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.]
The genuine works of Josephus reveal him not as a philosopher or sturdy
preacher of Judaism, but as an apologetic historian and apologist,
distinguished in either field rather for his industry and his ingenuity
in using others' works than by any original excellence. He learnt from
the Greeks and Romans the external manner of systematic history, and in
this he stood above his Jewish predecessors. He learnt from them also
the arts of mixing false with true, of invention, of exaggeration, of
the suggestion of the bad and the suppression of the good motive. He was
a sophist rather than a sage, and circumstances compelled him to be a
court chronicler rather than a national historian. And while he acquired
something of the art of historical writing from his models, he lost the
intuitive synthesis of the Jewish attitude, which saw the working of
God's moral law in all human affairs. On the other hand, certain defects
of his history may be ascribed to lack of training and to the spirit of
the age. He had scant notion of accuracy, he made no independent
research into past events, and he was unconscionable in chronology. In
his larger works he is for the most part a translator and compiler of
the work of others, but he has some claim to originality of design and
independence of mind in the books against Apion. The times were out of
joint for a writer of his caliber. For the greater part of his literary
life, perhaps for the whole, he was not free to write what he thought
and felt, and he wrote for an alien public, which could not rise to an
understanding of the deeper ideas of his people's history. But this much
at least may be put down to his credit, that he lived to atone for the
misrepresentation of the heroic struggle of the Jews with the Romans by
preserving some record of many dark pages in their history and by
refuting the calumnies of the Hellenistic vituperators about their
origin and their religious teachings.
V
THE JEWISH WARS
The first work of Josephus as man of letters was the history of the wars
of the Jews against the Romans, for which, according to his own
statement, he prepared from the time of his surrender by taking copious
notes of the events which he witnessed. He completed it in the fortieth
year of his life and dedicated it to Vespasian.[1] He seems originally
to have designed the record of the struggle for the purpose of
persuading his brethren in the East that it was useless to fight further
against the Romans. He desired to prove to them that God was on the side
of the big battalions, and that the Jews had forfeited His protection by
their manifold transgressions. The Zealots were as wicked as they were
misguided, and to follow them was to march to certain ruin. It is not
unlikely that Josephus was commissioned by Titus to compose his version
of the war for the "Upper Barbarians," whose rising in alliance with the
Parthians might have troubled the conqueror of Jerusalem, as it
afterwards troubled Trajan. But, save that it was written in Aramaic, we
cannot tell the form of the original history, since it has entirely
disappeared.
[Footnote 1: B.J. VII. xv. 8.]
Josephus says in the preface to the extant Greek books that he
translated into Greek the account he had already written. But he
certainly did much more than translate. The whole trend of the narrative
and the purpose must have been changed when he came to present the
events for a Greco-Roman audience. He was concerned less to instill
respect for Rome in his countrymen than to inspire regard for his
countrymen in the Romans, and at the same time to show that the
Rebellion was not the deliberate work of the whole people, but due to
the instigation of a band of desperate, unscrupulous fanatics. He was
concerned also to show that God, the vanquished Jewish God, as the
Romans would regard Him, had allowed the ruin of His people, not because
He was powerless to preserve them, but because they had sinned against
His law. Lastly, he was anxious to emphasize the military virtue and the
magnanimity of his patrons Vespasian and Titus. He intersperses frequent
protests in various parts of the seven books, and repeats them in the
preface, to the effect that while his predecessors had written
"sophistically," he was aiming only at the exact record of events. But
it is obvious that, in the _Wars_ as in his other works, he has a
definite purpose to serve, and he colors his account of events to suit
this purpose and to please his patrons.
He sets out to establish, in fact, that it was "a sedition of our own
that destroyed Jerusalem, and that the tyrants among the Jews brought
upon us the Romans, who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the
burning of our Temple."[1] And he apologizes for the passion he shows
against the tyrants and Zealots, which, he admits, is not consistent
with the character of an historian; it was provoked because the
unparalleled calamities of the Jews were not caused by strangers but by
themselves, and "this makes it impossible for me to contain my
lamentations."[2] The historian, therefore, in the work which has come
down to us, is dominated by the conviction, whether sincere or feigned,
that the war with Rome was a huge error, that those who fomented it were
wicked, self-seeking men, and that the Jews brought their ruin on
themselves. This being his temper, it is necessary to look very closely
at his representation of events and examine how far partisan feeling and
prejudices, and how far servility and the courtier spirit, have colored
it. We have also to consider how far his reflections represent his own
judgment, and how far they are the slavish adoption of opinions
expressed by the victorious enemies of his people.
[Footnote 1: B.J., Preface.]
[Footnote 2: B.J., Preface, 4.]
The alternative title of the work is _On the Destruction of the Temple_,
but its scope is larger than either name suggests. It is conjectured by
the German scholar Niese that the author called it _A History of the
Jewish State in Its Relations with the Romans_. It is in fact a history
of the Jews under the Romans, beginning, as Josephus says, "where the
earlier writers on Jewish affairs and our prophets leave off." He
proposes to deal briefly with the events that preceded his own age, but
fully with the events of the wars of his time. The history starts,
accordingly, with the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and, save that
he expatiates without any sense of proportion on the exploits of Herod
the Great, Josephus is generally faithful to his program in the
introductory portion of the work. For the Herodian period he found a
very full source, and the temptation was too powerful for him, so that
the greater part of the first book is taken up with the story of the
court intrigues and family murders of the king. Very brief indeed is his
treatment of the Maccabean brothers, and not very accurate. They are
dismissed in two chapters, and it is probable that the historian had not
before him either of the two good Jewish sources for the period, the
First and the Second Book of the Maccabees. In his later work, in which
he dealt with the same period at greater length, the account which he
had abstracted from a Greek source, probably Nicholas of Damascus, is
corrected by the Jewish work. The two records show a number of small
discrepancies. Thus, in the _Wars_ he states that Onias, the high priest
who drove out the Tobiades from Jerusalem, fled to Ptolemy in Egypt, and
founded a city resembling Jerusalem; whereas in the _Antiquities_ he
states that the Onias who fled to Egypt because Antiochus deprived him
of office was the son of the high priest. Again, in the _Wars_ he makes
Mattathias kill the Syrian governor Bacchides; whereas, in the
_Antiquities_, agreeing with the First Book of the Maccabees, he says
that the Syrian officer who was slain at Modin was Appelles.
Josephus in the _Wars_ follows his Hellenistic source for the history of
the Hasmonean monarchy without introducing any Jewish knowledge and
without criticism. His summary is of incidents, not of movements, and he
has a liking for romantic color. The piercing of the king's elephant by
the Maccabean Eleazar, the prediction by an Essene of the murder of
Antigonus, the brother of King Aristobulus I, are detailed. The inner
Jewish life is passed over in complete silence until he comes to the
reign of Alexander. Then he describes the Pharisees as a sect of Jews
that are held to be more religious than others and to interpret the laws
more accurately.[1] The description is clearly derived from a Greek
writer, who regards the Jewish people from the outside. It is quite out
of harmony with the standpoint which Josephus himself later adopts. In
this passage he presents the Pharisees as crafty politicians,
insinuating themselves into the favor of the queen, and then ordering
the country to suit their own ends. Without describing the other sects,
he continues the narration of intrigues and wars till he reaches the
intervention of Pompey in the affairs of Palestine.
[Footnote 1: B.J. I. v. 2.]
From this point the treatment is fuller. No doubt the Hellenistic
historians paid more attention to the Jews from the moment when they
came within the orbit of the Roman Empire; but while in the
_Antiquities_ Josephus refers several times to the statements of two or
three of the Greco-Roman writers, in the _Wars_ he quotes no authority.
From this it may be inferred that in the earlier work he is following
but one guide.
He gives an elaborate account of the rise of the Idumean family of
Antipater, and hence to the end of the book the history passes into a
biography of Herod. The first part of Herod's career, when he was
building up his power, is related in the most favorable light. His
activity in Galilee against the Zealots, his trial by the Sanhedrin, his
subsequent service to the Romans, his flight from Judea upon the
invasion of the Parthians, his reception by Antony, his triumphal return
to the kingdom that had been bestowed on him, his valiant exploits
against the Arabians of Perea and Nabatea, his capture of Jerusalem, his
splendid buildings, and his magnificence to foreigners--all these
incidents are set forth so as to enhance his greatness. The description
throughout has a Greek ring. There is scarcely a suggestion of a Jewish
point of view towards the semi-savage godless tyrant. And when Josephus
comes to the part of Herod's life which even an historian laureate could
not misrepresent to his credit, his family relations, he adopts a
fundamentally pagan outlook.
The foundation of the Greek drama was the idea that the fortunate
incurred the envy of the gods, and brought on themselves the "nemesis,"
the revenge, of the divine powers, which plunged them into ruin. This
conception, utterly opposed as it is to the Jewish doctrine of God's
goodness, is applied to Herod, on whom, says Josephus, fortune was
revenged for his external prosperity by raising him up domestic
troubles.[1] He introduces another pagan idea, when he suggests that
Antipater, the wicked son of the king, returned to Palestine, where he
was to meet his doom, at the instigation of the ghosts of his murdered
brothers, which stopped the mouths of those who would have warned him
against returning. The notion of the avenging spirits of the dead was
utterly opposed to Jewish teaching, but it was a commonplace of the
Hellenistic thought of the time.
[Footnote 1: B.J. I. xxii. 1.]
Of Hillel and Shammai, the great sages of the time, we have not a word;
but when he recounts how, in the last days of Herod, the people under
the lead of the Pharisees rose against the king in indignation at the
setting up of a golden eagle over the Temple gate, he speaks of the
sophists exhorting their followers, "that it was a glorious thing to die
for the laws of their country, because the soul was immortal, and an
eternal enjoyment of happiness did await such as died on that account;
while the mean-spirited, and those that were not wise enough to show a
right love of their souls, preferred death by disease to that which is a
sign of virtue." The sentiments here are not so objectionable, but the
description of the Pharisees as sophists, and the suggestion of a
Valhalla for those who died for their country and for no others--for
which there is no authority in Jewish tradition--betray again the
uncritical copying of a Hellenistic source.
Finally, in summing up the character of Herod, all he finds to say is,
"Above all other men he enjoyed the favor of fortune, since from a
private station he obtained a kingdom, and held it many years, and left
it to his sons; but yet in his domestic affairs he was a most
unfortunate man." Not a word of his wickedness and cruelty, not a breath
of the Hebrew spirit, but simply an estimate of his "fortune." This is
the way in which the Romanized Jew continued the historical record of
the Bible, substituting foreign superstitions about fate and fortune for
the Jewish idea that all human history is a manifestation of God.
Josephus ends the first book of the _Wars_ with an account of the
gorgeous pomp of Herod's funeral, and starts the second book with a
description of the costly funeral feast which his son Archelaus gave to
the multitude, adding a note--presumably also derived from Nicholas--
that many of the Jews ruin themselves owing to the need of giving such a
feast, because he who omits it is not esteemed pious. As his source
fails him for the period following on the banishment of Archelaus, the
treatment becomes fragmentary, but at the same time more original and
independent. An account of the various Jewish sects interrupts the
chronicle of the court intrigues and popular risings. Josephus
distinguishes here four sects, the Essenes, the Pharisees, the
Sadducees, and the Zealots, but his account is mainly confined to the
first.[1] He describes in some detail their practices, beliefs, and
organizations. Indeed, this passage and the account in Philo are our
chief Jewish authorities for the tenets of the Essenes. He is anxious to
establish their claim to be a philosophical community comparable with
the Greek schools. In particular he represents that their notions of
immortality correspond with the Greek ideas of the Isles of the Blessed
and of Hades. "The divine doctrines of the Essenes, as he calls them,
which consider the body as corruptible and the soul an immortal spirit,
which, when released from the bonds of the flesh as from a long slavery,
rejoices and mounts upwards, lay an irresistible bait for such as have
once tasted of their philosophy." The ideas which the sect cherished
were popular in a certain part of Greco-Roman society, which, sated with
the luxury of the age, turned to the ascetic life and to the pursuit of
mysticism. Pliny the Elder, who was on the staff of Titus at Jerusalem,
appears to have been especially interested in the Jewish communists, and
briefly described their doctrines in his books; and the circle for whom
Josephus wrote would have been glad to have a fuller account.
[Footnote 1: B. J. II. viii.]
Of the other two sects he says little here, and what he says is
superficial. He places the differentiation in their contrasted doctrines
of fate and immortality. The Pharisees ascribe all to fate, but yet
allow freewill--a Hellenizing version of the saying ascribed to Rabbi
Akiba, "All is foreseen, but freedom of will is given"[1]--and they say
all souls are immortal, but those of the good only pass into other
bodies, while those of the bad suffer eternal punishment. This
attribution of the doctrine of metempsychosis and eternal punishment is
another piece of Hellenization, or a reproduction of a Hellenistic
misunderstanding; for the Rabbinic records nowhere suggest that such
ideas were held by the Pharisees. "The Sadducees, on the other hand,
deny fate entirely, and hold that God is not concerned in man's conduct,
which is entirely in his own choice, and they likewise deny the
immortality of the soul or retribution after death." Here the attempt to
represent the Sadducees' position as parallel with Epicurean materialism
has probably induced an overstatement of their distrust of Providence.
Josephus adds that the Pharisees cultivate great friendships among
themselves and promote peace among the people; while the Sadducees are
somewhat gruff towards each other, and treat even members of their own
party as if they were strangers.
[Footnote 1: Comp. Abot, iii. 15.]
Of the fourth party, the Zealots, Josephus has only a few words, to the
effect that when Coponius was sent as the first procurator of Judea, a
Galilean named Judas prevailed on his countrymen to revolt, saying they
would be cowards if they would endure to pay any tax to the Romans or
submit to any mortal lord in place of God. This man, he says, was the
teacher of a peculiar sect of his own. While the other three sects are
treated as philosophical schools, Josephus does not attribute a
philosophy to the Zealots, and out of regard to Roman feelings he says
nothing of the Messianic hopes that dominated them.
After the digression about the sects, Josephus continues his narrative
of the Jewish relations with the Romans. He turns aside now and then to
detail the complicated family affairs of the Herodian family or to
describe some remarkable geographical phenomenon, such as the glassy
sands of the Ladder of Tyre.[1] The main theme is the growing irritation
of the Jews, and the strengthening of the feeling that led to the
outbreak of the great war. But Josephus, always under the spell of the
Romans, or writing with a desire to appeal to them, can recognize only
material, concrete causes. The deeper spiritual motives of the struggle
escape him altogether, as they escaped the Roman procurators. He
recounts the wanton insults of a Pontius Pilate, who brought into
Jerusalem Roman ensigns with the image of Caesar, and spoiled the sacred
treasures of the Korban for the purpose of building aqueducts; and he
dwells on the attempt of Gaius to set up his statue in the Temple, which
was frustrated only by the Emperor's murder. But about the attitude of
the different sections of the Jewish people to the Romans, of which his
record would have been so valuable, he is silent.
[Footnote 1: B.J. II. x. 2. The same phenomenon is recorded in Pliny and
Tacitus, and it was a commonplace of the geography of the age.]
After the brief interlude of Agrippa's happy reign, the irritation of
Roman procurators is renewed, and under Comanus tumult follows tumult,
as one outrage after another upon the Jewish feeling is countenanced or
abetted. The courtier of the Flavian house takes occasion to recount the
Emperor Nero's misdeeds and family murders; but he resists the desire to
treat in detail of these things, because his subject is Jewish
history.[1] He must have had before him a source which dealt with
general Roman history more fully, and he shows his independence, such as
it is, in confining his narrative to the Jewish story. But the reliance
on his source for his point of view leads him to write as a good Roman;
the national party are dubbed rebels and revolutionaries ([Greek:
stasiastai]). The Zealots are regularly termed robbers, and the origin
of war is attributed to the weakness of the governors in not putting
down these turbulent elements. All this was natural enough in a Roman,
but it comes strangely from the pen of a soi-disant Jewish apologist,
who had himself taken a part in the rebellion. Characteristic is his
account of the turbulent condition of Palestine in the time of Felix:
"Bands of Sicarii springing up in the chaos caused by the tyranny
infested the country, and another body of abandoned men, less villainous
in their actions, but more wicked in their designs, deluded the people
under pretense of divine inspiration, and persuaded them to rise. Felix
put down these bands, but, as with a diseased body, straightway the
inflammation burst out in another part. And the flame of revolt was
blown up every day more and more, till it came to a regular war."[2]
[Footnote 1: B.J. II. xiii. 1.]
[Footnote 2: B.J. II. xiii. 6.]
Josephus vents his full power of denunciation on the last procurator,
Floras, who goaded the people into war, and by his repeated outrages
compelled even the aristocratic party, to which the historian belonged,
to break their loyalty to Rome: "As though he had been sent as
executioner to punish condemned criminals, he omitted no sort of
spoliation or extortion. In the most pitiful cases he was most inhuman;
in the greatest turpitudes he was most impudent, nor could anyone outdo
him in perversion of the truth, or combine more subtle ways of deceit."
Josephus, not altogether consistently with what he has already said,
seeks to exculpate his countrymen for their rising, up to the point in
which he himself was involved in it; and though he admits that the high
priests and leading men were still anxious for peace at any price, and
he puts a long speech into Agrippa's mouth counseling submission, he is
yet anxious to show that his people were driven into war by the
wickedness of Nero's governors. His masters allowed him, and probably
invited him, to denounce the oppression of the ministers of their
predecessors, and the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus likewise
state that the rapacity of the procurators drove the Jews into revolt.
He had authority, therefore, for this view in his contemporary sources.
The die was cast. Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean and the head of
the Zealots, seized Jerusalem, drove the Romans and Romanizers into the
fortress of Antonia, and having armed his bands with the contents of
Herod's southern stronghold of Masada, overpowered the garrison and put
it to the sword. Menahem himself, indeed, was so barbarous that the more
moderate leader Eleazar turned against him and put him to death. But
Josephus sees in the massacre of the Roman garrison the pollution of the
city, which doomed it to destruction. In his belligerent ethics,
massacre of the Romans by the Jews is always a crime against God,
requiring His visitation; massacres of the Jews are a visitation of God,
revealing that the Romans were His chosen instrument.
With the history of the war, so far as the historian was involved in it,
we have already dealt. We are here concerned with the character and the
reliability of his account. Josephus is somewhat vague and confused
about the dispositions of the Jewish leaders, but when he is not
justifying his own treachery, or venting his spite on his rivals, he
shows many of the parts of a military historian. He surveys with
clearness and conciseness the nature of the country that the Romans had
to conquer, and he describes the Roman armies and Roman camp with
greater detail than any Roman historian, his design being "not so much
to praise the Romans as to comfort those who have been conquered and to
deter others from rising."[1] It has, however, been pointed out with
great force, in support of the theory that he is following closely and
almost paraphrasing a Roman authority on the war, that his geographical
and topographical lore is introduced not in its natural place, but on
the occasions when Vespasian is the actor in a particular district.[2]
Thus, he describes the Phoenician coast when Vespasian arrives at
Ptolemais, Galilee when Vespasian is besieging Tarichea, Jericho when
Vespasian makes his sally to the Jordan cities.[3]
[Footnote 1: B.J. III. v. This remark must clearly have appeared in the
original Aramaic.]
[Footnote 2: Schlatter, Zur Topographie und Geschichte Palastinas, pp.
99 _ff_.]
[Footnote 3: B.J. III. iii. 1 and x. 7.]