The contrast between the individual creative impulse of the Hellene and the respect for tradition of the Hebrew, which anticipates in a way Matthew Arnold's contrast between Hellenic "spontaneity of consciousness" 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 history, and least of all as to that part which concerns the affairs of our country. The reliability of the Hebrew records 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."
[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 6_ff_.]
The reckoning of the Canon is interesting:[1] 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 trustworthiness, because the exact succession of prophets has not been maintained. The intense sentiment which the Jews feel for their Scriptures is proved by their willingness to die for them.
[Footnote 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., s.v. Canon.]
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 continually. 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. Afterwards, 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 command 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 Roman 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 Antiquities, 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 digression as being made in self-defense, and claims to have 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 cultivation of the soil. This, of course, is a picture of the Bible times, because in the writer's days they were beginning 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 contact. They are rather to be compared with the Romans, who only entered into the Greek sphere of interest later in their history.
Josephus makes the point that it would be as reasonable 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 extracts about the Hyksos tribes and Hyksos kings, whom he identifies with Joseph and his brethren. The identification was popular till recent times, but modern historical criticism has rejected it. Josephus 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 collected 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 comparative material which he had introduced in the Antiquities. Confirmation of the account of the flood, as also of the rebuilding of the Temple after the return of the Jews from Babylon, is found in the Chaldean history of Berosus; and other long extracts from Babylonian history are inserted that furnish a casual mention of Judea or Jerusalem. Josephus attempts, too, with doubtful success, to combine the 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.
[Footnote 1: Comp. above, p. 159.]