Works
During the leisure of his life in Rome Josephus composed the four works which, owing largely, no doubt, to their popularity with early Christian writers, have survived entire: the Jewish War (7 books), the Jewish Antiquities (20 books), the Life and the treatise Against Apion (2 books). There is no adequate ground for thinking that he published anything further.
(i) The Jewish War. This, the earliest of the works, was, in its present Greek form, finished in the latter half of Vespasian’s reign, between A.D. 75 and 79. It cannot be earlier than A.D. 75, because it mentions the completion of the temple of Pax (B. J. VII. 158), which was dedicated in that year; it had, moreover, been preceded by other histories of the war. The Greek, as the author tells us,[[16]] is a translation, made for the use of the learned Roman world at large, of a first draft, written in his native Aramaic for the benefit of a smaller circle of readers in upper (or inland) Syria. The Aramaic has not survived. The Greek—for which assistance was obtained, “employing certain collaborateurs with a view to the Greek style” are his words, c. Ap. I. 50—shows no sign of its Semitic parentage and probably amounted to practically a new work. It is unlikely, e. g., that the first draft contained the summary sketch of Jewish history from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, which occupies Books I and II of the Greek. The work seems to have been issued in parts.[[17]] Copies were presented to Vespasian and Titus and other Romans who had taken part in the war, and sold to Herod Agrippa II and other learned Jews (c. Ap. I. 51). Titus himself affixed his imprimatur. A long correspondence on the work passed between the author and his friend, Agrippa; two specimens of the king’s letters, in rather slipshod Greek, are quoted.[[18]]
Books I and II give a rapid sketch (expanded in the Ant.) of Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes (168 B.C.) down to the defeat of Cestius Gallus in A.D. 66 and the preparations for the war. Book III narrates the coming of Vespasian and Titus, the siege of Jotapata and the fighting in Galilee; Book IV the close of the Galilæan campaign, the factions in Jerusalem, the advance of Vespasian upon the city and his return to Rome on being elected emperor by his army; Book V describes the city and Temple, the investment by Titus and the capture of the first and second walls; Book VI the horrors of the famine, the taking of the fortress of Antonia, followed by the burning of the Temple and the capture and destruction of the city; Book VII the return of Titus to Rome, the triumphal procession and the capture of the last strongholds of the Jewish fanatics.
(ii) The Jewish Antiquities. In this, his magnum opus, Josephus undertook to write the history of his nation from the creation to the outbreak of the Jewish War. He tells us of his misgivings in entering on so large a task, the toil which it involved, and how it was only through the encouragement of his patron Epaphroditus (to whom Ant., the Life and the Apion treatise are all dedicated) that it was finally completed in the thirteenth year of Domitian’s reign and the fifty-sixth of his own life, A.D. 93-94 (Ant. I. 6 ff.; XX. 267). The work towards the close shows some marks of weariness. The title (Ἰουδαïκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία) and the division into twenty books were doubtless derived from the great Roman history (Ῥωμαïκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία) of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
In Books I-X the narrative closely follows the Biblical account down to the Babylonian captivity; XI carries on the story to Alexander the Great; XII to the death of Judas Maccabæus (161 B.C.); XIII contains the history of the Hasmonæan house to the death of Queen Alexandra (67 B.C.); XIV the intervention of Pompey and the Romans and the accession of Herod the Great (37 B.C.), whose reign (37-4 B.C.) fills XV, XVI and the first half of XVII; the rest of XVII comprises the reign of Archelaus (4 B.C. to A.D. 6); XVIII, XIX and XX cover the remainder of the period of the Gospels and the Acts, including notices of Quirinius, Pilate, Tiberius, Herod the Tetrarch, and the two later Herods; the greater part of XIX is occupied with a full, but irrelevant, account of the assassination of the emperor Gaius and the accession of Claudius (A.D. 41); XX summarizes the events to the outbreak of the war (A.D. 66).
As regards the historian’s authorities for the first half of his work, the main source was the Greek Bible (“the Septuagint”), occasional use being made of the Hebrew. This was supplemented by (1) legends and commentary, drawn, in part at least, from Rabbinic tradition (Haggadah and Halachah); (2) Hellenistic reproductions of the Biblical history by Alexandrians such as Demetrius and Artapanus; (3) secular historians and non-Biblical documents such as Berosus, the annals of Tyre, etc. The number of authorities named under this last head is considerable, but it is probable that many of them were known to Josephus only through the great Universal History of Nicolas of Damascus, the friend of Herod the Great and Augustus, to which he is largely indebted throughout the whole of Ant. For the centuries following the Captivity his authorities are unfortunately scanty and of little value. From the Captivity to Antiochus Epiphanes his main sources are the LXX books of 1 Esdras and Esther, some legends of Alexander the Great, the Letter of Aristeas, 1 Maccabees and (occasionally) Polybius. From this point he relies largely on two lost Universal Histories of Augustan writers, Strabo and Nicolas of Damascus. The latter was undoubtedly his chief authority for the very full account of the reign of Herod the Great, though he does not accept all his statements without question, and appears to have had access to some less eulogistic history of that monarch. Mention is once made of the “Memoirs of King Herod” (XV, 174). With the accession of Archelaus the history, unfortunately for the student of the N.T., again becomes meagre, expanding into greater fullness when the reign of Agrippa I is reached. With regard to him Josephus would obtain information from his son, Agrippa II, and for the events leading up to the war he could draw on his own recollections. The account of the assassination of Gaius, which is of primary importance for the Roman historian, was thought by Mommsen to be derived from the work of Cluvius Rufus, a witness of the events which immediately preceded it. Besides these authorities Josephus had access to priestly records (he notes the succession of high priests throughout the narrative) and to important decrees concerning privileges granted on various occasions to Jews resident in Asia and elsewhere.
(iii) The Life was written as a sequel to the Antiquities, to which it is appended in the MSS. A promise of such an appendix is made at the end of Ant. (XX. 266); and the Life closes with a dedication of the whole history to Epaphroditus, the patron named in the exordium to the larger work. But the Life seems to have been an afterthought, added only after an interval of some six or seven years, since it is implied that, Agrippa II is already dead,[[19]] and his death is said to have occurred in A.D. 100. The immediate occasion for its production was the appearance of a rival history of the Jewish War by Justus of Tiberias, in which the writer accused Josephus of being the real cause of the war with Rome. “The appearance of Justus’s work, with its damaging criticisms, was likely to endanger the secure position which Josephus had won for himself at Rome, and the earlier historian of the war felt bound to defend himself. The Life, then, by no means answers to its name. It is not a complete autobiography, but simply an apologetic statement as to the actions of Josephus as commander in Galilee, to which have been added a few details as to the earlier and later events of his life, by way of prologue and epilogue.”[[20]] The defence, in which Josephus attempts to pose as friendly to the Romans, while he has to admit the part which he took in organizing the Jewish forces to oppose them, is extremely weak; and the work, which is characterized by inordinate self-praise, is the least satisfactory of the historian’s writings.
(iv) The treatise Against Apion (in two books) is, on the other hand, the most pleasing of our author’s works, showing a well-designed plan, great literary skill, and a more genuine patriotism, a warmer and more impassioned zeal for his country’s religion, than we find elsewhere. The title (not the author’s) is, like that of the Life, unsuitable, Apion not being mentioned until Book II is reached. Older titles were: “On the Antiquity of the Jews” (not sufficiently distinctive), and “Against the Greeks.” It is designed as a reply to criticisms on the Antiquities and a refutation of current attacks upon, and groundless prejudices against, the Jewish nation; it is, in short, an Apology for Judaism with a demonstration of the antiquity of the race. It gives an interesting insight into the anti-Semitism of the first century. Apion is merely one representative of Israel’s enemies; a grammarian and interpreter of Homer, he is best known as the leader of the embassy to Caligula in A.D. 38, which brought accusations against the Jewish residents in Alexandria, and was opposed by a counter-embassy of Alexandrian Jews, headed by Philo. Josephus challenges the extreme antiquity claimed for the Greeks; accounts for the silence of Greek writers with regard to Jewish history; cites evidence for the antiquity of his nation from Egyptian, Phœnician, Babylonian and Greek sources; refutes the malignant and absurd accusations of the anti-Semites; and concludes with an able and eloquent defence of the lawgiver and his code,[[21]] contrasting his conception of God with the immoral ideas current among the Greeks. The numerous quotations from lost writings give the work a special value. Its date must be later than A.D. 93 (the date of Ant.), but whether written before or after the Life is uncertain.
Two further works, as he tells us at the end of Ant., were projected by Josephus, viz.: (1) A summary sketch of the war and the subsequent history of his nation down to A.D. 93-4; (2) “A work in four books concerning God and His being and concerning the Laws, why some actions are permitted to us by them and others are forbidden.” It is unlikely that either was ever completed. But the work on “Customs and Causes,” as he elsewhere calls it, appears, from the mention of the four books and from scattered allusions in the Antiquities to its intended contents, to have already taken shape in his mind, and was perhaps begun. The failure to carry out this scheme is regrettable.
From the repeated occurrence, usually with reference to the Seleucid dynasty or Parthian affairs, of the phrase “as we have shown elsewhere,” Josephus might appear to have written a monograph on Syrian history. But the variations on the phrase, “as has been shown elsewhere” (lit. “in others”) and (twice) “... by others,” make it probable that the use of the first person, where it occurs, has been carelessly taken over from one of his authorities.
The fourth book of Maccabees (in vol. iii. of Dr. Swete’s LXX) appears in the older editions of Josephus, but has no claim to have come from his pen.
The Man and the Historian. Importance of his Work[[22]]
The personal character of Josephus and his credibility as a historian have been often impugned, more especially by his own compatriots. Edersheim’s article in the Dictionary of Christian Biography (where our author finds himself in strange company), while not lacking in appreciation of his merits, displays some of this rancour, though not in its more virulent form. He has been denounced as traitor and renegade, as a flatterer of the Romans and one whose statements must always be regarded with suspicion.
His character is somewhat of an enigma. We may grant that it is not one to arouse any feeling of keen admiration. He was no ardent patriot, like Judas Maccabæus, no missionary in a great cause to which he was ready to devote his whole heart and soul and to sacrifice his life. His three years’ sojourn in the wilderness was not, like the visit to Arabia of an older contemporary, the prelude to a life-work of strenuous and unremitting toil ending in imprisonment and martyrdom. His faults are patent; and among them we should rank first an inordinate egotism and a concern, above all other considerations, for his personal interests. His life was constantly in danger; like St. Paul, he encountered perils in the sea, perils from his own countrymen, perils from the Gentiles; but his instinct for self-preservation, aided by ready tact and resourcefulness, carried him safely through the most desperate situations. In his account of the shipwreck[[23]] we read that “I and certain others, about eighty in all [out of a crew of six hundred], outstripped the others and were taken on board.” There is no thought of the unfortunate swimmers who were left behind; nothing corresponding to the Apostle’s words of encouragement in similar circumstances, and to his biographer’s joy in recording that “all escaped safe to the land.” In Galilee, before the siege of Jotapata, he narrates with evident self-satisfaction the various stratagems by which he outwitted his enemies who plotted against his life. During the siege he meditated flight; “Josephus, dissembling his anxiety for his own safety, said that it was for their sakes that he proposed to retire”—such is his own naïve statement of his reply to the remonstrances of the besieged citizens (B.J. III. 7. 15 f. (197)). Then there is the final scene in the cave; we cannot but admire the dexterity with which he eluded death at the hands of his fellow-prisoners and the vividness of his description; but by what ruse (“should one say by fortune or by the providence of God?” are his own words) he managed to be, with one companion, the last survivor in the drawing of the lots, remains a mystery.[[24]] Later, as Roman prisoner and Roman citizen, he always steered a safe course and retained the favour of a succession of imperial patrons. He was, it seems, a man of the world with a thoroughly secular disposition.
What was his real attitude to Judaism? Though he devoted the latter part of his life to writing the history of his nation and a very able defence of their religion, we may doubt whether he was profoundly affected by their beliefs. Traill finds something “unnational” in the first act of his life, when he “looked around him upon the sects and factions of his times ... with a philosophic, supercilious independence.”[[25]] Though we need not, perhaps, go so far as this, nor blame him for what appears to have been a genuine quest of truth, we may allow that he was a cosmopolitan, alienated in many ways from his own nation, and that there was a lack of depth and sincerity in his adherence to Jewish dogmas.
With this must be considered his attitude to Christianity. If we set aside the one brief “testimony” to Jesus Christ, which must be rejected as an interpolation,[[26]] we are left with the story of the death of James, “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,”[[27]] and the reference to the murder of John the Baptist,[[28]] as the sole allusions to the Founder of Christianity and the movement which prepared the way for it. This glaring omission cannot be other than deliberate. Josephus had every opportunity of acquainting himself with the events of the life of Christ and of his followers; certainly he did not lack the curiosity to investigate the facts, and he must surely have watched with interest the fortunes and rapid spread of the rising sect which, even in St. Paul’s lifetime, had gained a footing in “Cæsar’s household.”[[29]] The Apostle’s words with reference to an intimate friend of Josephus might have been said of the historian himself: “I am persuaded that none of these things is hidden from him; for this hath not been done in a corner.”[[30]] Yet there is this silence. He does not attack Christianity; he simply ignores it. And, with our knowledge of the character of Josephus, the reason is not far to seek. He studiously avoids a topic to which, in the circumstances of the time, it would have been dangerous to allude. “Not only was he informed on these subjects; he was far too well informed of what the Christians had already and recently suffered ... not to be on his guard against the imprudence of giving any testimony in their favour which might implicate himself in their misfortunes.”[[31]]
To the same motive must be attributed the historian’s reticence on the subject of a Messiah. The words addressed to the serpent: “It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,”[[32]] occasion no allusion to a future deliverer, nor yet the prophecies of Balaam; Jacob’s blessing is omitted; the oracle which foretold the coming of a world-ruler out of Judæa is interpreted of Vespasian.[[33]] On the other hand, there are a few passages which suggest that Josephus did not regard the fulfilment of prophecy as closed with the destruction of Jerusalem, and that he may have entertained a belief in a Messianic era involving the downfall of Rome, of which he dared not speak openly. On Balaam he writes (Ant. IV. 6. 5 [125]): “From the accomplishment of all these things in accordance with his prediction one may conjecture what will happen in the future”; and again, in the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Ant. X. 10. 4 [210]): “Daniel also showed the king the meaning of the stone, but I have not thought proper to relate this, my duty being to describe past, not future, events,” while curious enquirers are referred to the prophetical book.
In his public life as statesman and general Josephus scarcely deserves the hard names of traitor and renegade. Involved in early manhood in the rush of events arising out of a popular movement which had long been gathering force, with which he did not sympathize, which he could not stem and vainly tried to direct, realizing from the first the hopelessness of combating the Roman legions, and anxious to find some means of compromise by which to save his country from ruin, he nevertheless accepted the post with which he was entrusted, and threw himself into the task of organizing, to the best of his ability, the defences of Galilee, so long as resistance was possible; while he devoted the energies of his later life, when his position might have tempted him to disown his nation, to writing its history and defending his countrymen against the slanders of a malignant world.
On the position of Josephus as a historian, widely different opinions have been held, from that of Jerome who extolled him as a “Greek Livy,” to the criticisms of some modern writers who have accused him of bias and gross misrepresentation.
The apologetic nature of the Antiquities is self-evident. The author’s purpose was to represent his maligned nation in the best light to Greek readers, “to break down, if possible, the wall of partition that had hitherto secluded the Hebrew race from the communion and cut them off from the sympathies of mankind,” to “plead the cause of the injured Jew at the bar of the world” (Traill). This object has occasioned the suppression of some (though not all) of the less creditable incidents in the Biblical narrative. With a view to attractiveness the narrative is diversified by legendary additions culled from various sources, while occasionally, it must be admitted, the author seems to have added minor details of his own invention (see below on the imitation of Thucydides). Granted some blemishes of this kind, there remains no very serious charge against the writer of Ant. That work is, on the whole, a skilful compilation, its value varying with that of the authorities consulted, while the criticisms passed on some of them show that these were not always used without discrimination.[[34]] He professes in several passages to have a high ideal of a historian’s duty, and, speaking generally, one may allow that he so far comes up to it as to deserve a fairly high, if not a foremost, place among the historians of antiquity.
As the historian of the Jewish War, Josephus comes before us with the highest credentials. Holding command in Galilee in its opening stages and behind the Roman lines throughout the siege of Jerusalem, he was exceptionally well qualified for this task, and must have relied mainly on his own recollections and the notes which he made at the time (c. Ap. I. 49). Deserters kept him informed of events within the city (ib.). He seems also to have had access to the emperor’s memoirs (Life 358). He submitted the books as they were finished to Herod Agrippa and the completed work to Vespasian and Titus, and from them and others received testimonials to his accuracy (c. Ap. I. 50 ff., Life 361 ff.).[[35]] We may therefore unhesitatingly accept the general trustworthiness of his account. Exception should, perhaps, be made for a tendency to exaggeration, e. g. in the matter of numbers, and for some, though not a marked, bias for extolling the achievements and clemency of the Roman generals. His statement that Titus desired to spare the Temple[[36]] runs counter to that of another historian (Sulpicius Severus), who asserts that the destruction received his sanction; the Jewish historian was, at any rate, in a better position to know the facts.
Besides the authorities whom he names in the Antiquities, Josephus, who devoted much attention to style, made a special study of the great masters. The use which he has made of his chief model forms an interesting study. Was it Dionysius of Halicarnassus (to whom, as we saw, he owed the title and arrangement of his Ant.) and his essays on the style of Thucydides that first introduced him to the historian of the Peloponnesian War? Or did he trace a likeness to himself in the great Athenian? Widely different as were the characters of the two men, there were points of similarity in their careers. Like Josephus, Thucydides combined the duties of general and historian of the great war; like him he failed as a military commander (IV. 104 ff.), and through his consequent exile was enabled to associate with the enemy and to view the war from the standpoint of both belligerents (V. 26).[[37]] However that may be (and it is to the credit of our author that he does not suggest the comparison), there is a marked imitation of the style of Thucydides in portions of the Antiquities, especially in Books XVII-XIX, which possess peculiarities of their own. The imitation is seen in the recurrent use of some striking phrase, and occasionally in the bold attempt to reproduce the difficult and involved style characteristic of parts of Thucydides. One instance of a borrowed phrase must suffice. In his account of the plague of Athens, Thucydides writes, “When they were afraid to visit one another, the sufferers died in their solitude ... or if they ventured they perished, especially those who aspired to heroism.”[[38]] The phrase in italics has taken the fancy of Josephus, who employs it repeatedly.[[39]] But imitation did not stop at the diction. The narrative of incidents in the history of Israel has been heightened, it seems, by touches from the account of the siege of Platæa and the Sicilian expedition; this last exploit in particular has aroused the emulation of our author.[[40]]
Beside this indebtedness to former historians, Josephus doubtless derived inspiration from the literary circle of living authors by whom he was surrounded in Rome. The account of the assassination of Caligula was, as stated, possibly derived from Cluvius Rufus; and it is interesting to reflect that our author must have known a writer just rising to fame, the historian of the Emperors, who has also left us a brief account of the Jewish War, Cornelius Tacitus.
The high literary standard attained by the historian, writing in a language which he acquired with difficulty, and the power of vivid and dramatic description, evident in many brilliant passages, are in the circumstances very remarkable.
Every allowance being made for our author’s defects, the importance of his work is unquestionable. His writings bridge the gulf between sacred and profane literature; they bring the Jewish nation out of its isolation into the main current of world history. The task which he set himself could only be accomplished by a Jew, and few Jews possessed the requisite qualifications of a wide outlook and an intimate knowledge of the world and of Greek literature. His detachment from his nation and other characteristics which may appear as deficiencies in the man are not without their advantages for the historian.
For the O.T. period we may consult him as a store-house of Rabbinical and Alexandrian lore, though his acquaintance with Palestinian tradition is considered by experts[[41]] to have been as superficial as, judged by his interpretation of proper names, was his knowledge of Hebrew. But it is only when we come down to about the last century before our era and to the N.T. period itself that his evidence acquires supreme importance. Here he gives us the background of Jewish and world history in the time of our Lord and the infant Church; without his labours such a work as Schürer’s Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ could not have been written. Some figures which in the N.T. are little more than names become clothed with life; side-lights are cast on others with which we are more familiar. We may follow in detail the story, told with all the moving pathos of Greek tragedy, of the rise of Herod the Great to the height of his fame and of the nemesis which blasted his domestic happiness. We have full and lifelike portraits of Roman governors and generals, comparable with the slighter sketches in the Gospels and Acts; on the one hand we may read of the causes of the unpopularity of Pilate[[42]] and of his successors, the last of the procurators, whose corrupt administration and shameless peculation precipitated the war,[[43]] on the other of high-minded governors like Petronius,[[44]] claiming kinship with similar noble characters in the N.T.
Among other such illustrations of the N.T. which will be found in the selected passages below the following may be noted. Herod’s dying provision to secure himself a national mourning exhibits the cruelty of the murderer of the innocents.[[45]] In illustration of St. Luke’s account of the infancy (ii. 1 ff.) we may read the full story of an enrolment under Quirinius;[[46]] also of the revolt of Judas to which it gave rise and of the later insurrection of Theudas, both of which are mentioned in Gamaliel’s speech in the Sanhedrin (Acts v. 36 f.).[[47]] In the full account of the succession of Archelaus we may discover the historical event which suggested our Lord’s parable of the nobleman travelling to a far country (Luke xix. 12 ff.).[[48]] We have independent narratives, partly inconsistent with those in the N.T., of the marriage of Herod the Tetrarch with Herodias[[49]] and of the death of Herod Agrippa I.[[50]] In a beautiful story we read of a royal lady who, like Paul and Barnabas, brought relief to famine-stricken Jerusalem in the days of Claudius.[[51]] The expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Tiberius forms a precedent for the similar action of Claudius (Acts xviii. 2).[[52]] With the later scenes in St. Paul’s life we may compare what is told us of Felix and Festus,[[53]] and again of Agrippa II and the marriage of Felix and Drusilla; while the account of the Cypriot magician and his influence over Felix strangely resembles that of Elymas and Sergius Paulus (Acts xiii. 6 ff.).[[54]] We may read, moreover, of the death of James “the Lord’s brother”;[[55]] of the use of the word “Corban” (Mark vii. 11) as an oath;[[56]] of the tenets of the Jewish sects (in more than one passage),[[57]] and how the Pharisees acquired their power a century before the time of Christ;[[58]] we have a detailed account of the Jewish treatment in the first century of a case of demoniacal possession;[[59]] and, last but not least, we find in the scenes from the Jewish War the fulfilment of our Lord’s predictions of the fate of Jerusalem.
Other alleged connexions between Josephus and the N.T. are open to serious question. Few will be inclined to follow Wellhausen, who finds in the murder of Zacharias son of Baris (or Bariscæus or Baruch)[[60]] the incident referred to in our Lord’s words about “the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar” (Matt. xxiii. 35). Many critics have maintained that there is a direct literary connexion between the Jewish historian and St. Luke, whose writings (not unnaturally, since he alone of the Evangelists composed a “second treatise”) furnish the majority of the parallels. There is very little probability in the suggestion[[61]] that Josephus, in his description of himself in boyhood being consulted by the Rabbis, was influenced by Luke ii. 46 f. There is more to be said for the theory that St. Luke had made a cursory perusal of parts of the Antiquities and had been thereby led, in at least one instance, into serious error; reasons for rejecting this view will be found elsewhere.[[62]]