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 Romans.[1] Josephus retorts that, before he was appointed governor, Justus and the people of Tiberias had attacked the Greek cities of the Decapolis and the dominions of Agrippa, as was witnessed in the Commentaries of Vespasian. Not content with this 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,[2] Josephus proceeds to argue that he was a worse historian: Justus could not describe the Galilean campaign, because 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. Conscious 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 issued. 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.
[Footnote 1: Vita, 65.]
[Footnote 2: Justus, no doubt, had done the converse, representing himself as a thorough Romanizer and Josephus as an ardent rebel.]
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 philosophical meaning of the Mosaic legislation. The 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 allegorical lore in the extant works, and his mind was hardly given to such speculations. But a humanitarian 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 Christian 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 Universe, or The Cause of the Universe ([Greek: peri taes tou pantos aitias]), which is extant, but which is demonstrably of Christian origin, and was probably written by Hippolytus, an ecclesiastical writer of the third century and the author of Philosophumena. Another work attributed to Josephus in the Dark and Middle Ages, and often attached to manuscripts of the Antiquities, 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 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 Antiochus 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 animals 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 pleasures 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 mastery of the arts of Greek rhetoric, such as the Palestinian 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 knowledge 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 Roman court could hardly have aspired.
[Footnote 1: Freudenthal, Die Flavius Josephus beigelegte Schrift über die Herrschaft der Vernunft, 1879.]