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 Nicholas. 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 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 himself few digressions. He moralizes a little about the decay of the people under Rehoboam, reflecting that the aggrandizement of a kingdom and its sudden attainment of prosperity often are the occasion of mischief; 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 narrates, as is proved by the fact that he speaks of circumcised Syrians, who can be no other than Jews. The fate of Omri and Zimri[1] 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."[2] Artapanus, or one of the Jewish Hellenists masking as a pagan historian, may have provided him with this reflection.
[Footnote 1: Ant. IX. xii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Ant. IX. xv. 6.]
He spoils the grandeur of the scene on Mount Carmel, 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."[2] But these discrepancies may be due, not to a different Bible text, but to aberrations of the copyists.
[Footnote 1: Ant. IX. vi. 3; II Kings, 9:20.]
[Footnote 2: II Kings, 13:11.]
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,[1] in the reign of Jeroboam 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 Nahum, and paraphrases part of his prophecy of the fall of Nineveh, cutting it short with the remark that he does not think it necessary to repeat the rest,[2] so that he may not appear troublesome to his readers. In the account of Hezekiah he mentions that the king depended on Isaiah the prophet, by whom he inquired and knew of all future events,[3] 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.[4] 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" contained in the apocryphal book of Ben Sira, which Josephus probably used in the Greek translation.
[Footnote 1: Ant. IX. x. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Ant. IX. xi. 3.]