Josephus by Norman Bentwich

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[Footnote 1: Ant. XVIII. iii. Comp. below, p. 241.]

[Footnote 2: Die Quellen des Flavius Josephus.]

The story of Agrippa is interrupted by a chapter about the Jews of
Babylon, which has the air of a moral tale on the evils of
intermarriage, and may have formed part of the popular Jewish literature
of the day. Another long digression marks the beginning of the
nineteenth book of the _Antiquities_, where Josephus leaves Jewish
scenes and inserts an account of Caligula's murder and the election of
Claudius as Emperor. This narrative, while of great interest for
students of the Roman constitution, is out of all proportion to its
place in the Jewish chronicle. Josephus, it has been surmised, based it
on the work of one Cluvius (referred to in the book as an intimate
friend of Claudius), who wrote a history about 70 C.E.; he may besides
have received hitherto unpublished information from Agrippa II, whose
father had been an important actor in the drama, or from his friend
Aliturius, the actor at Rome, who had mixed in affairs of state. Anyhow,
he took advantage of this chance of making a literary sensation.
Doubtless also, the recital, which threw not a little discredit on the
house of the earlier Caesars, was for that reason not unwelcome to the
upstart Flavians, and may have been inserted at the Imperial wish.

Agrippa I is the most attractive figure in the second part of the
_Antiquities_. He is contrasted with Herod,

"who was cruel and severe in his punishments, and had no mercy on those
he hated, and everyone perceived that he had more love for the Greeks
than for the Jews.... But Agrippa's temper was mild and equally liberal
to all men. He was kind to foreigners and was of agreeable and
compassionate feeling. He loved to reside at Jerusalem, and was
scrupulously careful in his observance of the Law of his people. On his
death he expressed his submission to Providence; for that he had by no
means lived ill, but in a splendid and happy manner."

His peaceful reign, however, was only the lull before the storm, and the
last book of the _Antiquities_ is mainly taken up with the succession of
wicked procurators, who, by their extortions and cruelties and flagrant
disregard of the Jewish Law and Jewish feeling, goaded the Jews into the
final rebellion. It contains, however, a digression on the conversion of
the royal house of Adiabene to Judaism, which is tricked out with
examples of God's Providence. Yet another digression records the
villainies of Nero (which no doubt was pleasing to his patrons) and the
amours of Drusilia, the daughter of Agrippa I. But of the rising
discontent of the Jewish people in Palestine we have no clear picture.
Josephus fails as in the _Wars_ to bring out the inner incompatibility
of the Roman and the Jewish outlook, and represents, in an
unimaginative, matter-of-fact, Romanizing way, that it was simply
particular excesses--the rapacity of a Felix, the knavery of a
Florus--which were the cause of the Rebellion. This is just what a Roman
would have said, and when the Jewish writer deals at all with the Jewish
position, it is usually to drag in his political feud. He especially
singles out the sacrilege of the Zealots in assassinating their
opponents within the Temple precincts as the reason of God's rejecting
the city; "and as for the Temple, He no longer deemed it sufficiently
pure to be His habitation, but brought the Romans upon us and threw a
fire on the city to purge it, and brought slavery on us, our wives, and
our children, to make us wiser by our calamities." Thus the priestly
apologist, accepting Roman canons, finds in the ritual offense of a
section of the people the ground for the destruction of the national
center. He is torn, indeed, between two conflicting views about the
origin of the rebellion: whether he shall lay the whole blame on the
Jewish irreconcilables, or whether he shall divide it between them and
the wicked Roman governors; and in the end he exaggerates both these
motives, and leaves out the deeper causes.

The penultimate chapter contains a list of the high priests, about whom
the historian had throughout made great pretensions of accuracy. He
enumerates but eighty-three from the time of Aaron to the end of the
line, of whom no less than twenty-eight were appointed after Herod's
accession to his kingdom; whereas the Talmud records that three hundred
held office during the existence of the second Temple alone.[1] That
number is probably hyperbolical, but the statement in other parts of the
Rabbinical literature, that there were eighty high priests in that
period,[2] throws doubt on this list, which besides is manifestly
patched in several places.

[Footnote 1: Yoma, 9a.]

[Footnote 2: Yer. Yoma, ix., and Lev. R. xx.]

With the procuratorship of Florus, Josephus brings his chronicle to an
end, the later events having been treated in detail in the _Wars;_ and
in conclusion he commends himself for his accuracy in giving the
succession of priests and kings and political administrators:

"And I make bold to say, now I have so completely perfected the work
which I set out to do, that no other person, be he Jew or foreigner, and
had he ever so great an inclination to it, could so accurately deliver
these accounts to the Greeks as is done in these books. For members of
my own people acknowledge that I far exceed them in Jewish learning, and
I have taken great pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks and
understand stand the elements of the Greek language, though I have so
long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue that I cannot speak Greek
with exactness."

He makes explicit his standpoint with this _envoi_, which shows that he
was writing for a Greek-speaking public and in competition with Greeks,
and this helps to explain why he sets special store on the record of
priests and kings and political changes, and why he so often disguises
the genuine Jewish outlook. As an account of the Jewish people for the
prejudiced society of Rome, the _Antiquities_ undoubtedly possessed
merit. History, indeed, at the time, was far from being an exact
science, nor was accuracy esteemed necessary to it. Cicero had said a
hundred years earlier, that it was legitimate to lie in narratives; and
this was the characteristic outlook of the Greco-Roman writers. The most
brilliant literary documents of the age, the _Annals_ and _Histories_ of
Tacitus, are rather pieces of sparkling journalism than sober and
philosophical records of facts; and therefore we must not judge Josephus
by too high a standard.

Weighed in his own balance, he had done a great service to his people by
setting out the main heads of their history over three thousand years,
so that it should be intelligible to the cultured Roman society; and had
he been reproached with misrepresenting and distorting many of their
religious ideas, he would have replied, with some justice, that it was
necessary to do so in, order to make the Romans understand. On the same
ground he would have justified the omission of much that was
characteristic and the exaggeration of much that was normal. He shows
throughout some measure of national pride. To-day, however, we cannot
but regret that he weakly adopted much of the spiritual outlook of his
Gentile contemporaries, and that he did not seek to convey to his
readers the fundamental spiritual conceptions of the Jews, which might
have endowed his history with an unique distinction. His record of two
thousand years of Israel's history gives but the shadow of the glory of
his people.

VIII

THE APOLOGY FOR JUDAISM

In every age since the dispersion began, the Jews have appeared to their
neighbors as a curious anomaly. Their abstract idea of God, their
peculiar religious observances, their refusal to intermarry with their
neighbors, their serious habits of life--all have served to mark them
out and attract the wonder of the philosophical, the vituperation of the
vulgar, and the dislike of the ignorant. Their enemies in every epoch
have repeated with slight variation the charge which Haman brought in
his petition to King Ahasuerus, "There is a people scattered abroad and
dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and
their laws are diverse from those of every people, neither keep they the
king's laws" (Esther 3:8). In the cosmopolitan society that arose in the
Hellenistic kingdoms, it was their especial offense that they retained a
national cohesion, and refused to indulge in the free trade in religious
ideas and social habits adopted by civilized peoples. The popular
feeling was fanned by a party that had a more particular grievance
against them. Though certain philosophical sects, notably the schools of
Pythagoras and Aristotle, were struck with admiration for the lofty
spiritual ideas and the strict discipline of Judaism, another school,
and that the most powerful of the time, was smitten with envy and
hatred.

The Stoics, who aspired to establish a religious philosophy for all
mankind, and pursued a vigorous missionary propaganda, particularly in
the East, saw in the Jews not only obstinate opponents but dangerous
rivals, who carried on a competing mission with provoking success. The
children of Israel were spread over the whole of the civilized world,
and everywhere they vigorously propagated their teaching. Of all
enmities, the enmity of contending creeds is the bitterest. The Stoics
became the first professional Jew-haters, and set themselves at the head
of those who resented Jewish particularism, either from jealousy or from
that unreasoning dislike which is universally felt against minorities
that live differently from the mass about them.

The ill-will and sectarian hatred were most prevalent at Alexandria,
where the powerful Jewish community excited the attacks of the
half-Hellenized natives. The campaign was fought mainly as a battle of
books. The Hebrew Scriptures represented the early Egyptians in no
favorable light. The Greco-Egyptian historians retaliated by a
malevolent account of the origin and history of the Hebrew people, of
which Manetho's story is the prototype. In this work of the third
century B.C.E. the children of Israel were represented as sprung from a
pack of lepers, who were expelled from Egypt because of their foul
disease. A still more virulent attack on the Jewish teaching is found in
two Stoic writers of the first century B.C.E., Posidonius of Apamea, a
town of Phrygia, and Molon,[1] who taught at Rhodes. The former raised
the charge that the Jews alone of all peoples refused to have any
communication with other nations, but regarded them as their enemies.
Molon, besides a general travesty of their early history, wrote a
special diatribe against them--the first document of the kind which
history records--accusing them of atheism and misanthropy, cowardice and
stupidity. These remained the stock charges for centuries, and they
assumed an added bitterness after the Roman conquest, when to the
peculiarity of Jewish customs was added the stigma of being a subject
people. The hatred of Greek and Jew, despite all the ostentatious
friendliness of a Herod for Greek things, became deeper, and it showed
itself as well without as within Palestine. At Alexandria, in the
beginning of the first century, the antagonism developed into open
riots, and the leaders of the anti-Jewish party were again two Stoics,
Apion and Chaeremon, the one orator and grammarian, the other priest and
astrologer. There is nothing very original in their libels, which are
modeled upon those of Posidonius and Molon; but some fresh detail is
added. It was said that the deity worshiped at Jerusalem was the head of
an ass, to which human sacrifices were offered, and that the Jews took
an oath to do no service for any Gentile. Apion, a man of some repute,
was the head of the Alexandrian Stoic school, and called "the toiler,"
because of his industry. He was, however, also known as "the
quarrelsome"[2] ([Greek: ho pleistonikeas]). Another critic of ancient
times says he was notorious for advertising his ideas (_in doctrinis
suis praedicandis venditator_)[3], and the Emperor Augustus declares
that he was the drum of his own fame (i.e. the blower of his own
trumpet). He was in fact a mixture of scholar and charlatan, as many of
his successors have been, the Houston Chamberlain of the first century.

[Footnote 1: Schuerer (iii. 503_ff_) has brought cogent reasons to show
that Molon is not the same as Apollonius, another Jew-baiter, with whom
he has often been identified.]

[Footnote 2: Clemens, Strom. i. 21, 101.]

[Footnote 3: Gallus, Noctes Atticae, v. 2.]

Apion wrote a history of Egypt in which his attack upon the Jews appears
to have been an episode,[1] but his prominence as an anti-Semite is
shown by the fact that he went as the spokesman of the Greek embassy to
Caligula on the memorable occasion when Philo was the champion of the
Jewish cause. In that capacity Philo prepared an elaborate apology for
his people, which he had not the opportunity to deliver; but it
contained in part an account of the religious sects, designed to show
their philosophical excellence, and it was known to the Church fathers
of the early centuries of the Christian era. Only small fragments of it
are preserved by Eusebius, and the rest of the apologetic writing of
Alexandria, which was in all probability very extensive, has
disappeared. Yet the Hellenistic-Jewish literature is colored throughout
by an apologetic purpose. Whether the work is a professedly historical
or ethical or philosophical treatise, the idea is always present of
representing Judaism as a sublime and a humanitarian doctrine, and of
refuting the calumnies of the Greek scribes. Thus, besides his elaborate
apology prepared for the Roman Emperor, Philo had written a popular
presentation of Judaism in the form of a Life of Moses, with appended
treatises on Humanity and Nobility, which was but a thinly-veiled work
of apologetics. Another part of the defensive literature took the form
of missionary propaganda under a heathen mask. The oracles of the Sibyl
and Orpheus, a forged history of Hecataeus, and monotheistic verses
foisted on the Greek poets, were but attempts to carry the war into the
enemy's territory. Further, there must have been a more direct
presentation of the Jewish cause by way of public lectures and popular
addresses in the synagogues. Nevertheless, the specific answers to the
charges advanced by the anti-Jewish scribblers are now to be found most
fully stated in Josephus. In his day the literary campaign against the
Jewish name was as remorseless as the military campaign that had
destroyed their political independence. The Romans, tolerant themselves
in religion, had long been intolerant of Jewish separatism and national
exclusiveness, and Cicero,[2] shortly after the capture of Jerusalem by
Pompey, had denounced their "barbarian superstition" in language that is
typical of the outlook of the Roman aristocracy. "Even when Jerusalem
was untouched, and the Jews were at peace with us, their religious
ceremonies ill accorded with the splendor of our Empire; still less
tolerable are they to-day, when the nation has shown, by taking up arms,
its attitude towards us, while the fact that it has been conquered and
reduced to servitude proves how much the gods care for it."

[Footnote 1: The idea, which is derived from the Church fathers, that he
wrote a separate [Greek: logos] against the Jews, appears to be based by
them on a misunderstanding of Ant. XVIII. viii. 1. Comp. Schuerer, _op.
cit._ iii. 541.]

[Footnote 2: Pro Flacco, 68.]

The later poets of the Augustan age, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid,
expressed a supercilious disdain for the Jewish customs of
Sabbath-keeping, etc., which were spreading even in the politest
circles. As the political conflict between the Romans and their stubborn
subjects became more pronounced, the Roman impatience of their obstinacy
increased. Seneca, writing after Palestine had been placed under a Roman
governor, speaks bitterly of "the accursed race whose practices have so
far prevailed that they have been received all over the world." Hating
the Jews as he did with the double hatred of a Roman aristocrat and a
Stoic philosopher, he is yet fain to admit that their religion is
diffused over the Empire, and anxious as he is to decry their
superstition, he reveals part of the reason of their success. "They at
least can give an explanation of their religious ceremonies, whereas the
pagan masses cannot say why they carry out their practices." The pagan
cults were languishing because of the frigidity of their forms and their
incapacity for providing men with an ideal or a discipline or a solace;
and the people turned to a living religion. The day had come that was
foretold by the prophet, when men shall catch hold of the skirts of a
Jew, saying, "We will go with you, because we have heard that God is
with you" (Zech. 8:23).

The bitterest and the most envenomed attacks on the Jews were written
after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the failure of Rome to break
the stubborn spirit of her conquered foe became apparent. The legions
could destroy Jerusalem; they could not uproot Judaism or even stay its
progress. The presence of thousands of Jewish captive slaves at Rome
accelerated indeed the march of conversion. Vespasian and Titus forebore
to take the title "Judaicus" after their triumph, lest it should be
taken to mean that they had Judaized. The speedy defection of Roman
citizens to the superstition of a conquered people was an insult, which,
added to the injury of their obstinate resistance, roused to fury the
remnants of the Roman conservatives. The entanglement of Titus with the
Jewish princess Berenice was the final outrage. The satiric poets
Martial and Juvenal inserted frequent ribald references to Jewish
customs; but the nature of their works precluded a serious criticism.
Martial was a master of flouts, jeers, and gibes, and Juvenal was a
soured and disappointed provincial, who delighted to hurl wild
reproaches. He declaimed against the passing away of the old manners of
Republican Rome, and for him the spread of Jewish habits was among the
surest signs of degeneracy. The poets, however, did not so much endeavor
to misrepresent as to ridicule the Jews and their converts. But the
classical exponent of Roman anti-Semitism is Tacitus, the historian who
wrote in the time of Nerva and Trajan, i.e. just after Josephus, and who
treated of the Jews both in his _Annals_, which were a history of the
last century, and in his _Histories_, which dealt with his own times. He
surpassed all his predecessors, Greek or Roman, in distortion and abuse,
and he combined the charges invented by the jealousy and rancor of Greek
sophists with the abuse of Jewish character induced by Imperial Roman
passion. His account cannot be mistaken for a sober judgment. By the
transparent combination of earlier, discredited sources, by blatant
inconsistencies, and by neglect of the authorities that would have
provided him with reliable information, he shows himself the partisan
pamphleteer. But the indictment is none the less illuminating. Mommsen
speaks of the solemn enmity which Tacitus cherishes to the section of
the human race "to whom everything pure is impure, and everything impure
is pure." Doubtless his hatred was founded on intense national pride,
but it was fed by his tendency to blacken and exaggerate. His audience
was composed, as Renan says, of "aristocrats of the race of English
Tories, who derived their strength from their very prejudices." Their
ideas about the Jewish people were as vague as those of the ordinary man
of to-day about the people of Thibet, and they were willing to believe
anything of them.

Tacitus gives several alternative accounts of the origin of the Jews.[1]
According to some they were fugitives from the Isle of Crete (deriving
their name from Mount Ida), who settled on the coast of Libya. According
to others they sprang from Egypt, and were driven out under their
captains Hierosolymus and Judas; while others stated that they were
Ethiopians whom fear and hatred obliged to change their habitation. He
supplies himself a fanciful account of the Exodus, tricked out with a
variety of misrepresentations of their observances, which are
ludicrously inconsistent with each other:

"They bless the image of that animal [the ass], by whose indication they
had escaped from their vagrant condition in the wilderness and quenched
their thirst. They abstain from swine's flesh as a memorial of the
miserable destruction which the mange brought on them. That they stole
the fruits of the earth, we have a proof in their unleavened bread. They
rest on the seventh day, because that day gave them rest from their
labors, and, affecting a lazy life, they are idle during every seventh
year. These rites, whatever their origin, are at least supported by
their antiquity.[2] Their other institutions are depraved and impure,
and prevailed by reason of their viciousness; for every vile fellow
despising the rites of his ancestors brought to them his contribution,
so that the Jewish commonwealth was augmented. The first lesson taught
to converts is to despise their gods, to renounce their country, and to
hold their parents, children, and brethren in utmost contempt: but still
they are at pains to increase and multiply, and esteem it unlawful to
kill any of their children. They regard as immortal the souls of those
who die in battle, or are put to death for their crimes.[3] Hence their
love of posterity and their contempt of death. They have no notion of
more than one Divine Being, who is only grasped by the mind. They deem
it profane to fashion images of gods out of perishable matter, and teach
that their Being is supreme and eternal, immutable and imperishable.
Accordingly, they erect no images in their cities, much less in their
temples, and they refuse to grant this kind of honor to kings or
emperors."

[Footnote 1: Hist. v. 2_ff_.]

[Footnote 2: Ch. lvii.]

[Footnote 3: This statement agrees remarkably with what Josephus puts
into the mouth of several of his speakers. See above, p. 114.]

The sage Pliny, who himself laughed at the crude paganism of his time,
could also point the finger of scorn at the Jews as "a people notorious
by their contempt of divine images." To the genuine Roman, the state
religion might not be true, but it was part of the civic life, and
therefore its rejection was unsocial and disloyal. Yet the account of
Tacitus contains several remarks which, in their author's despite,
reveal the moral superiority of the conquered over the conquerors. He
notes their national tenacity, their ready charity, their freedom from
infanticide, their conviction of the immortality of the soul, their
purely spiritual and monotheistic cult. Tacitus certainly wrote after
the works of Josephus had been published, so that the apology is not an
answer to him; but his methods of misstatement were anticipated at Rome
by a host of anti-Semitic writers. Though Josephus never mentions a
single Roman detractor of his people, and confines his reply to Greeks
who were long buried, it was doubtless against this class that he was
anxious to defend himself and his faith.

He declared at the end of the _Antiquities_ his intention to write three
books about "God and His essence, and about our laws," proposing,
perhaps, to imitate Philo's apology for Judaism, which was in three
parts. But the virulence of the calumny against Judaism induced him to
modify his plan and write a specific reply to the charges made against
the Jews. It was necessary to refute more concisely and more definitely
than he had done in his long historical works the false tales about the
Jewish past and the Jewish law that were circulated and believed in the
hostile Greco-Roman world. He directed himself more particularly to
uphold the antiquity of the Jews against those who denied their
historical claims and to disprove the charges leveled against the Jewish
religious ideas and legislation. These two subjects form the content of
the two books commonly known to us as _Against Apion_. Only the second,
however, deals with Apion's diatribe, and the current title is certainly
unauthentic. Origen,[1] Eusebius, and Hieronymus[2] refer to the first
book as _About the Antiquity of the Jews_, and Hieronymus adds the
description [Greek: antirraetikos logos], _A Refutation_. Eusebius
similarly[3] speaks of the second book as the Refutation of Apion the
grammarian. Porphyry calls it simply [Greek: pros tous Hellaenas], _The
Address to the Greeks_, and it is possible that Josephus so entitled his
work. It is noteworthy that he directed his pleading to the
Greek-speaking and not to the Latin public; the Greeks, he recognized,
were the source of the misrepresentations of his people, and, as Greek
was read by all cultured people in his day, in refuting them he would
incur less obloquy and attain his end equally well.

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