[Footnote 1: Derek Erez, ed. Goldberg, iii. 10.]
[Footnote 2: Moëd Katon, 23a. See above, p. 177.]
[Footnote 3: Comp. Zunz, Gottesdienstliche Vorträge, pp. 154_ff_.]
The chronicle of Yosippon is a summary of Jewish history, with considerable digressions—many of them later interpolations—about the history of the nations with whom the Hebrew people came into contact, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Like the Book of Chronicles, it begins with Adam and genealogies, explains the roll of the nations in Genesis, and then springs suddenly from the legendary origin of Babel and Rome to the relation of the Jews with Babylon. The history proper contains the record of the Jews from the first to the second captivity, but is broken by a mass of legendary material about Alexander the Great—reproducing much of what is found in pseudo-Callisthenes—and by a short account of the Carthaginian general Hannibal and several incidents of Roman history. These include a description of a coronation of the Emperor, which, it is suggested, applies to the medieval and not the classical period of the Empire.
The book was known throughout the later part of the Middle Ages and down to the eighteenth century as the Hebrew Josephus, and contrasted with the [Hebrew: Yosifon la-Romim], or "Latin Josephus." When the genuine works of our worthy became known to the Jews, Yosippon was regarded as the true representative of the Jewish point of view against the paganizing traitor. Its author had not a first-hand acquaintance with our Josephus. He knew him only through the Latin versions, which were mixed with much later material. Possibly he meant to pass off his work as the Hebrew original of the Jewish history, and confused Joseph ben Gorion with Joseph ben Mattathias; for in the introduction to one manuscript we read, "I am Joseph, called Josephus the Jew, of whom it is written that he wrote the book of the wars of the Lord, and this is the sixth part." This, however, may be the gloss of a later scribe, who found an anonymous book, and thought fit to supply the omission. In places the Hebrew translator reproduces, though with some blunders, the Latin Hegesippus, but he sought to give charm to his work by legendary additions, which more often show Arabic and other foreign influences than traces of the Jewish Haggadah. Interpolations have served to increase the legendary element, and take away from the historical value. But it is this element, reflecting the ideas of the age, that gives the composition a peculiar literary interest.
Though only to a small extent representing Jewish tradition, the book remained very popular among the Jews both of the West and the East, and was long regarded as authoritative. The first printed edition was issued at Mantua, in 1476, and was followed by the edition of Constantinople, in 1520, arranged in chapters and enlarged, and an edition of Basel, in 1541, containing a Latin preface and a Latin translation of the greater part. In 1546 a printed Yiddish edition appeared in Zurich, and in the Ghetto it retains its popularity to the present day. Other editions and translations have followed. Steinschneider has noted that as late as 1873 an abstract of the Arabic translation together with the Arabic version of the Book of the Maccabees was published at Beirut.[1] The spuriousness of the work has now been established, and of modern scholars Wellhausen[2] is almost alone in ascribing to it any independent historical worth. In the Spanish period of Jewish culture the real as well as the spurious Josephus was read by many of his race, and some hard things were said of him. Thus Rabbi Isaac Abrabanel, the statesman and apologist (1457-1508), regarded him as a common sycophant and wrote, "In many things he perverted the truth, even where we have the Scriptures before us, in order to court favor with the Romans, as a slave submits himself to the will of his master." Azariah de Rossi (ab. 1850), anticipating the ideas of a later age, alone balanced his merits against his demerits. Among the great Christian scholars of the Renaissance, however, he enjoyed great fame. Joseph Scaliger, the most eminent of the seventeenth century critics, could write of him, "Josephus was the most diligent and the most truthloving of all writers, and one can better believe him, not only as to the affairs of the Jews, but also as to the Gentiles, than all the Greek and Latin writers, because his fidelity and his learning are everywhere conspicuous."[3] It is illustrative of his popularity that Rembrandt named one of his great Jewish pictures after him. Whiston's English translation of his works became a household book, found side by side with the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress.[4]
[Footnote 1: J.Q.R. xvi. 393.]
[Footnote 2: Der arabische Josippus; see J.E., s.v. Joseph ben Gorion.]
[Footnote 3: De Emend. Temp. Proleg. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Readers of Rudyard Kipling may recall that in Captains Courageous one of the seamen on board the "We're Here" Schooner reads aloud on Sunday from a book called Josephus: "It was an old leather-bound volume very solid and very like a Bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges.">[