[Footnote 2: C. Ap. 9-10.]
It has been suggested that the Roman point of view that pervades the Wars of Josephus, the frequent absence of sympathy with the Jewish cause, and the incongruous pagan ideas, which surprise us, can be explained by the fact that the Jewish writer founded his account on that of Antonius Julianus, which is referred to by the Christian apologist Minucius[1] as a standard authority on the destruction of Jerusalem. Antonius is mentioned by Josephus as one of the Roman staff who gave his opinion in favor of the burning of the Temple, and he has also been ingeniously identified with the Roman general (called [Hebrew: Otaninus] or [Hebrew: Ananitus]) who engaged in controversy with Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai.[2] 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 Gentile accounts of the struggle, and he often slavishly adopted not only their record of facts but their expressions of opinion. In point of time Tacitus might have derived from Josephus his summary of the Jewish Wars, part of which has come down to us, and on some points the Jewish and the Roman 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 Roman and Greek authors to provide him with food for his epigrams.
[Footnote 1: Epist. ad Octav. 33.]
[Footnote 2: Yer. Sanhedrin, i. 4. Comp. Schlatter, Zur Topographie und
Geschichte Palästinas, pp. 97_ff_.]
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, Unfortunately we have to depend almost entirely on a hostile rival's spitefulness and malice for our knowledge of 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 character 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 latter'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 commander; 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 judgment of the work, because, apart from the abuse of Josephus, the criticism we have comes merely from ecclesiastical historians, who imbibed Josephus' personal 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 disappearance 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 interpolated, as Josephus was, with a passage about Jesus.[2] Hence Photius says that he passed over many of the most important occurrences.[3] We know of him now only by the charges of Josephus and a few disconnected fragments.
[Footnote 1: Hist. Eccl. III. x. 8; De Viris Illustr, 14.]
[Footnote 2: See below, pp. 241 ff.]
[Footnote 3: Bibl. Cod. 33.]
Coming now to the works of Josephus, his prefaces give a full account of his historical motives. He originally 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 predecessors contain sometimes slanders, sometimes eulogies, 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 contrasts the merit of one who composes by his own industry a history of events not hitherto faithfully recorded, 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 history] of the Jews, because many before me, both among my own people and the Greeks, have composed the histories of our ancestors very exactly."[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: B.J., Preface. The Greek name Archaeologia is regularly rendered by Antiquities, but it means simply the early history.]