled from Egypt because of their foul disease. A 
 still more virulent attack on the Jewish teaching is
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 207 
 
 found in two Stoic writers of the first century B. c. E., 
 Posidonius of Apamea, a town of Phrygia, and Molon, 1 
 who taught at Ehodes. The former raised the charge 
 that the Jews alone of all peoples refused to have any 
 communication with other nations, but regarded them 
 as their enemies. Molon, besides a general travesty 
 of their early history, wrote a special diatribe against 
 them the first document of the kind which history 
 records accusing them of atheism and misanthropy, 
 cowardice and stupidity. These remained the stock 
 charges for centuries, and they assumed an added bit- 
 terness after the Roman conquest, when to the peculi- 
 arity of Jewish customs was added the stigma of being 
 a subject people. The hatred of Greek and Jew, despite 
 all the ostentatious friendliness of a Herod for Greek 
 things, became deeper, and it showed itself as well 
 without as within Palestine. At Alexandria, in the 
 beginning of the first century, the antagonism devel- 
 oped into open riots, and the leaders of the anti-Jewish 
 party were again two Stoics, Apion and Chaeremon, 
 the one orator and grammarian, the other priest and 
 astrologer. There is nothing very original in their 
 libels, which are modeled upon those of Posidonius 
 and Molon; but some fresh detail is added. It was 
 said that the deity worshiped at Jerusalem was the 
 head of an ass, to which human sacrifices were offered, 
 
 1 Schiirer (iii. 503#) has brought cogent reasons to 
 show that Molon is not the same as Apollonius, another 
 Jew-baiter, with whom he has often been identified.
 
 208 JOSEPHUS 
 
 and that the Jews took an oath to do no service for 
 any Gentile. Apion, a man of some repute, was the 
 head of the Alexandrian Stoic school, and called " the 
 toiler," because of his industry. He was, however, also 
 known as " the quarrelsome " 1 (o TrActoron'*^). An- 
 other critic of ancient times says he was notorious for 
 advertising his ideas (in doctrinis suis praedicandis 
 venditator) 3 , and the Emperor Augustus declares that 
 he was the drum of his own fame (i. e. the blower of 
 his own trumpet) . He was in fact a mixture of scholar 
 and charlatan, as many of his successors have been, the 
 Houston Chamberlain of the first century. 
 
 Apion wrote a history of Egypt in which his attack 
 upon the Jews appears to have been an episode, 1 but 
 his prominence as an anti-Semite is shown by the fact 
 that he went as the spokesman of the Greek embassy 
 to Caligula on the memorable occasion when Philo 
 was the champion of the Jewish cause. In that 
 capacity Philo prepared an elaborate apology for his 
 people, which he had not the opportunity to deliver; 
 but it contained in part an account of the religious 
 sects, designed to show their philosophical excellence, 
 and it was known to the Church fathers of the early 
 centuries of the Christian era. Only small fragments 
 
 1 Clemens, Strom. I. 21, 101. 
 
 3 Callus, Noctes Atticae, v. 2. 
 
 1 The idea, which is derived from the Church fathers, 
 that he wrote a separate Ao-yos against the Jews, appears 
 to be based by them on a misunderstanding of Ant. XVIII. 
 viii. 1. Comp. Schiirer, op. cit. iii. 541.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 209 
 
 of it are preserved by Eusebius, and the rest of the 
 apologetic writing of Alexandria, which was in all 
 probability very extensive, has disappeared. Yet the 
 Hellenistic-Jewish literature is colored throughout 
 by an apologetic purpose. Whether the work is a_ 
 professedly historical or ethical or philosophical treat- 
 ise, the idea is always present of representing Juda- 
 ism as a sublime and a humanitarian doctrine, and 
 of refuting the calumnies of the Greek scribes. Thus, 
 besides his elaborate apology prepared for the Eoman 
 Emperor, Philo had written a popular presentation of 
 Judaism in the form of a Life of Moses, with ap- 
 pended treatises on Humanity and Nobility, which 
 was but a thinly-veiled work of apologetics. Another 
 part of the defensive literature took the form of mis- 
 sionary propaganda under a heathen mask. The ora- 
 cles of the Sibyl and Orpheus, a forged history of 
 Hecataeus, and monotheistic verses foisted on the 
 Greek poets, were but attempts to carry the war into 
 the enemy's territory. Further, there must have been a 
 more direct presentation of the Jewish cause by way of 
 public lectures and popular addresses in the syna- 
 gogues. Nevertheless, the specific answers to the 
 charges advanced by the anti- Jewish scribblers are now 
 to be found most fully stated in Josephus. In his day 
 the literary campaign against the Jewish name was 
 as remorseless as the military campaign that had de- 
 stroyed their political independence. The Romans, 
 tolerant themselves in religion, had long been intole- 
 rant of Jewish separatism and national exclusiveness, 
 
 14
 
 210 JOSEPHUS 
 
 and Cicero, 1 shortly after the capture of Jerusalem by 
 Pompey, had denounced their " barbarian supersti- 
 tion " in language that is typical of the outlook of the 
 Eoman aristocracy. " Even when Jerusalem was un- 
 touched, and the Jews were at peace with us, their 
 religious ceremonies ill accorded with the splendor of 
 our Empire; still less tolerable are they to-day, when 
 the nation has shown, by taking up arms, its attitude 
 towards us, while the fact that it has been conquered 
 and reduced to servitude proves how much the gods 
 care for it." 
 
 ^The later poets of the Augustan age, Horace, Ti- 
 bullus, and Ovid, expressed a supercilious disdain for 
 the Jewish customs of Sabbath-keeping, etc., which 
 were spreading even in the politest circles. As the 
 political conflict between the Eomans and their stub- 
 born subjects became more pronounced, the Eoman 
 impatience of their obstinacy increased. Seneca, 
 writing after Palestine had been placed under a 
 Eoman governor, speaks bitterly of " the accursed race 
 whose practices have so far prevailed that they have 
 been received all over the world." Hating the Jews 
 as he did with the double hatred of a Eoman aristocrat 
 and a Stoic philosopher, he is yet fain to admit that 
 their religion is diffused over the Empire, and anxious 
 as he is to decry their superstition, he reveals part of 
 the reason of their success. " They at least can give 
 an explanation of their religious ceremonies, whereas 
 the pagan masses cannot say why they carry out their 
 
 1 Pro Flacco, 68.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 211 
 
 practices.'*' The pagan cults were languishing because 
 of the frigidity of their forms and their incapacity for 
 providing men "with an ideal or a discipline or a solace ; 
 and the people turned to a living religion. The day 
 had come that was foretold by the prophet, when 
 men shall catch hold of the skirts of a Jew, saying, 
 " We will go with you, because we have heard that God 
 is with you" (Zech. 8:23). 
 
 The bitterest and the most envenomed attacks on the 
 Jews were written after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 when the failure of Rome to break the stubborn spirit of 
 her conquered foe became apparent. The legions could 
 destroy Jerusalem ; they could not uproot Judaism or 
 even stay its progress. The presence of thousands of 
 Jewish captive slaves at Rome accelerated indeed the 
 march of conversion. Vespasian and Titus forebore 
 to take the title " Judaicus " after their triumph, lest 
 it should be taken to mean that they had Judaized. 
 The speedy defection of Roman citizens to the super- 
 stition of a conquered people was an insult, which, 
 added to the injury of their obstinate resistance, roused 
 to fury the remnants of the Roman conservatives. 
 The entanglement of Titus with the Jewish princess 
 Berenice was the final outrage. The satiric poets 
 Martial and Juvenal inserted frequent ribald refer- 
 ences to Jewish customs ; but the nature of their works 
 precluded a serious criticism. Martial was a master of 
 flouts, jeers, and gibes, and Juvenal was a soured and 
 disappointed provincial, who delighted to hurl wild 
 reproaches. lie declaimed against the passing away
 
 212 JOSEPHTJS 
 
 of the old manners of Republican Rome, and for him 
 the spread of Jewish habits was among the surest signs 
 of degeneracy. The poets, however, did not so much 
 endeavor to misrepresent as to ridicule the Jews and 
 their converts. But the classical exponent of Roman 
 anti-Semitism is Tacitus, the historian who wrote in 
 the time of Nerva and Trajan, i. e. just after Josephus, 
 and who treated of the Jews both in his Annals, which 
 were a history of the last century, and in his Histories, 
 which dealt with his own times. He surpassed all his 
 predecessors, Greek or Roman, in distortion and abuse, 
 and he combined the charges invented by the jealousy 
 and rancor of Greek sophists with the abuse of Jewish 
 character induced by Imperial Roman passion. His 
 account cannot be mistaken for a sober judgment. 
 By the transparent combination of earlier, discredited 
 sources, by blatant inconsistencies, and by neglect of 
 the authorities that would have provided him with 
 reliable information, he shows himself the partisan 
 pamphleteer. But the indictment is none the less illu- 
 minating. Mommsen speaks of the solemn enmity 
 which Tacitus cherishes to the section of the human 
 race " to whom everything pure is impure, and every- 
 thing impure is pure/' Doubtless his hatred was 
 founded on intense national pride, but it was fed by 
 his tendency to blacken and exaggerate. His audience 
 was composed, as Renan says, of " aristocrats of the 
 race of English Tories, who derived their strength 
 from their very prejudices." Their ideas about the
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 213 
 
 Jewish people were as vague as those of the ordinary 
 man of to-day about the people of Thibet, and they 
 were willing to believe anything of them. 
 
 Tacitus gives several alternative accounts of the 
 origin of the Jews. 1 According to some they were 
 fugitives from the Isle of Crete (deriving their name 
 from Mount Ida), who settled on the coast of Libya. 
 According to others they sprang from Egypt, and were 
 driven out under their captains Hierosolymus and 
 Judas ; while others stated that they were Ethiopians 
 whom fear and hatred obliged to change their habi- 
 tation. He supplies himself a fanciful account of the 
 Exodus, tricked out with a variety of misrepresenta- 
 tions of their observances, which are ludicrously incon- 
 sistent with each other : 
 
 They bless the image of that animal [the ass], by whose 
 indication they had escaped from their vagrant condition 
 in the wilderness and quenched their thirst. They ab- 
 stain from swine's flesh as a memorial of the miser- 
 able destruction which the mange brought on them. 
 That they stole the fruits of the earth, we have a proof in 
 their unleavened bread. They rest on the seventh day, 
 because that day gave them rest from their labors, and, 
 affecting a lazy life, they are idle during every seventh 
 year. These rites, whatever their origin, are at least 
 supported by their antiquity. 2 Their other institutions 
 are depraved and impure, and prevailed by reason of their 
 viciousness; for every vile fellow despising the rites of 
 his ancestors brought to them his contribution, so that 
 the Jewish commonwealth was augmented. The first 
 lesson taught to converts is to despise their gods, to re- 
 nounce their country, and to hold their parents, children, 
 
 l Hist v. 2ff. Ck Ml.
 
 214 JOSEPHUS 
 
 and brethren in utmost contempt: but still they are at 
 pains to increase and multiply, and esteem it unlawful 
 to kill any of their children. They regard as immortal 
 the souls of those who die in battle, or are put to death 
 for their crimes. 1 Hence their love of posterity and 
 their contempt of death. They have no notion of more 
 than one Divine Being, who is only grasped by the 
 mind. They deem it profane to fashion images of gods 
 out of perishable matter, and teach that their Being is 
 supreme and eternal, immutable and imperishable. Ac- 
 cordingly, they erect no images in their cities, much less 
 in their temples, and they refuse to grant this kind of 
 honor to kings or emperors. 
 
 The sage Pliny, who himself laughed at the crude 
 paganism of his time, could also point the finger of 
 scorn at the Jews as " a people notorious hy their con- 
 tempt of divine images." To the genuine Eoman, the 
 state religion might not be true, but it was part of 
 the civic life, and therefore its rejection was unsocial 
 and disloyal. Yet the account of Tacitus contains sev- 
 eral remarks which, in their author's despite, reveal 
 the moral superiority of the conquered over the con- 
 querors. He notes their national tenacity, their ready 
 charity, their freedom from infanticide, their convic- 
 tion of the immortality of the soul, their purely spirit- 
 ual and monotheistic cult. Tacitus certainly wrote 
 after the works of Josephus had been published, so 
 that the apology is not an answer to him; but his 
 
 1 This statement agrees remarkably with what Josephus 
 puts into the mouth of several of his speakers. See above, 
 p. 114.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 215 
 
 ' 
 
 methods of misstatement were anticipated at Rome by, , 
 a host of anti-Semitic writers. Though Josephus 
 never mentions a single Roman detractor of his peo- 
 ple, and confines his reply to Greeks who were long 
 buried, it was doubtless against this class that he was 
 anxious to defend himself and his faith. 
 
 He declared at the end of the Antiquities his inten- 
 tion to write three books about " God and His essence, 
 and about our laws," proposing, perhaps, to imitate 
 Philo's apology for Judaism, which was in three 
 parts. But the virulence of the calumny against 
 Judaism induced him to modify his plan and write a 
 specific reply to the charges made against the Jews. 
 It was necessary to refute more concisely and more 
 definitely than he had done in his long historical 
 works the false tales about the Jewish past and the 
 Jewish law that were circulated and believed in the 
 hostile Greco-Roman world. He directed himself 
 more particularly to uphold the antiquity of the Jews 
 against those who denied their historical claims and 
 to disprove the charges leveled against the Jewish 
 religious ideas and legislation. These two subjects 
 form the content of the two books commonly known 
 to us as Against Apion. Only the second, however, 
 deals with Apion's diatribe, and the current title is 
 certainly unauthentic. Origen, 1 Eusebius, and Hie- 
 ronymus* refer to the first book as About the An- 
 tiquity of the Jews, and Hieronymus adds the descrip- 
 
 1 Orig. C. Cels. i. 14. = De Viris Illustr. 13.
 
 218 JOSEPHUS 
 
 tion &vTippr)TiKos Aoyos, A Refutation. Eusebius 
 similarly 1 speaks of the second book as the Refutation 
 of Apion the grammarian. Porphyry calls it simply 
 7r/)os TOVS "EAA^vas, The Address to the Greeks, and 
 it is possible that Josephus so entitled his work. It 
 is noteworthy that he directed his pleading to the 
 Greek-speaking and not to the Latin public; the -' 
 Greeks, he recognized, were the source of the misrep- 
 resentations of his people, and, as Greek was read by 
 all cultured people in his day, in refuting them he \ 
 would incur less obloquy and attain his end equally 
 well. 
 
 The first point that Josephus seeks to make good 
 in his apology is the antiquity of the Hebrew people 
 and the historical character of their Scriptures. In_ 
 the Greco-Roman world, which had lost confidence in 
 itself, and looked for inspiration to the past, age was 
 a title to respectability, and it was the aim of the 
 Jewish apologist to explain away the silence of the 
 Jjjfiek-e; For the certificate of the Hellenic historians 
 was in the Hellenistic world the most convincing 
 mark of genuineness. 
 
 By my works on the Antiquity of the Jews thus Jose- 
 phus begins I hare proved that our Jewish nation is of 
 very great antiquity and had a distinct existence. Those 
 Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, 
 and are derived from our sacred books, but are translated 
 by me into the Greek tongue. 
 
 1 H. E. III. viii. 2.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 217 
 
 / Josephus loosely represents that the whole of the 
 ^Antiquities is based on_Jhe Bible, and reckons the 
 period of history at nearly a thousand years more than 
 it covered. 
 
 / But since I observe that many people give ear to the 
 reproaches that are laid against us by those who bear 
 us ill-will, and will not believe what I have written con- 
 cerning the antiquity of our nation, while they take it for 
 a plain sign that our nation is of late date because it 
 is not so much as vouchsafed a bare mention by the 
 most famous historians among the Greeks, I therefore 
 have thought myself under an obligation to write some- 
 what briefly about these subjects, in order to convict those 
 who reproach us of spite and deliberate falsehood and to 
 correct the ignorance of others, and withal to instruct all 
 those who are desirous of knowing the truth of what 
 great antiquity we really are. As for the witnesses whom 
 I shall produce for the proof of what I say, they shall be 
 such as are esteemed by the Greeks themselves to be of 
 the greatest reputation for truth and the most skilful 
 in the knowledge of all antiquity. I will also show that 
 those who hare written so reproachfully and falsely 
 about us are to be convicted by what they have them- 
 selves written to the contrary, and I shall endeavor to 
 give an account of the reasons why it has happened that 
 a great number of Greeks have not made mention of our 
 nation in their histories. 
 
 Acting on the principle that the best defense is 
 attack, Josephus starts by turning on the Greeks them- 
 selves and discrediting their antiquity. They were a 
 mushroom people, or at least their records were mod- 
 ern, and not to be compared in age with the records of 
 the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, or the Babylonians.
 
 218 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Comparative sciences had flourished in the cosmopoli- 
 tan city of Alexandria, and in the light of them the 
 Greek claim to exclusive wisdom had been shattered. 
 Josephus had made himself master of the current 
 knowledge of the subject. The^Greeks learnt their let- 
 ters from the Phoenicians, tney have no record more 
 ancient than the Homeric poems, and even Homer did 
 not leave his poems in writing, 1 while their earliest his- 
 torians lived but shortly before the Persian expedition 
 into Greece, and their earliest philosophers, Pythag- 
 oras and Thales, learnt what they knew from Egypt- 
 ians and Chaldeans. Having shown the lateness and 
 Oriental origin of Greek culture, Josephus accuses 
 Greek writers of unreliability, as is manifest by their 
 mutual disagreement. He makes a great show of 
 learning on the subject and uses his material effec- 
 tively. Doubtless he found the topic ready to hand in 
 some predecessor, and it is somewhat ironical that a 
 Josephus should throw stones at a Thucydides on the 
 score of inaccuracy. 
 
 The reason for the want of authority in the Greek 
 historians continues Josephus is to be found in the fact 
 that the Greeks in early times took no care to preserve 
 public records of their transactions, which afforded those 
 who afterwards would write about them scope for mak- 
 ing mistakes and displaying invention: conditions which 
 favored literary art, but marred historical accuracy. 
 Those who were the most zealous to write history were 
 
 1 It is interesting that this casual statement of Jose- 
 phus was one of the starting points of modern Homeric 
 criticism.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 219 
 
 more anxious to demonstrate that they could write well 
 than to discover the truth. 
 
 The contrast between the individual creative im- 
 pulse of the Hellene and the respect for tradition of 
 the Hebrew, which anticipates in a way Matthew Ar- 
 nold's contrast between Hellenic " spontaneity of con- 
 sciousness " and Hebraic " strictness of conscience/' 
 is pointedly made by the apologist : 1 
 
 We Jews must yield to the Greek writers as to style 
 and eloquence of composition, but we concede them no 
 such superiority in regard to the verity of ancient his- 
 tory, and least of all as to that part which concerns the 
 affairs of our country. The reliability of the Hebrew rec- 
 ords is vouched for by the unbroken succession of official 
 annals handed down by priests and prophets. The purity 
 of the priestly caste was strictly maintained by the law 
 of marriage, which impelled every priest to make a 
 scrutiny into the genealogy of his wife and forward a 
 register of it to Jerusalem, where it was duly recorded in 
 the archives. And we possess the names of our high 
 priests from father to son for a period of two thousand 
 years. Nor is there individual liberty of writing among 
 us: only the prophets (i. e. inspired persons) have 
 written the earliest accounts of things as they learned 
 them of God Himself by inspiration, and others have 
 written about what happened in their own times, and 
 that too in a very distinct manner. We have no mass of 
 books disagreeing with each other, but only twenty-two 
 books containing the records of all our past, which are 
 rightly believed to be inspired. 
 
 'C. Ap. 6,f.
 
 220 JOSEPHUS 
 
 The reckoning of the Canon is interesting : * there 
 are five books of Moses, thirteen books of the prophets, 
 recording the history from the death of Moses to the 
 reign of Artaxerxes, and the remaining four books, 
 the Ketubim, contain hymns to God and precepts for 
 the conduct of human life. The books written since 
 the time of Artaxerxes have not the same trustworthi- 
 ness, because the exact succession of prophets has not 
 been maintained. The intense sentiment which the 
 Jews feel for their Scriptures is proved by their wil- 
 lingness to die for them. 
 
 Again a contrast is pointed between the seriousness 
 of the Hebraic and the levity of the Greek attitude 
 towards literature. Josephus egotistically draws an 
 example from the record of the recent war. The 
 Greeklings who wrote about it 
 
 put a few things together by hearsay, and, abusing the 
 word, call their writings by the name of histories. But 
 
 I have composed a true history of the whole war and of 
 all the events that occurred, having been concerned in all 
 its transactions; for I acted as general of those among 
 us that are named Galileans, as long as it was possible 
 for us to make any resistance. I was then seized by the 
 Romans, and became a captive. Vespasian and Titus kept 
 me under guard, and forced me to attend on them con- 
 
 1 The accepted number of books in the Jewish Canon is 
 twenty-four, and this number is found in the Book of 
 
 II Esdras, xiv. 41, which is probably contemporaneous 
 with Josephus. The number 22 is to be explained by the 
 fact that Josephus must have linked Ruth with Judges 
 and Lamentations with Jeremiah. See J. E., a. v. Canon.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 221 
 
 tlnually. At the first I was put into bonds, but later was 
 set at liberty and sent to accompany Titus when he came 
 from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem, during which 
 time nothing was done that escaped my knowledge. For 
 what happened in the Roman camp I saw, and wrote down 
 carefully; and what information the deserters brought 
 out of the city, I was the only man to understand. After- 
 wards, when I had gotten leisure at Rome, and when all 
 my material was prepared for the work, I obtained some 
 persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue, and 
 by these means I composed the history of the events, and 
 I was so well assured of the truth of what I related, that 
 I first of all appealed to those that had the supreme com- 
 mand in that war, Vespasian and Titus, as witnesses for 
 me. For to them first of all I presented my books, and 
 after them to many of the Romans that had been engaged 
 in the war. I also recited them to many of my own race 
 that understood Greek philosophy, among whom were 
 Julius Archelaus, Herod, king of Chalcis, a person of 
 great authority, and King Agrippa himself, a person that 
 deserved the greatest respect. Now all these bore their 
 testimony to me that I had the strictest regard to truth; 
 who yet would not have dissembled the matter, nor been 
 silent, if I, out of ignorance, or out of favor to any side, 
 either had given a false color to the events, or omitted 
 any of them. 
 
 Josephus here indignantly replies to his Eoman 
 detractors, who accused him of having composed a 
 mere partisan thesis. As a priest he had a special 
 knowledge of the Scriptures, which were the basis of 
 his A ntiauities, and as an important actor in the drama 
 of the Roman war, he wrote of its events with the 
 knowledge of an eye-witness. He excuses his digres- 
 sion as being made in self-defense, and claims to have
 
 222 JOSEPHUS 
 
 proved that historical writing is indigenous rather 
 to those called Barbarians than to the Greeks. He 
 then returns to the task of refuting those who say that 
 the Jewish polity is of late origin because the Greek 
 authors are silent about it. One main cause of the 
 silence was the isolation of Judea and the character of 
 the Jewish people, who did not delight in merchandise 
 and commerce, but devoted themselves to the cultiva- 
 tion of the soil. This, of course, is a picture of the 
 Bible times, because in the writer's days they were be- 
 ginning their mercantile development. Hence the 
 Jews were in quite a different condition from the 
 Phoenicians, the Thracians, the Persians, and the 
 Medes, with all of whom the Hellenes came into con- 
 tact. They are rather to be compared with the 
 Eomans, who only entered into the Greek sphere of 
 interest later in their history. 
 
 Josephus makes the point that it would be as rea- 
 sonable for the Jews to deny the antiquity of the 
 Greeks because there is no mention of them in Hebrew 
 records, as for the Greeks to deny the antiquity of the 
 Jews for the converse reason. And if the Greeks are 
 ignorant of the Hebrews, he argues that there is 
 abundant testimony in the histories of other peoples. 
 He starts with the Egyptian evidence, and quotes 
 from Manetho, the anti-Jewish historian, giving ex- 
 tracts about the Hyksos tribes and Hyksos kings, 
 whom he identifies with Joseph and his brethren. The 
 identification was popular till recent times, but mod- 
 ern historical criticism has rejected it. Josephus
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 223 
 
 dates the invasion of the Hyksos at three hundred 
 and ninety-three years before Danaus came to Argos, 
 which in turn was five hundred and twenty years 
 before the Trojan war. Thus he puts the Bible story 
 far ahead in age of Greek myth. Passing on to the 
 testimony in the Phoenician records, he derives from 
 the public archives of Tyre, to which reference was 
 made also in the Antiquities, 1 evidence of the relations 
 between Solomon and Hiram, and further quotes the 
 account given by the Hellenistic historian Alexander 
 of Ephesus, who mentions the same incident. This 
 Alexander had written a world-history, and had col- 
 lected the chronicles of the various peoples that formed 
 part of Alexander's empire. Josephus, who probably 
 knew of his work through Nicholas or some other 
 chronicler, cites him to confirm the Bible. Collections 
 of extracts about the Jewish people and references to 
 the Bible in Greek literature were already in vogue, 
 for it was an age similar to our own in its love of 
 encyclopedias. Josephus uses with not a little skill 
 these foreign sources, and supplements the compara- 
 tive material which he had introduced in the An- 
 tiquities. Confirmation of the account of the flood, 
 as also of the rebuilding of the Temple after the re- 
 turn of the Jews from Babylon, is found in the Chal- 
 dean history of Berosus ; and other long extracts from 
 Babylonian history are inserted that furnish a cas- 
 ual mention of Judea or Jerusalem. Josephus at- 
 tempts, too, with doubtful success, to combine the 
 
 1 Comp. above, p. 159.
 
 224 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Phoenician and Babylonian records in order to prove 
 that they agree about the date of the rebuilding of the 
 Temple. The only justifiable inference from the 
 passages, however, appears to be that both sources 
 agreed on the existence of Cyrus, king of Persia. 
 
 Finally he adduces passages from various Greek 
 writers, to show that the Jews were not entirely un- 
 known to the Hellenes before Alexander's conquests. 
 Josephus had no doubt predecessors among the Hel- 
 lenistic Jewish litterateurs in the search for testimony, 
 as well as successors among the Christian apologists; 
 but his collection has alone survived, and has become 
 invaluable to modern scholars, who have ploughed the 
 same field for a different purpose. Authority is 
 brought forward to show that Pythagoras had con- 
 nection with the Hebrews, and Herodotus, it is ar- 
 gued, referred to the Jews as circumcised Syrians. 1 
 More apposite is a passage quoted from Clearchus, a 
 pupil of Aristotle, about a discussion which his master 
 had with a Jew of Soli, " who was Greek not only in 
 language but in thought/' The genuineness of this 
 excerpt has been questioned, but without good reason. 
 Aristotle's school had a scientific interest in the Jews 
 as in other peoples that had come under Greek sway 
 through Alexander's conquests. 
 
 Josephus then sets out some very eulogistic passages 
 about his people, purporting to be from Hecataeus of 
 Abdera, which are very much to his taste and his 
 purpose. Unfortunately, however, they are too good 
 
 1 Comp. Ant. VIII. x. 3.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 225 
 
 to be true, and modern criticism has established that, 
 while the genuine Hecataeus, an historian who wrote 
 at the end of the fourth century B. c. E., did insert 
 in his work an account of Jerusalem and the Jews, 
 the glowing testimonials which Josephus adduces are 
 from forged books devised by Jews to their own glory. 
 A passage of a less favorable tone, and of which the 
 genuineness is therefore not open to suspicion, is 
 quoted from Agatharchides, a Seleucid historian. Fi- 
 nally, with an incidental mention of a half-dozen Hel- 
 lenistic writers that have made distinct reference to 
 the Jewish people, and of three Jewish writers, De- 
 metrius, the elder Philo, and Eupolemus, " who have 
 not greatly missed the truth about our affairs," 
 Josephus closes his evidence as to the antiquity of his 
 nation. 1 Possibly he did not realize that his last three 
 witnesses were of his own race, and it is not improb- 
 able that this string of names was to him also a string 
 of names culled from Alexander Polyhistor or a simi- 
 lar authority. 
 
 The latter part of the first book is devoted to the 
 refutation of the anti-Jewish diatribes of several 
 Greeks, and starts off with a few commonplaces upon 
 the topic, to the effect that every great nation incurs 
 the jealousy and ill-will of others. " The Egyptians," 
 says Josephus, " were the first to cast reproaches upon 
 us, and in order to please them, some others undertook 
 to pervert the truth. The causes of their enmity are 
 
 1 C. Ap. 23. 
 15
 
 226 JOSEPHIJS 
 
 their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the 
 difference of their religious ideas." ' Josephus deals 
 with Manetho's description of the going-out from 
 Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate that " he trifles 
 and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the 
 Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, 
 and insists upon its absurdity and the lack of consist- 
 ency in the details. He offers ingenuously as a proof 
 of the falsity of the allegation that Moses was a leper 
 the Mosaic legislation about lepers. " How could it 
 be supposed," he asks, " that Moses should ordain such 
 laws against himself, to his own reproach and dam- 
 age?" Chaeremon is unworthy of reply, because his 
 account, though equally scurrilous, is inconsistent 
 with that of Manetho. But the story of Lysimachus, 
 a writer of the same genus, is more critically ex- 
 amined and found wanting, because it gives no expla- 
 nation of the origin of the Hebrews. Lysimachus de- 
 rived the name Jerusalem from the Greek Hierosvlen 
 to commit sacrilege the Hebrews, according to his 
 story, owing their settlement to the plunder of 
 temples ; and Josephus points out triumphantly that 
 that idea is not expressed hy the same word and name 
 among the Jews and Greeks. But, to vary a saying of 
 Doctor Johnson, this section of Josephus must be read 
 for the quotations, for if one reads it for the argument 
 of either assailant or apologist, one would shoot 
 oneself. 
 1 C. Ap. 24.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 227 
 
 The second book of the apology, which is a continu- 
 ation of the first, opens with an elaborate refutation 
 of Apion. Josephus questions whether he should 
 take the trouble to confute the scurrilous stories of the 
 Alexandrian grammarian, "which are all abuse and 
 vulgarity " ; but because many are pleased to pick up 
 mendacious fictions, he thinks it better not to leave 
 the charges without an answer. He disposes first of 
 Apion's tales about Moses and the Exodus, which are 
 of the same character as those of Manetho and 
 Chaeremon. Loaded abuse and unmeasured invective 
 color the refutation, but Apion apparently deserved it. 
 We may take, as a fair specimen of his veracity, the 
 statement that the Hebrews reached Palestine six 
 days after they left Egypt and rested on the seventh 
 day, which they called Sabbath, because of some disease 
 from which they suffered, and of which the Egyptian 
 name was Sabbaton. Apion had in particular at- 
 tacked the Alexandrian Jews, and Josephus takes 
 the opportunity of enlarging on the privileged posi- 
 tion of his people, not only in the Egyptian capital, 
 but in the other Hellenistic cities where they had been 
 settled. 1 He elaborates and amplifies what he had 
 stated on this subject in the Antiquities, and adds a 
 short account of the miraculous delivery of the 
 Egyptian Jews during the short-lived persecution of 
 Ptolemy Physcon, which is recorded more fully and 
 
 1 This part of the book, it may be noted, has only been 
 preserved in the Latin version; the Greek original has 
 been lost.
 
 228 JOSEPHUS 
 
 with some variation of detail in the so-called Third 
 Book of the Maccabees. In reply to Apion's charge, 
 that the Jews show a lack of civic spirit because they / 
 do not worship the same gods as the Alexandrians, 
 Josephus launches out into an explanation of their 
 conception of God, describes their abhorrence of 
 idolatry, and deals also with their refusal to set up 
 in their temples the image of the Emperory' " But 
 at the same time they are willing," he says, " to pay 
 honors to great men and to offer sacrifices in their 
 name." He deals also, in a digression, with calum- 
 nies derived from Posidonius and Molon about the 
 worship of an ass in the sanctuary at Jerusalem. 
 
 Apion- had invented a detailed story of ritual 
 murder to justify Antiochus Epiphanes for his spoli- 
 ation of the Temple. The origin of this charge is in- 
 structive of the methods of a classical anti-Semite. 
 There was, in the innermost sanctuary, a stone 1 on 
 which the blood of the burnt offering was sprinkled 
 by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. It was 
 known as the rvnt? px, and tradition said that the ark 
 of the covenant had rested on it. Mystery centered 
 around it, and the Greek scribes imagined that it was 
 the object of worship. Now, the Greek word for a 
 stone was Onos, which likewise meant an ass, and it 
 was probably on the strength of this blunder that prej- 
 udice for centuries accused Jews and Christians of 
 worshiping an ass' head. Josephus brings proof of the 
 emptiness of the charge, and retorts that Apion had 
 
 1 Yer. Yoma, v. 2.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 229 
 
 himself the heart of an ass ; and then, describing the 
 ritual of the Temple, insists that there was no secret 
 mystery about it. It gives a touch of pathos that he 
 speaks as if the Temple services were still being car- 
 ried out, whether because he was copying a source 
 written before the destruction, or because he deliber- 
 ately disregarded that event. Apion, like Cicero, had 
 taunted the Jews on account of their political subjec- 
 tion, which proved, he argued, that their laws were not 
 just nor their religion true. Josephus meets the 
 charge which in the materialistic thinking of the 
 Eoman world was hard to answer by the not very 
 happy plea that the Egyptians and Greeks had suffered 
 a like fortune. So, too, he meets the gibe that the Jews 
 do not eat pork, by saying that the Egyptian priests 
 abstain likewise. He omits in both cases the true re- 
 ligious answer, which would probably not have ap- 
 pealed to his public. 
 
 At this point the reply to the Alexandrian anti- 
 Semite comes to an end, and the rest of the book com- 
 prises a defense of the Jewish legislation, " which is 
 intended not as an eulogy but as an apology." The 
 broad aim is to show that the Law inculcates humanity 
 and piety ; but Josephus, before setting himself to this, 
 again labors to point out that it is pre-eminent in 
 antiquity over any of the Greek codes. This done, 
 he gives a summary of the principles of Judaism, which 
 is unlike anything else he wrote in its masterly grasp 
 of the spirit of the religion and in its philosophical 
 attitude. So great indeed is the contrast between this
 
 230 JOSEPHUS 
 
 epilogue and the bald summary of the Mosaic laws 
 in the Antiquities, that it is safe to say that 
 Josephus had for his later work lighted on a fresh 
 and more inspired source. His presentation has the 
 regular characteristic of the Alexandrian school, an 
 insistence on the universal and philanthropic elements 
 of the Mosaic law; and it is likely that he had before 
 him either Philo's work on the Life of Moses, or 
 another work, which his predecessor had used. It mat- 
 ters little that there are differences of detail between 
 his and Philo's interpretations : the manner and the 
 general purport are the same, and the manner is not 
 the usual manner of Josephus, and altogether different 
 from the treatment in the Antiquities. 
 
 He lays down with great clearness the dominant 
 features of the Mosaic constitution. It is a theocracy, 
 t. e. the state depends on God. The passage in which 
 he makes good this principle is a striking piece of 
 reasoning in comparative religion, worthy to be quoted 
 in full: 
 
 Now there are innumerable differences in the particu- 
 lar customs and laws that hold among all mankind, which 
 a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: 
 Some legislators have permitted their governments to be 
 under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, 
 and others under a republican form; but our legislator 
 had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our 
 government to be what, by a strained expression, may be 
 termed a Theocracy, by ascribing the authority and the 
 power to God, and by persuading all the people to have 
 a regard to Him as the Author of all the good things en- 
 joyed either in common by all mankind or by each one in
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 231 
 
 particular, and of all that they themselves obtain by 
 praying to Him in their greatest difficulties. He informed 
 them that it was impossible to escape God's observation, 
 either in any of our outward actions or in any of our 
 inward thought^. Moreover he represented God as un- 
 begotten and immutable through all eternity, superior to 
 all mortal conceptions in form, and though known to us 
 by His power, yet unknown to us as to His essence. I 
 do not now explain how these notions of God are in har- 
 mony with the sentiments of the wisest among the Greeks. 
 However, their sages testify with great assurance that 
 these notions are just and agreeable to the divine nature; 
 for Pythagoras and Anaxagoras and Plato and the Stoic 
 philosophers that succeeded them, and almost all the rest 
 profess the same sentiments, and had the same notions 
 of the nature of God; yet durst not these men disclose 
 those true notions to more than a few, because the body 
 of the people were prejudiced beforehand with other 
 opinions. But our legislator, whose actions harmonized 
 with his laws, did not only prevail with those who were 
 his contemporaries to accept these notions, but so firmly 
 imprinted this faith in God upon all their posterity that it 
 could never be removed. The reason why the constitu- 
 tion of our legislation was ever better directed than other 
 legislations to the utility of all is this: that Moses did 
 not make religion a part of virtue, but he ordained other 
 virtues to be a part of religion I mean justice, and for- 
 titude, and temperance, and a universal agreement of the 
 members of the community with one another. All our 
 actions and studies have a reference to piety towards 
 God, for he hath left none of these in suspense or unde- 
 termined. There are two ways of coming at any sort of 
 learning and a moral conduct of life: the one is by in- 
 struction in words, the other by practical exercises. Now, 
 other lawgivers have separated these two ways in their 
 opinions, and, choosing the one which best pleased each
 
 232 JOSEPHUS 
 
 of them, neglected the other. Thus did the Lacedemon- 
 ians and the Cretans teach by practical exercises, but 
 not by words; while the Athenians and almost all the 
 other Greeks made laws about what was to be done, or 
 left undone, but had no regard to exercising them thereto 
 in practice. 
 
 But our legislator very carefully joined these two meth- 
 ods of instruction together; for he neither left these prac- 
 tical exercises to be performed without verbal instruc- 
 tion, nor did he permit the learning of the law to proceed 
 without the exercises for practice; but beginning im- 
 mediately from the earliest infancy and the regulation 
 of our diet, he left nothing of the very smallest conse- 
 quence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the 
 individual. Accordingly, he made a fixed rule of law, 
 what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what 
 sorts they should use; as also what communion they 
 should have with others, what great diligence they should 
 use in their occupations, and what times of rest should 
 be interposed, in order that, by living under that law as 
 under a father and a master, we might be guilty of no 
 sin, neither voluntary nor out of ignorance. For he did 
 not suffer the guilt of ignorance to go without punish- 
 ment, but demonstrated the law to be the best and the 
 most necessary instruction of all, directing the people to 
 cease from their other employments and to assemble 
 together for the hearing and the exact learning of the 
 law, and this not once or twice or oftener, but every 
 week; which all the other legislators seem to have 
 neglected. 
 
 This passage contains, in many ways, an admirable 
 explanation of Judaism as a law of conduct, incul- 
 cating moralitv by good habit; it lacks, indeed, 
 any deep spiritual note or mystical exaltation, but 
 it was likely for that reason to appeal to the prac-
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 233 
 
 tical, material-minded Eoman. Josephus corroborates 
 what Seneca had grudgingly remarked, that the Jews 
 understood their laws; and it is this, he says, which 
 made such a wonderful accord among us, to which 
 no other nation can show a parallel. The eloquent 
 insistence on the harmony uniting the Jewish people 
 is another proof that Josephus is here reproducing the 
 ideas of others, for it is in complete and glaring con- 
 trast with what he had repeatedly written in his An- 
 tiquities and his Wars about the strife of different 
 sects. His books would have supplied the best argu- 
 ment to any pagan criticising his apology. Josephus 
 further ascribes to the singleness of the tradition the 
 absence of original genius among the people. The 
 excellence of the Law produces a conservative outlook, 
 whereas the Greeks, lacking a fixed law, love a new 
 thing. S. D. Luzzatto, the Hebraist of the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, emphasized the same con- 
 trast between Hellenism and Hebraism. 
 
 Turning in detail to the precepts of the Law, / 
 Josephus gives eloquent expression in the Hellenis- cX 
 tic fashion to the idea of the divine unity. " God," 
 he says, " contains all : He is a being altogether per- 
 fect, happy, and self-sufficient, the beginning, the 
 middle, and the end of all things; God's aim is re- 
 flected in human institutions. Eightly He has but 
 one Temple, which should be common to all men, even 
 as He is the common God of all men." He develops, 
 too, the humanitarian aspect of Judaism in the man- 
 ner of the Hellenistic school. " And for our duty 
 at the sacrifices, we ought in the first place to pray for
 
 234 JOSEPHUS 
 
 the common welfare of all and after that for ourselves, 
 for we were made for fellowship, one with another, 
 and he who prefers the common good before his own is 
 above all dear to God." He points to the excellence of 
 the Jewish conception of marriage, another common- 
 place of the Hellenistic apologist, as we know from the 
 Sibylline oracles ; to the respect for parents and to the 
 friendliness for the stranger. He insists with Philo * 
 that kinship is to be measured not by blood, but by 
 the conduct of life. He dwells, likewise in company 
 with the Hellenists, on a law that lacks Bible au- 
 thority: that the Israelites should give, to all who 
 needed it, fire and water, food and guidance. 1 The 
 impulse to this interpretation of the Torah is found in 
 the charge made by the Jews' enemies, that they were 
 to assist only members of their own race. 1 Josephus 
 appears to be original, and, as is quite pardonable, he 
 may be writing with a view to Eoman proclivities, 
 when he praises the law for the number of offenses to 
 which it attaches the capital penalty. Like many a 
 later Jewish apologist living amid an alien and domi- 
 nant culture, Josephus accepts foreign standards, and 
 he is silent about the Pharisaic teaching which soft- 
 ened the literal prescripts of the Bible.* 
 
 1 Comp. De Nobilitate. * Comp. Philo, ii. 639. 
 
 8 Comp. Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 102. 
 
 4 It has been noticed above (note, p. 153) that Josephus 
 appears to misunderstand or deliberately misinterpret the 
 Hebrew i^^ (cursed be!), which precedes many pro- 
 hibitions of the Mosaic law, to mean " he shall be put to 
 death."
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 235 
 
 c~ 
 
 In a peroration Josephus returns to a general eulogy 
 of the Jewish Law, on account of the faithful alle- 
 giance which it commands, and denounces the pagan 
 idolatry in the manner of the Greek rationalists, who 
 had made play with the Olympian hierarchy. While 
 the inherent excellence of the Jewish Law is dependent 
 on the sublime conception of God, the inherent defect 
 of the Greek religion is that the Greek legislators en- 
 tertained a low conception of God, and did not make 
 the religious creed a part of the state law, but left it to 
 the poets to invent what they chose. The greatest of the 
 Greek philosophers, indeed, agreed with the Jews as to 
 the true notions about God : " Plato especially imi- 
 tated our legislation in enjoining on all citizens that 
 they should know the laws accurately." A later gene- 
 ration made bold to declare that Plato had listened to 
 Jeremiah in Egypt and learnt his wisdom from the 
 Jewish prophet. Josephus compares with the Jewish 
 separateness the national exclusiveness of the Lacede- 
 monians, and claims that the Jews show a greater 
 humanity in that they admit converts from other peo- 
 ples. They have, moreover, shown their bravery not in 
 wars for the purpose of amassing wealth, but in observ- 
 ing their laws in spite of every attempt to wean them 
 away. The Mosaic law is being spread over the civil- 
 ized world : 
 
 For there is not any city of the Greeks, nor any of the 
 barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever whither our cus- 
 tom of resting on the seventh day has not come, and by 
 which our fasts and lighting up of lamps and divers
 
 236 JOSEPHUS 
 
 regulations as to food are not observed. They also en- 
 deavor to imitate our mutual accord with one another, 
 and the charitable distribution of our goods, and our 
 diligence in our trades, and our fortitude in bearing the 
 distresses that befall us; and what is here matter of the 
 greatest admiration, our Law hath no bait of pleasure to 
 allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and 
 as God Himself pervades all the world, so hath our Law 
 passed through all the world also. 
 
 The task of the apologist is completed; "for 
 whereas our accusers have pretended that our nation 
 are a people of late origin, I have demonstrated that 
 they are exceedingly ancient, and whereas they have 
 reproached our lawgiver as a vile man, God of old bare 
 witness to his virtues, and time itself hath been proved 
 to bear witness to the same thing." 1 In a final appre- 
 ciation he concludes : 
 
 As to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, 
 for they are visible in their own nature, and are seen to 
 teach not impiety, but the truest piety in the world. 
 They do not make men hate one another, but encourage 
 people to communicate what they have to one another 
 freely. They are enemies to injustice, they foster right- 
 eousness, they banish idleness and expensive living, and 
 instruct men to be content with what they have and to 
 be diligent in their callings. They forbid men to make 
 war from a desire of gain, but make them courageous in 
 defending the laws. They are inexorable in punishing 
 malefactors. They admit no sophistry of words, but are 
 always established by actions, which we ever propose as 
 surer demonstrations than what is contained in writing 
 only; on which account I am so bold as to say that we are 
 
 1 C. Ap. ii. 41.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM 237 
 
 become the teachers of other men in the greatest number 
 of things, and those of the most excellent nature only. 
 For what is more excellent than inviolable piety? What 
 is more just than submission to laws? And what is more 
 advantageous than mutual love and concord? And this 
 prevails so far that we are to be neither divided by 
 calamities nor to become oppressive and factious in pros- 
 perity, but to contemn death when we are in war, and in 
 peace to apply ourselves to our handicrafts or to the 
 tilling of the ground; while in all things and in all ways 
 we are satisfied that God is the Judge and Governor of 
 our actions. 
 
 As we read this final outburst of the Jewish apolo- 
 gist and think of what he had himself written to gain- 
 say it, and what he was yet to write in his autobiog- 
 raphy, we are fain to exclaim, o si sic omnia! One 
 would like to believe that in the defense of the Jewish 
 Law we have the true Josephus, driven in his old age 
 by the goading of enemies to throw off the mask of 
 Greco-Roman culture, and standing out boldly as a 
 lover of his people and his people's law. Such latter- 
 day repentance has been known among the Flavii of 
 other generations. And the two books Against Apion 
 show that when Josephus had not to qualify his own 
 weakness nor to flatter his patrons, he could rise to an 
 appreciation and even to an eloquent exposition of 
 Jewish ideals. Yet it was not the Greek-writing his- 
 torian, but the Palestinian Rabbis, that were to prove 
 to the world the undying vigor, the unquenchable 
 power of resistance of the Jewish Law. The Vineyard 
 of Jabneh founded by Johanan ben Zakkai was the
 
 238 JOSEPHUS 
 
 sufficient refutation of Roman scoffers, while the 
 apology of Josephus became the guide of the early 
 Church fathers in their replies to heathen calumni- 
 ators who repeated against them the charges that had 
 been invented against the Jews. It is significant that 
 Tacitus, who wrote his history some few years after 
 the defense of Josephus was published, repeated with 
 added virulence the fables which the Jewish writer 
 had refuted. The charges of anti-Semites have in 
 every age borne a charmed life : they are hydra-headed, 
 and can be refuted, not by literature, but by life. 
 
 Nevertheless literary libels, if unanswered in litera- 
 ture, tend to become fixed popular beliefs, and in the 
 Dark and Middle Ages the Jewish people were to 
 suffer bitterly from the lack of apologists who could 
 obtain a hearing before the peoples of Europe. In 
 the early centuries of the Christian era, before the 
 Christian Church was allied with the Roman Empire, 
 tolerance ruled in the Greco-Roman world, and the 
 narrow Roman hatred of Judaism was in large part 
 broken down. Celsus, Xumenius, and Dion Cassius, 
 three of the most notable authors of the second cen- 
 tury, speak of the Jewish people and Jewish Scriptures 
 in a very different tone from that of a Tacitus and an 
 Apion. And as it has been said, "Who shall know 
 how many cultured pagans were led by the books of 
 Josephus to read the Bible and to look on Judaism 
 with other eyes ? " * If the apologies of Philo and 
 
 'Comp. Joel, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, ii. 118.
 
 THE APOLOGY FOE JUDAISM 239 
 
 Josephus could not pierce the armor of prejudice and 
 hatred which enwrapped a Tacitus or a Christian 
 ecclesiastic, they at least found their way through the 
 lighter coating of ignorance and misunderstanding 
 which had been fabricated by Hellenistic Egyptians, 
 but which had not fatally warped the minds of the 
 general Greco-Eoman society.
 
 IX 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The works of Josephus early passed into the cate- 
 gory of standard literature. It is recorded that they 
 were placed by order of the Flavian Emperors in the 
 public library of Rome; and though Suetonius, the 
 biographer of the Caesars, who wrote in the second 
 century, and Diogenes, the biographer of the philoso- 
 phers, who wrote a century later, do not apparently 
 hold them of any account, it is certain that they were 
 carefully preserved till the triumph of the Christian 
 Church gave them a new importance. For centuries 
 henceforth they were the prime authority for Jewish 
 history of post-Biblical times, and were treasured as a 
 kind of introduction to the Gospels, illuminating the 
 period in which Christianity had its birth. The 
 traitor-historian was soon forgotten by his own people, 
 if they ever had regard for him, and with the rest 
 of the Hellenistic writers he dropped out of the Rab- 
 binical tradition. Possibly the Aramaic version of the 
 Wars survived for a time in the Eastern schools, but 
 while the Jews were struggling to preserve their re- 
 ligious existence, they had little thought for such a 
 history of their past. 
 
 The Christians, on the other hand, had a special 
 interest in the works of Josephus, since they found in
 
 CONCLUSION" 241 
 
 them not only the model of their defense against pagan 
 calumnies, but the earliest external testimony to sup- 
 port the Gospels. Josephus was venerated as the Jew 
 who had recorded the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. The 
 Antiquities contain two references to John the Baptist 
 and an account of the execution of James, the brother 
 of Jesus ; but the most celebrated of the " evidential " 
 passages occurs in book xviii of the Antiquities, where 
 in our text, following on the account of Pilate's perse- 
 cution, occurs this paragraph : 
 
 Now, there lived about this time Jesus, a wise man, if 
 it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of won- 
 derful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth 
 with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the 
 Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and 
 when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men 
 amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that 
 loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared 
 alive to them again the third day, as the divine prophets 
 had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful 
 things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so 
 named from him, are not extinct at this day (ch. 3). 
 
 An enormous literature has been provoked by these 
 lines, and the weight of modern opinion is that they 
 are altogether spurious. The passage is first quoted 
 by Eusebius, 1 the historian of Caesarea, who wrote 
 about the beginning of the fourth century c. E. ; * 
 
 1 Comp. Schlatter, op. cit. 403. 
 
 *H. E. i. 41; Comp. Freimann, Wie verhielt sich das 
 Judenthum zu Jesus? ( Monatsschrif t fur die Geschichte 
 und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1911, p. 296). 
 
 16
 
 242 JOSEPHUS 
 
 \ 
 I 
 
 but Origen, his predecessor by a hun'dred years, sig- 
 nificantly enough does not know of it. Josephus, he 
 says simply, did not acknowledge the Christ. 1 At the 
 same time Origen quotes a passage from the same book 
 of the Antiquities* to show that the Jews ascribed the 
 defeat of the Tetrarch Herod to his murder of John 
 the Baptist. The earliest of the Patristic writers, 
 Clement of Alexandria, quotes Josephus as to chro- 
 nology, but it is fairly certain that he did not know 
 the works at first hand, since the era he refers to 
 runs from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus, 3 i. <>. 
 till the better part of a century after the death of 
 Josephus. Origen likewise probably knew Josephus 
 only at second hand, and the inference is that both the 
 Alexandrian ecclesiastics derived their citations and 
 their interpolation in the text of Josephus from a 
 pious Christian abstract and improvement. The un- 
 compromisingly Christian character of the text, 
 the discrepancy between Origen and Eusebius, and 
 the notorious aptitude of early Christian scribes for 
 interpolating manuscripts, and especially the manu- 
 scripts of Hellenistic Jewish writers, with Christologi- 
 cal passages make it well nigh certain that the para- 
 graph was foisted in between the second and third 
 century. That was a period when, as has been said, 
 " faith was more vivid than good-faith." The will to 
 believe its genuineness, however, persisted to our own 
 
 1 Comm. in Matth. ch. xvli. 
 
 3 Ant. XVIII. T. 5. * Strom. I. xxi. 409.
 
 CONCLUSION 243 
 
 day, and some have made a compromise between their 
 sentiment and their critical faculty, by arguing that 
 the passage, though partly corrupt, is founded on 
 something Josephus wrote. 1 
 
 It is alleged that many of the words are such as 
 Josephus might have used, but, apart from the fact 
 that this is contested by other authorities, it is unrea- 
 sonable to suppose that the interpolator would go out 
 of his way to stamp the insertion as a forgery by using 
 extraordinary words. It is urged again that the pas- 
 sages about John and James in the Antiquities sup- 
 port the likelihood of Josephus' having mentioned 
 Jesus. But these passages are themselves open to very 
 grave suspicions. There is no reference to them in the 
 epitome of the chapters furnished at the head of each 
 book, which according to Xiese dates from the age of 
 the Antonines, or the end of the second century. Xor 
 does the Slavonic version of Josephus contain the pas- 
 sage about James, and while Origen refers to that pas- 
 sage, he had a different version of it from that which 
 appears in our manuscripts. It seems that he has in- 
 corporated the gloss of a Christian believer. And 
 again, while our text imputes the blame of the stoning 
 of James to the Sadducees, and gives credit to the 
 
 1 Among those who uphold this view is the Franco- 
 Jewish savant Theodore Reinach, whose opinion is that 
 the Christian scribe changed a testimonium de Christo 
 into a testimonium pro Christo (R. B. J. xxxv. 6). Both 
 Renan and Ewald hold that our passage is a corrupted 
 fragment of a much fuller account of Jesus in the Anti- 
 quities. See Joel. op. cit. p. 52.
 
 244 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Pharisees for endeavoring to prevent it, Hegesippus, 
 the Christian writer of the second century, uses the 
 alleged account of the incident by Josephus to gird at 
 the Pharisees. The probability is then that different 
 Christological insertions were made in the manuscripts 
 of Josephus according to the leaning of the scribe, but 
 that none of the supposed evidences are genuine, or 
 based on a genuine narrative. The absence of any ref- 
 erence to Jesus and the apostles in Josephus would 
 have seemed damaging to the truth of the Christian 
 testament, and therefore the passages were supplied. 
 Nevertheless we may be grateful to the interpola- 
 tors, because, on the strength of these passages, Jose- 
 phus was especially treasured through the Dark and 
 Middle Ages, and he alone survived of the Hellenistic 
 apologists. When Christianity established its center 
 at Rome, Josephus was soon translated into Latin, and 
 in the Vulgate version (if we may so call it) he was 
 best known for centuries. The seven books of the 
 Wars were rendered into Latin by one Tyrannus 
 Rufinus of Aquilea, who was a contemporary of 
 Jerome (Hieronymus, 345-410 c. E.), and a very 
 industrious translator of the works of the Greek 
 Patristic writers. The translation of the Antiquities, 
 though ascribed to the same author, was made later. 
 Jerome apparently was invited to undertake the task, 
 for in one of his letters he writes : * " The rumor that 
 the works of Jo?ephus and Papian and Polycarp have 
 been translated by me is false. I have neither the leis- 
 
 1 Epist. ad Lucrinum, 5.
 
 CONCLUSION 245 
 
 lire nor the strength to render his writings into 
 another tongue with the same elegance" [as those 
 already done] . It is uncertain who the translator was, 
 but the work was carried out at the instigation of 
 Cassiodorus (480-575), who lived in the time of 
 Justinian, and was a versatile historian. He wrote 
 himself a chronicle of events from Adam to his own 
 day as well as a history of the Goths. In his book on 
 the Institutions of Holy Literature he says : 
 
 As to Josephus, who is almost a second Livy, and Is 
 widely known by his books on the Antiquities of the Jews, 
 Jerome declared that he was unable to translate his 
 works because of their great volume. But one of my 
 friends has translated the twenty -two books [i. e. the 
 Antiquities and the two books of the Apology], in spite 
 of their difficulty and complexity, into the Latin tongue. 
 He also wrote seven books of extreme brilliancy on the 
 Conquest of the Jews, the translation of which some 
 ascribe to Jerome, others to Ambrose, and others to 
 Rufinus. 
 
 The autobiography of Josephus, alone of his writ- 
 ings, does not appear to have been done into the lan- 
 guage of the Western Church. Perhaps its worthless- 
 ness was apparent even in the dark days. More 
 ancient, however, and even more popular than the 
 complete Latin version of Josephus, was an abridg- 
 ment of his works which passed under the name of 
 Hegesippus. The name is not found till the ninth 
 century, but it is likely that the work was written in 
 the time of Ambrosius, the famous bishop of Milan 
 (c. E. 350) . In this form the seven books of the Wars
 
 246 JOSEPHUS 
 
 are compressed into five, and the words and phrases of 
 the original are modified throughout. The writer in 
 his preface explicitly declares that it is a kind of re- 
 vised version, and he improves the original by Christo- 
 logical insertions, explaining, for example, the de- 
 struction of Jerusalem as a judgment upon the Jews 
 for the murder of Christ. Josephus, he says, aims at 
 the careful unraveling of events and at sobriety of 
 speech, but he lacks faith (religio) and truth; "and 
 so we have been at pains, relying not on intellectual 
 force but on the promptings of faith, to probe for the 
 inner meaning of Jewish history and to extract from 
 it more of value to our posterity." Josephus is often 
 mentioned by name as authority for the statements, 
 but at the same time considerable additions are made 
 from other Eoman sources. Some have thought that 
 there was a compiler named Hegesippus, others that 
 the word is but a corruption of the Latinized form of 
 the Jewish historian's name: Josippus, formed from 
 'IWO^TTOS, would become Egesippus, and finally He- 
 gesippus. 
 
 A Greek epitome of Josephus also existed. "\Ve find 
 it used by a Byzantine historian, John Zonaras, during 
 the tenth and the eleventh century, in the composition 
 of his chronicles. It omitted the speeches and histori- 
 cal evidences of the fuller work and pruned its exces- 
 sive garrulousness. By the uncritical scholiasts and 
 the prolix chroniclers of the Byzantine and Papal 
 courts, Josephus was esteemed as a distinguished and 
 godlike historian, and as a truthloving man ( (t
 
 avrjp ) . He was dubbed by Jerome " the Greek Livy," 
 and to Tertullian and his followers he was an un- 
 failing guide. Choice passages in his writings are 
 frequently extracted, often with a little purposive 
 modification, to emphasize some Christological design. 
 Eustathius of Antioch in the sixth century, Syncellus 
 in the eighth, and Cedrenus and Glycas some three or 
 four hundred years later, are among those whose ex- 
 tant fragments prove a frequent use of Josephus. And 
 the neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry (ab. 300 c. 
 E.), who was well acquainted with Jewish literature, 
 reproduces in his treatise on Abstinence the various 
 passages about the Essenes from the Wars and the 
 Antiquities. The Emperor Constantine later ordered 
 extracts from the Wars to be put together for his edi- 
 fication in a selection bearing the title About Virtue 
 and Vice. 
 
 Owing to this popularity, we have abundant manu- 
 scripts of Josephus. The oldest of the Latin is as 
 early as the sixth century; the Greek date from the 
 tenth century and later. Niese, the most authorita- 
 tive editor of Josephus in modern times, thinks that 
 our manuscript families go back to one archetype of 
 the second century in the epoch of the Antonines. 
 The earliest printed copy like the earliest manuscript 
 of his work contains the Latin version, being a part 
 of the Antiquities, which was issued in 1470 at Augs- 
 burg. The whole corpus was printed in 1499, and, 
 after a number of Latin editions, the first Greek 
 edition was published at Basel by Arten, in 1544,
 
 248 JOSEPHUS 
 
 together with the Fourth Book of the Maccabees, 
 which was ascribed to the historian. 
 
 In the days of vast but undiscriminating scholar- 
 ship that followed the Renaissance, Josephus still en- 
 joyed a great repute, and Scaliger, prince of poly- 
 maths, regarded him as superior to any pagan his- 
 torian. The great Dutch scholar Havercamp made a 
 special study of the manuscripts, and produced, in 
 1726, a repertory of everything discovered about his 
 author. A little later Whiston, professor of mathe- 
 matics at Cambridge, published an English transla- 
 tion of all the works, which is still serviceable, but 
 not critical, together with some dissertations, which 
 are neither serviceable nor critical. Later trans- 
 lations into English and almost every other language 
 were made, but the greatest work of modern times 
 on Josephus is the edition of Xiese. Lastly, it may 
 be mentioned that we have a Slavonic version, which 
 goes back to the eighth or the ninth century, and a 
 Syriac version of the sixth book of the Wars, which 
 is included, immediately after the Fourth Book of the 
 Maccabees, in a manuscript of the Syriac version of 
 the Bible dating from the sixth century, and is en- 
 titled the Fifth Book of the Maccabees. It has been 
 suggested that the Syriac was based on the work which 
 Josephus published in Aramaic before he wrote the 
 Greek; but Professor Noldeke has shown that the 
 theory is not probable, since the translator clearly 
 used the Greek text. 1 Somewhat late in the day a 
 
 1 Literarisches Centralblatt, 1880, no. 20, p. 881.
 
 CONCLUSION" 249 
 
 Hebrew translation of the books Against Apion, which 
 were regarded as the most Jewish part of his work, was 
 made in the Middle Ages, and printed, together with 
 Abraham Zacuto's Yuhasin, at Constantinople, in 
 1506, by Samuel Shullam. The Hebrew translation is 
 very free, and is marred by several large omissions. 
 It was very probably made with the help of the Latin 
 version. 
 
 While Josephus enjoyed great honor among Christ- 
 ian scholars, for centuries he passed out of the knowl- 
 edge of his own people. The Talmud has no reference 
 to him, for the surmise that he is the " philosopher " 
 visited by the four sages who journeyed from Pales- 
 tine to Borne 1 is no more than a vague possibility. 
 Nor has the supposed identification with the Joseph 
 Hakohen that is mentioned in the Midrash anything 
 more solid to uphold it. 2 In the Middle Ages, however, 
 when Spain, Italy, and North Africa witnessed a re- 
 markable revival of Jewish literature, both secular and 
 religious, and when scientific studies again interested 
 the people, the historical literature of other peoples be- 
 came known to their scholars, and several Jewish writ- 
 ers mention the chronicles of one Yosippon, or " little 
 Joseph." The text of the chronicle itself is widely 
 known from the eleventh century onwards. The first 
 author to mention it is David ben Tammum (ab. 950), 
 and an extract from the book is found about a century 
 later. Four manuscripts of it have come down to us : 
 
 1 Derek Erez, ed. Goldberg, HI. 10. 
 
 ' Moed Katon, 23a. See above, p. 177.
 
 250 JOSEPHUS 
 
 two in the Vatican, one in Paris, and one in Turin, and 
 it was among the earliest Hebrew books printed. Pro- 
 fessing to be the work of Joseph ben Gorion, one of the 
 Jewish commanders in the war with Rome and a pre- 
 fect of Jerusalem, it is written in a Eabbinical Hebrew 
 that is nearer the classical language than most medie- 
 val compositions. It was indeed argued on the ground 
 of its pure classical idiom that it dated from the fourth 
 century, but Zunz 1 showed that this was impossible. 
 It bears all the traces of the pseudepigraphic tendency 
 of a period that produced the first works of the Ca- 
 bala, the Seder Clam Zutta of Rabbi Joshua, and the 
 neo-Hebraic apocalypses. The attempt to write an 
 archaic Hebrew is marred by the presence of Rabbini- 
 cal and novel terms. Reference to events or things 
 only known to later times is combined with the pre- 
 tension of an ancient chronicle. The country and the 
 date of the author are uncertain, but probabilities 
 point to Italy, where in the ninth and tenth centuries 
 Jewish culture flourished, and where both Arabic and 
 Latin works were well known in the Ghettos. The 
 transcription cf foreign names, the frequent intro- 
 duction of the names of places in Italy, the acquaint- 
 ance with Roman history, and the fact that Italian 
 Jews are among the first to recognize Yosippon favor 
 this theory. It is fitting that the country where 
 Josephus wrote his history should also have produced 
 a Jewish imitation of his work. Yosippon indeed was 
 soon translated into Arabic, and its narratives and 
 
 'Comp. Zunz, Gottesdienstliche Vortrage, pp. 154/f.
 
 CONCLUSION- 251 
 
 legends passed into the current stock of Ghetto history. 
 The book was swollen by later additions, which Zunz 
 has proved to belong to the twelfth century. One 
 Yerahmeel ben Shelomoh who flourished in that epoch 
 is mentioned in an early manuscript as a compiler of 
 Yosippon and other histories; and it is possible that 
 he was himself responsible for parts of the work in its 
 present form. 
 
 The chronicle of Yosippon is a summary of Jewish 
 history, with considerable digressions many of them 
 later interpolations about the history of the nations 
 with whom the Hebrew people came into contact, 
 Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Like the Book of 
 Chronicles, it begins with Adam and genealogies, ex- 
 plains the roll of the nations in Genesis, and then 
 springs suddenly from the legendary origin of Babel 
 and Eome to the relation of the Jews with Babylon. 
 The history proper contains the record of the Jews 
 from the first to the second captivity, but is broken by 
 a mass of legendary material about Alexander the 
 Great reproducing much of what is found in pseudo- 
 Callisthenes and by a short account of the Cartha- 
 ginian general Hannibal and several incidents of 
 "Roman history. These include a description of a 
 coronation of the Emperor, which, it is suggested, ap- 
 plies to the medieval and not the classical period of the 
 Empire. 
 
 The book was known throughout the later part of 
 the Middle Ages and down to the eighteenth century 
 as the Hebrew Josephus, and contrasted with the
 
 252 JOSEPHUS 
 
 Dor& paDV, or " Latin Josephus." When the genu- 
 ine works of our worthy became known to the Jews, 
 Yosippon was regarded as the true representative 
 of the Jewish point of view against the paganizing 
 traitor. Its author had not a first-hand acquaintance 
 with our Josephus. He knew him only through the 
 Latin versions, which were mixed with much later 
 material. Possibly he meant to pass off his work as the 
 Hebrew original of the Jewish history, and confused 
 Joseph ben Gorion with Joseph ben Mattathias; for 
 in the introduction to one manuscript we read, " I am 
 Joseph, called Josephus the Jew, of whom it is written 
 that he wrote the book of the wars of the Lord, and 
 this is the sixth part." This, however, may be the 
 gloss of a later scribe, who found an anonymous book, 
 and thought fit to supply the omission. In places the 
 Hebrew translator reproduces, though with some 
 blunders, the Latin Hegesippus, but he sought to give 
 charm to his work by legendary additions, which more 
 often show Arabic and other foreign influences than 
 traces of the Jewish Haggadah. Interpolations have 
 served to increase the legendary element, and take 
 away from the historical value. But it is this element, 
 reflecting the ideas of the age, that gives the compo- 
 sition a peculiar literary interest. 
 
 Though only to a small extent representing Jewish 
 tradition, the book remained very popular among the 
 Jews both of the "West and the East, and was long 
 regarded as authoritative. The first printed edition 
 was issued at Mantua, in 1476, and was followed by
 
 CONCLUSION 253 
 
 the edition of Constantinople, in 1520, arranged in 
 chapters and enlarged, and an edition of Basel, in 
 1541, containing a Latin preface and a Latin trans- 
 lation of the greater part. In 1546 a printed Yiddish 
 edition appeared in Zurich, and in the Ghetto it retains 
 its popularity to the present day. Other editions and 
 translations have followed. Steiuschneider has noted 
 that as late as 1873 an abstract of the Arabic trans- 
 lation together with the Arabic version of the Book of 
 the Maccabees was published at Beirut. 1 The spurious- 
 ness of the work has now been established, and of mod- 
 ern scholars Wellhausen 2 is almost alone in ascribing 
 to it any independent historical worth. In the Spanish 
 period of Jewish culture the real as well as the 
 spurious Josephus was read by many of his race, and 
 some hard things were said of him. Thus Eabbi Isaac 
 Abrabanel, the statesman and apologist (1457-1508), 
 regarded him as a common sycophant and wrote, " In 
 many things he perverted the truth, even where we 
 have the Scriptures before us, in order to court favor 
 with the Eomans, as a slave submits himself to the will 
 of his master/' Azariah de Eossi (ab. 1650), antici- 
 pating the ideas of a later age, alone balanced his 
 merits against his demerits. Among the great Chris- 
 tian scholars of the Eenaissance, however, he en- 
 joyed great fame. Joseph Scaliger, the most emi- 
 nent of the seventeenth century critics, could write of 
 
 1 J. Q. R. xvl. 393. 
 
 3 Der arabische Josippus; see J. E., s. v. Joseph ben 
 Gorion.
 
 254 JOSEPHUS 
 
 him, " Josephus was the most diligent and the most 
 truthloving of all writers, and one can better believe 
 him, not only as to the affairs of the Jews, but also as 
 to the Gentiles, than all the Greek and Latin writers, 
 because his fidelity and his learning are everywhere 
 conspicuous." * It is illustrative of his popularity that 
 Rembrandt named one of his great Jewish pictures 
 after him. Whiston's English translation of his works 
 became a household book, found side by side with the 
 Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress' 
 
 Vfn modern times his reputation as a trust- 
 worthy authority has depreciated considerably, and 
 it is still depreciating. More accurate study and 
 wider knowledge have exposed his grave defects as an 
 historian, and the critical standpoint has dissipated 
 the halo with which his supposed Christian sympathies 
 had invested him, and laid bare his weakness and his 
 essential unreliability. Yet with all his glaring faults 
 and unlovable qualities he has certain solid merits. 
 The greatest certainly is that his works so appealed to 
 later generations as to have been preserved, and 
 thereby posterity has been enabled to get some knowl- 
 edge, however inadequate, of the history of the Jewish 
 polity during its last two hundred years between the 
 
 1 De Emend. Temp. Proleg. 17. 
 
 2 Readers of Rudyard Kipling may recall that in Cap- 
 tains Courageous one of the seamen on board the " We're 
 Here " Schooner reads aloud on Sunday from a book 
 called Josephus: " It was an old leather-bound volume 
 very solid and very like a Bible, but enlivened with ac- 
 counts of battles and sieges."
 
 CONCLUSION 255 
 
 time of the Maccabees and the fall of the nation 
 which would otherwise have been buried in almost un- 
 relieved darkness. And at the same time he has pre- 
 served a record of some interesting pieces of Egyptian, 
 Syrian, and Roman history. Just because he was so 
 little original, he has a special usefulness; for he re- 
 produces the statements of more capable writers than 
 himself, who have disappeared, and he has embodied 
 an aspect of the Hellenistic-Jewish literature which 
 had otherwise been lost. We can estimate his value 
 to us as an historian from our ignorance of what was 
 happening in Judea during the fifty years after his 
 account comes to an end. 
 
 It is true that he brings before us, for the most part, 
 but the external facts and the court scandals in place 
 of the vital movements and the underlying principles ; 
 and in dealing with contemporary events he has a per- 
 verted view, borrowed largely from Eoman foes and 
 feebly corrected. But it is something to have preserved 
 even these facts, and in the account of the Wars he of- 
 ten draws a vivid picture. The siege of Jerusalem has 
 passed into the roll of the world's heroic events, and it 
 owes its place there largely to the narrative of Jose- 
 phus. Moreover, in spite of his pusillanimity and his 
 subservience to his Eoman patrons, Josephus did pos- 
 sess a distinct pride of race and a love of his people. 
 It led him at times to glorify them in a gross way, but 
 notably in the books Against Apion it could inspire 
 a certain eloquence ; and many hostile outsiders must
 
 256 JOSEPHUS 
 
 have learnt from his pages to appreciate some of the 
 great qualities of the Jewish people. 
 
 To appraise him fairly is difficult. He has few of 
 the qualities, either personal or literary, that attract 
 sympathy and many of the defects that repel. He is 
 at once vain and obsequious, servile and spiteful, pro- 
 fessing candor and practising adulation, prolix and 
 prosaic. As a general he proved himself a traitor ; as 
 apologist of the Jews, a function which he asserted for 
 himself, he marred by a lack of independence the 
 service which he sought to render his people. In his 
 account of their past he was often false to their funda- 
 mental ideas of God and history. Whether he was 
 really under the influence of the debased Greco-Roman 
 culture of the day, which consigned mankind to the 
 dominion of fatality, or whether he deliberately 
 masked his own standpoint to please his audience, he 
 presented the history of the Hebrew nationality in the 
 light of ideas of fate strange to it. He has perpetuated 
 a false picture of the Zealots, whose avowed enemy he 
 was, and he reveals an inadequate understanding of the 
 deeper ideas and deeper principles of the Pharisees, 
 whose champion he professed to be. Generally., in deal- 
 ing with the struggle against Rome, his dominating 
 desire to justify his own submission and please the 
 Romans led him to distort the facts, and rendered him 
 blind to the real heroism of his countrymen. The 
 client in him prevails over the historian : we can never 
 be sure whether he is expressing his own opinion or 
 only what he conceives will be pleasing to his patrons
 
 COXCLUSION" 257 
 
 and masters. This dependence affects his presentation 
 of Judaism as well as of the Jewish people. He dis- 
 sembled his theological opinions in his larger his- 
 torical works, and it is only in his last apologetic 
 composition that he asserts confidently a Jewish point 
 of view. 
 
 Yet it is but fair to Josephus to consider the times 
 and circumstances in which he wrote. It was an age 
 when the love of truth was almost dead, extinguished 
 partly by the crushing tyranny of omnipotent Emper- 
 ors, partly by the intellectual and moral degeneration 
 of pagan society. The Flavian house soon showed 
 the same characteristics of a vainglorious despotism 
 as the line of Caesars which it had supplanted. Under 
 Domitian " the only course possible for a writer with- 
 out the risk of outlawry or the sacrifice of personal 
 honor was that followed by Juvenal and Tacitus dur- 
 ing his reign, viz., silence/' It was an age when, in 
 the words of Mazzini, " a hollow sound as of dissolu- 
 tion was heard in the world. Man seemed in a hideous 
 case: placed between two infinities, he knew neither. 
 He knew not past nor future. All belief was dead; 
 dead the belief in the gods, dead the belief in the 
 Republic." The material power of Rome, while it 
 dazzled by its splendor, seemed invincible, and it 
 crushed, in all save the strongest, independence of 
 thought and independence of national life. Unfor- 
 tunately it fell to Josephus to write amid these sur- 
 roundings his account of the Jewish wars and the his- 
 tory of the Jews, and he may have been driven to dis- 
 
 17
 
 258 JOSEPHUS 
 
 tortion to keep his perilous position at court. The 
 moral environment, too, was such as to contaminate 
 those who had not a deep faith and a strong Hebrew 
 consciousness. At Alexandria it was possible to achieve 
 a harmony between Judaism and the spiritual teaching 
 of Greek philosophy; but the basic conceptions of 
 Eoman Imperialism were not to be brought into ac- 
 cord with Jewish ideas. 
 
 Josephus had no conception of the moral weakness, 
 he felt only the invincible power, of the conqueror. He 
 was a Jew, isolated in Rome, estranged from his own 
 people, and not at home in his environment, a favored 
 captive in a splendid court, a member of a subject peo- 
 ple living in the halls of the mighty. Did ever situation 
 more strongly conduce to moral servility and mental 
 dependence ! It was well nigh impossible for him, even 
 had he possessed the ability, to write an honest and 
 independent history of the Jews. It required some 
 courage and steadfastness to write of the Jews at all. 
 In such circumstances he might well have become an 
 apostate, as his contemporary Tiberius Alexander had 
 done, and it is a tribute to his Jewish feeling that 
 he remained in profession and in heart true to his peo- 
 ple, that he was not among those who with the fall of 
 the second Temple exclaimed, " Our hope is perished : 
 we are cut off." He had indeed chosen the easier and 
 less noble way on the destruction of the national life 
 of his people ; he preferred the palace of the Palatine 
 with its pomp to the Vineyard at Jabneh with its wise 
 men. While Johanan ben Zakkai was saving Judaism,
 
 CONCLUSION 259 
 
 Josephus was apologizing for it. Yet he too has done 
 some service: he preserved some knowledge of his 
 people and their religion for the Gentiles, and became 
 one of the permanent authorities for that heretical 
 body of Jewish proselytes who in his own day were be- 
 ginning to mark themselves off as a separate sect, and 
 who carried on to some extent the work of Hellenistic 
 Judaism. Perhaps the true judgment about him is 
 that he was neither noble nor villainous, neither 
 champion nor coward, but one of those mediocre men 
 of talent but of weak character and conflicting im- 
 pulses struggling against adversity who succumb to 
 the difficulties of the time in which their life is passed, 
 and sacrifice their individuality to comfort. But he 
 wrote something that has lived ; and for what he wrote, 
 if not for what he was, he has a niche in the literary 
 treasure house of the Jewish people as well as in the 
 annals of general history. As a man, if he cannot in- 
 spire, he may at least stand as a warning against that 
 facile subservience to external powers and that fatal 
 assimilation of foreign thought which at once destroy 
 the individuality of the Jew and deprive him of his 
 full humanity.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The best Greek text of Josephus is that edited by Niese 
 (Berlin, 1887-1894), but the editions of Bekker (Leipzig, 
 1855) and Dindorf (Paris, 1845) are still serviceable. 
 
 The standard English translation of the complete works 
 is that made by William Whiston, of Cambridge, a cen- 
 tury ago. It has been revised in modern times not very 
 thoroughly by Shilleto (London, 1890) and by Margo- 
 liouth (London, 1909). 
 
 A French translation, which contains excellent notes 
 to the text, is in the course of publication under the gen- 
 eral editorship of M. Theodore Reinach; and there are 
 German translations of the whole works, by Demme, and 
 of the Antiquities, by Martin (Koln, 1852) and Clementz 
 (Halle, 1900). The Life and the books Against Apion 
 were translated by M. Jost (Leipzig, 1867) and books 
 xi-xiii of the Antiquities by Horschitzky. And there 
 is another elaborately annotated edition of the books 
 Against Apion by J. G. Miiller. 
 
 The best modern works on the Roman history of the 
 period are Mommsen's Roman Provinces, and Merivale's 
 History of the Roman Empire; and of the literature of 
 the contemporaries of Josephus, the Annals and Histories 
 of Tacitus and the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius are 
 the most valuable historical sources. 
 
 For Jewish history, the fullest account is provided by 
 Schiirer's Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter 
 Jesu (fourth edition), which contains a thorough criti- 
 cism of Josephus and the best general investigation into 
 his sources. The work has been translated into Eng- 
 lish. Joel's Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte is sug- 
 gestive upon certain aspects of the period.
 
 262 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 Graetz, of course, deals with the events, and in the 
 Stories of the Nations Series (Putnam) there is a volume 
 on The Jews under the Romans by Hosmer, which is read- 
 able. 
 
 The opening chapters of Berliner's Die Juden in Rom 
 and of Vogelstein and Rieger's Geschichte der Juden in 
 Rom (Berlin, 1895) are concerned with the relations of 
 Jews and Romans in the first century; and a series of 
 articles on the same subject by Hils, in the Revue des 
 etudes juives (vols. viii and xi), is noteworthy. Anatole 
 France has written two very vivid sketches of the Roman 
 attitude to the Jews, which give a better impression of 
 the inner conflict between the two peoples than any 
 strictly historical work, " Gallion " in Sur la pierre 
 blanche, and " Le Procurateur de Judee " in L'etui de 
 nacre. 
 
 Among critical studies of Josephus as an historian the 
 most striking works are: 
 
 Schlatter, Zur Topographie und Geschichte Palastinas 
 (Stuttgart, 1893). 
 
 Bloch, Die Quellen des Flavius Josephus (Leipzig, 
 1879). 
 
 Nussbaum, Observationen in Flavius Josephus (Got- 
 tingen, 1875). 
 
 Destinon, Die Chronologie des Josephus (Kiel, 1880) 
 and Die Quellen des Josephus (1882). 
 
 Buchler, A., Les Sources de Josephe, R. E. J. xxii. and 
 xxiv., and The Sources of Josephus for the History of 
 Syria, J. Q. R. ix. 
 
 Holscher, G., Die Quellen des Josephus, etc. (Leipzig, 
 1904). 
 
 For the relation of Josephus to the Bible and Jewish 
 tradition, the following monographs may be consulted: 
 
 Duschak, Josephus und die Tradition (Vienna, 1864). 
 
 Olitzki, Flavius Josephus und die Halacha (Berlin, 
 1885).
 
 ABBREVIATIONS 263 
 
 Schlatter, Die he'braischen Namen tei Josephus (Giiters- 
 loh, 1913.) 
 
 Griinbaum, Die Priester-Gesetze "bei Fl. Josephus 
 (1887). 
 
 Poznanski, Ueber die religionsphilosophischen An- 
 schauungen ties Fl. Josephus (Berlin, 1887). 
 
 The apologetic works of Josephus are especially dealt 
 with by: 
 
 Friedlaender, M., Die Geschichte der judischen Apolo- 
 getik (Vienna, 1906). 
 
 Mxiller, J. G., Des Fl. Josephus Schrift gegen den Apion 
 (Basel, 1877). 
 
 Gutschmid, Kleine Schriften, iv. (Leipzig, 1893). 
 
 The work of M. Theodore Reinach, Textes des auteurs 
 grecs et romains rclatifs au judaisme, is a very useful 
 collection of the pagan accounts of Jewish life which 
 Josephus was seeking to refute. 
 
 Among general appreciations of Josephus, there may be 
 mentioned those of: 
 
 Edersheim, in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christ- 
 ian Biography. 
 
 Foakes-Jackson, in the Jewish Review, iv. 
 
 Margoliouth, in his edition of Whiston's translation. 
 
 Niese, in the Historische Zeitschrift, Ixxvi. 
 
 ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 USED IN REFERRING TO THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS 
 
 Ant.: The Antiquities of the Jews. 
 B. J. : The Wars (Bellum Judaicum) 
 C. Ap. : Against Apion (Contra Apionem)
 
 INDEX 
 
 Agrippa, the friend of Herod, 22, 
 177. 
 
 Agrippa I, favorite of Gaius, 26; 
 becomes king of Judea, 27; 
 Character, 28, 200. 
 
 Agrippa II, Romanizing character, 
 32; failure to control people, 
 34; life and death, 75; gives 
 testimonial to Josephus, 221. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, coercion of 
 Judea, 12; Josephus' picture of, 
 177. 
 
 Aplon, writings against Jews, 207 
 ff. ; refuted, 277 ff. 
 
 Archelaus, succeeds Herod, 22. 
 
 Aristeas, Letter of, used by Jose- 
 phus, 136, 174. 
 
 Artapanus, historian, 85. 
 
 Augustus, attitude toward Judaism, 
 21. 
 
 Ben Sira, parallel with Josephus, 
 163. 
 
 Berosus, cited in reference to Sen- 
 nacherib, 164; cited in con- 
 firmation of the flood, 223. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, favors the Jews, 16, 
 
 17; decrees for benefit of Jews, 
 
 187 ff. 
 
 Cicero, condemns Judaism, 15, 210. 
 Claudius, becomes Emperor, 27; 
 
 Josephus' account of, 199; 
 
 tolerance to Jews, 28. 
 Crassus, spoils the Temple, 16. 
 Cumanus, procurator of Judea, 29. 
 
 Daniel, importance attached to, 
 
 166. 
 
 Demetrius, Jewish historian, 84. 
 Domitian, favors Josephus, 73; 
 
 persecutes Jews, 76. 
 
 Elea7ar, Zealot leader, speech of, 
 ]R2. 
 
 Epaphroditus, patron of Josephus, 
 73. 
 
 Esdras, Book of, followed by Jo- 
 sephus, 167 ff. 
 
 E?dras II, Book of, reference to, 
 130. 
 
 Essenes, sympathy of Josophus for, 
 41; account of, 116, 196. 
 
 Esther, Book of, reproduced by 
 Josephus, 169. 
 
 Eupolemus, historian, 84. 
 
 E'usebius, preserves fragments of 
 Jewish history, 83; quotes 
 passage about Jesus, 241. 
 
 Ezekiel, mention of, 164 ff. 
 
 Felix, tyrannical governor of Judea, 
 29. 
 
 Florus, cruelties of, 31; provokes 
 people, 43; denounced by Jo- 
 sephus, 119. 
 
 France, Anatole, quoted on Juda- 
 ism, 24. 
 
 Gaius, succeeds to Roman throne, 
 26; madness of, 26. 
 
 Galilee, center of Zealots, 23; Jo- 
 sephus sent to govern, 45; 
 physical nature of, 47. 
 
 Callus, Cestius, marches on Jerusa- 
 lem, 44. 
 
 Gamaliel, teacher of Josephus, 40. 
 
 Graetz, quoted, 36, 71. 
 
 Haggadah, Josephus' knowledge of, 
 39. 
 
 Halakah, Josephus' relation to, 
 150 ff. 
 
 Hecataeus of Abdera quoted, 224; 
 spurious works of, 83, 225. 
 
 Hegesippus, Latin version of Jose- 
 phus, 245. 
 
 Herod, conquers Palestine, 19 ff. ; 
 reign, 21 ff. ; Josephus' account 
 of, 113 ff., 186 ff., 192 ff. 
 
 Herodotus, criticised, 161; quoted, 
 164, 167. 
 
 Hillel, silence of Josephus about, 
 114. 
 
 Hyksns, identified with Hebrews, 
 222. 
 
 Isaiah, notice of, 163. 
 
 James, passage about, 243. 
 
 Jeremiah, account of, 164; con- 
 traded with Josephus, 71. 
 
 Jerusalem, taken by Pompey, 14; 
 by Herod, 20; besieged by 
 Titus, 63; fortifications of, 64 
 ff. ; Josephus' account of siege, 
 129 ff.
 
 266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Jesus, passage about in Antiqui- 
 ties, 241; genuineness dis- 
 cussed, 242. 
 
 Johanan ben Zakkai, conduct in' 
 war, 56; preserves Judaism, 
 237; contrasted with Josephus, 
 258. 
 
 John of Gischala, national leader, 
 49; feud with Josephus, 50; 
 flees to Jerusalem, 61; struggle 
 with Simon, 66; denunciation 
 of, 132. 
 
 Jotapata, fortified by Josephus, 47; 
 besieged by Vespasian, 53. 
 
 Julianus, Antonius, writes history, 
 91; debt of Josephus to, 92. 
 
 Justus, rival of Josephus, 50; at- 
 tacked in Life, 74, 103; his- 
 torical works of, 93 ff. 
 
 Life of Josephus, contents, 74 ff. ; 
 
 character and object, 102 ff. 
 Lysimachus, anti-Semite, refuted, 
 
 226. 
 
 Maccabees, alliance with Rome, 
 13; history of, 86; Josephus' 
 account of, 111 ff., 179 ff.; Third 
 Book of, nature, 87; Fourth 
 Book of, attributed to Jose- 
 phus, 104 ff. 
 
 Manetho, Egyptian historian, 82; 
 attacks Jews, 82; referred to in 
 confirmation of Bible, 141; ac- 
 count of the Exodus, 206; re- 
 futed by Josephus, 226 ff. 
 
 Midrash, parallels with Josephus, 
 139 ff., 145 ff. 
 
 Nero, becomes Emperor, 31; vil- 
 lainies recorded by Josephus, 
 201. 
 
 Nerva, clemency toward Jews, 76. 
 
 Nicholas of Damascus, historical 
 works, 89; Josephus' debt to, 
 90; chief source for Hellenistic 
 period, 178, 183. 
 
 Petronius, ordered to march on Je- 
 rusalem, 26. 
 
 Pharisees, political outlook, 23, 41; 
 Josephus' connection with, 40; 
 account of, 117, 183, 196; not 
 faithfully represented, 256. 
 
 Philo, sent to supplicate Gaius, 26; 
 historical works of, 88; copied 
 hv Josephus, 137, 230, 198; re- 
 ply to Apion, 209. 
 
 Polybins, deals with Jewish events, 
 "88; quoted, 177. 
 
 Pompey, conquers Fast, 13; spares 
 the Temple, 14, 15. 
 
 Pontius Pilate, outrages in Judea, 
 
 25, 118. 
 
 Poppaea, aids Josephus, 42. 
 Posidonius, anti-Semitic writings, 
 
 89, 207. 
 Pythagoras, supposed connection 
 
 with Hebrews, 224. 
 
 Sadducees, Josephus' account of, 
 
 117, 196. 
 Salvador, judgment on Josephus, 
 
 71. 
 Scaliger, eulogy on Josephus, 248, 
 
 253. 
 
 Seneca, attacks Judaism, 210. 
 Smith, G. A., cited about Herod, 
 
 20; about Temple, 193. 
 Stoics, jealousy of Jews, 206 ff. 
 Strabo, historical works of, 80; 
 
 cited by Josephus, 185, 186. 
 Suetonius, cited on Jewish grief 
 
 for Caesar, 18. 
 
 Tacitus, quoted about Felix, 30; 
 relations with Josephus, 92; 
 theology of, 147; anti-Semitic 
 utterance, 212 ff. 
 
 Tarichea, stronghold of Josephus, 
 50. 
 
 Temple the, fortress of Jerusalem, 
 65; fired by Romans, 69, 128 ff. ; 
 described by Josephus, 193. 
 
 Tiberias, center of Josephus' ene- 
 mies, 50. 
 
 Tiberius, checks Roman governors, 
 25. 
 
 Titus, commands Roman troops, 
 52; sent to complete Judean 
 war, 61; besieges Jerusalem, 
 63; fires the Temple, 69, 128; 
 hero of the Wars, 124. 
 
 Vespasian, sent to command in 
 Judea, 52; spares Josephus, 55; 
 becomes E'mperor, 60; Josephus' 
 attitude to, 123. 
 
 Yerahmeel, part author of Yosip- 
 
 pon, 251. 
 Yoslppon, chronicle of, origin, 249; 
 
 character, 250; contents of, 
 
 251. 
 
 Zealots, aim to shake off Roman 
 yoke, 19, 22; religious and po- 
 litical standpoint, 23, 117, 126, 
 197; Messianic beliefs, 34; feuds 
 in sieere of Jerusalem. 66, 125; 
 denounced by Josephns, 68; 
 heroism of, 69; referred to 
 about Yosippon, 250. 
 
 Zunz, on the age of Yosippon, 250.
 
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