Josephus by Norman Bentwich

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[Footnote 1: Orig. C. Cels. i. 14.]

[Footnote 2: De Viris Illustr. 13.]

[Footnote 3: H.E. III. viii. 2.]

The first point that Josephus seeks to make good in his apology is the
antiquity of the Hebrew people and the historical character of their
Scriptures. In the Greco-Roman world, which had lost confidence in
itself, and looked for inspiration to the past, age was a title to
respectability, and it was the aim of the Jewish apologist to explain
away the silence of the Greeks. For the certificate of the Hellenic
historians was in the Hellenistic world the most convincing mark of
genuineness.

"By my works on the Antiquity of the Jews--thus Josephus begins--I have
proved that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity and had a
distinct existence. Those Antiquities contain the history of five
thousand years, and are derived from our sacred books, but are
translated by me into the Greek tongue."

Josephus loosely represents that the whole of the _Antiquities_ is based
on the Bible, and reckons the period of history at nearly a thousand
years more than it covered.

"But since I observe that many people give ear to the reproaches that
are laid against us by those who bear us ill-will, and will not believe
what I have written concerning the antiquity of our nation, while they
take it for a plain sign that our nation is of late date because it is
not so much as vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historians
among the Greeks, I therefore have thought myself under an obligation to
write somewhat briefly about these subjects, in order to convict those
who reproach us of spite and deliberate falsehood and to correct the
ignorance of others, and withal to instruct all those who are desirous
of knowing the truth of what great antiquity we really are. As for the
witnesses whom I shall produce for the proof of what I say, they shall
be such as are esteemed by the Greeks themselves to be of the greatest
reputation for truth and the most skilful in the knowledge of all
antiquity. I will also show that those who have written so reproachfully
and falsely about us are to be convicted by what they have themselves
written to the contrary, and I shall endeavor to give an account of the
reasons why it has happened that a great number of Greeks have not made
mention of our nation in their histories."

Acting on the principle that the best defense is attack, Josephus starts
by turning on the Greeks themselves and discrediting their antiquity.
They were a mushroom people, or at least their records were modern, and
not to be compared in age with the records of the Phoenicians, the
Hebrews, or the Babylonians. Comparative sciences had flourished in the
cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, and in the light of them the Greek
claim to exclusive wisdom had been shattered. Josephus had made himself
master of the current knowledge of the subject. The Greeks learnt their
letters from the Phoenicians, they have no record more ancient than the
Homeric poems, and even Homer did not leave his poems in writing,[1]
while their earliest historians lived but shortly before the Persian
expedition into Greece, and their earliest philosophers, Pythagoras and
Thales, learnt what they knew from Egyptians and Chaldeans. Having shown
the lateness and Oriental origin of Greek culture, Josephus accuses
Greek writers of unreliability, as is manifest by their mutual
disagreement. He makes a great show of learning on the subject and uses
his material effectively. Doubtless he found the topic ready to hand in
some predecessor, and it is somewhat ironical that a Josephus should
throw stones at a Thucydides on the score of inaccuracy.

[Footnote 1: It is interesting that this casual statement of Josephus
was one of the starting points of modern Homeric criticism.]

The reason for the want of authority in the Greek historians--continues
Josephus--is to be found in the fact that the Greeks in early times took
no care to preserve public records of their transactions, which afforded
those who afterwards would write about them scope for making mistakes
and displaying invention: conditions which favored literary art, but
marred historical accuracy. Those who were the most zealous to write
history were more anxious to demonstrate that they could write well than
to discover the truth.

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.]

Finally he adduces passages from various Greek writers, to show that the
Jews were not entirely unknown to the Hellenes before Alexander's
conquests. Josephus had no doubt predecessors among the Hellenistic
Jewish litterateurs in the search for testimony, as well as successors
among the Christian apologists; but his collection has alone survived,
and has become invaluable to modern scholars, who have ploughed the same
field for a different purpose. Authority is brought forward to show that
Pythagoras had connection with the Hebrews, and Herodotus, it is argued,
referred to the Jews as circumcised Syrians.[1] More apposite is a
passage quoted from Clearchus, a pupil of Aristotle, about a discussion
which his master had with a Jew of Soli, "who was Greek not only in
language but in thought." The genuineness of this excerpt has been
questioned, but without good reason. Aristotle's school had a scientific
interest in the Jews as in other peoples that had come under Greek sway
through Alexander's conquests.

[Footnote 1: Comp. Ant. VIII. x. 3.]

Josephus then sets out some very eulogistic passages about his people,
purporting to be from Hecataeus of Abdera, which are very much to his
taste and his purpose. Unfortunately, however, they are too good to be
true, and modern criticism has established that, while the genuine
Hecataeus, an historian who wrote at the end of the fourth century
B.C.E., did insert in his work an account of Jerusalem and the Jews, the
glowing testimonials which Josephus adduces are from forged books
devised by Jews to their own glory. A passage of a less favorable tone,
and of which the genuineness is therefore not open to suspicion, is
quoted from Agatharchides, a Seleucid historian. Finally, with an
incidental mention of a half-dozen Hellenistic writers that have made
distinct reference to the Jewish people, and of three Jewish writers,
Demetrius, the elder Philo, and Eupolemus, "who have not greatly missed
the truth about our affairs," Josephus closes his evidence as to the
antiquity of his nation.[1] Possibly he did not realize that his last
three witnesses were of his own race, and it is not improbable that this
string of names was to him also a string of names culled from Alexander
Polyhistor or a similar authority.

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 23.]

The latter part of the first book is devoted to the refutation of the
anti-Jewish diatribes of several Greeks, and starts off with a few
commonplaces upon the topic, to the effect that every great nation
incurs the jealousy and ill-will of others. "The Egyptians," says
Josephus, "were the first to cast reproaches upon us, and in order to
please them, some others undertook to pervert the truth. The causes of
their enmity are their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the
difference of their religious ideas."[1] Josephus deals with Manetho's
description of the going-out from Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate
that "he trifles and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the
Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, and insists upon
its absurdity and the lack of consistency in the details. He offers
ingenuously as a proof of the falsity of the allegation that Moses was a
leper the Mosaic legislation about lepers. "How could it be supposed,"
he asks, "that Moses should ordain such laws against himself, to his own
reproach and damage?" Chaeremon is unworthy of reply, because his
account, though equally scurrilous, is inconsistent with that of
Manetho. But the story of Lysimachus, a writer of the same genus, is
more critically examined and found wanting, because it gives no
explanation of the origin of the Hebrews. Lysimachus derived the name
Jerusalem from the Greek Hierosylen--to commit sacrilege--the Hebrews,
according to his story, owing their settlement to the plunder of
temples; and Josephus points out triumphantly that that idea is not
expressed by the same word and name among the Jews and Greeks. But, to
vary a saying of Doctor Johnson, this section of Josephus must be read
for the quotations, for if one reads it for the argument of either
assailant or apologist, one would shoot oneself.

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 24.]

The second book of the apology, which is a continuation of the first,
opens with an elaborate refutation of Apion. Josephus questions whether
he should take the trouble to confute the scurrilous stories of the
Alexandrian grammarian, "which are all abuse and vulgarity"; but because
many are pleased to pick up mendacious fictions, he thinks it better not
to leave the charges without an answer. He disposes first of Apion's
tales about Moses and the Exodus, which are of the same character as
those of Manetho and Chaeremon. Loaded abuse and unmeasured invective
color the refutation, but Apion apparently deserved it. We may take, as
a fair specimen of his veracity, the statement that the Hebrews reached
Palestine six days after they left Egypt and rested on the seventh day,
which they called Sabbath, because of some disease from which they
suffered, and of which the Egyptian name was Sabbaton. Apion had in
particular attacked the Alexandrian Jews, and Josephus takes the
opportunity of enlarging on the privileged position of his people, not
only in the Egyptian capital, but in the other Hellenistic cities where
they had been settled.[1] He elaborates and amplifies what he had stated
on this subject in the _Antiquities_, and adds a short account of the
miraculous delivery of the Egyptian Jews during the short-lived
persecution of Ptolemy Physcon, which is recorded more fully and with
some variation of detail in the so-called Third Book of the Maccabees.
In reply to Apion's charge, that the Jews show a lack of civic spirit
because they do not worship the same gods as the Alexandrians, Josephus
launches out into an explanation of their conception of God, describes
their abhorrence of idolatry, and deals also with their refusal to set
up in their temples the image of the Emperor. "But at the same time they
are willing," he says, "to pay honors to great men and to offer
sacrifices in their name." He deals also, in a digression, with
calumnies derived from Posidonius and Melon about the worship of an ass
in the sanctuary at Jerusalem.

[Footnote 1: This part of the book, it may be noted, has only been
preserved in the Latin version; the Greek original has been lost.]

Apion had invented a detailed story of ritual murder to justify
Antiochus Epiphanes for his spoliation of the Temple. The origin of this
charge is instructive of the methods of a classical anti-Semite. There
was, in the innermost sanctuary, a stone[1] on which the blood of the
burnt offering was sprinkled by the high priest on the Day of Atonement.
It was known as the [Hebrew: Even Shtiah] and tradition said that the
ark of the covenant had rested on it. Mystery centered around it, and
the Greek scribes imagined that it was the object of worship. Now, the
Greek word for a stone was Onos, which likewise meant an ass, and it was
probably on the strength of this blunder that prejudice for centuries
accused Jews and Christians of worshiping an ass' head. Josephus brings
proof of the emptiness of the charge, and retorts that Apion had himself
the heart of an ass; and then, describing the ritual of the Temple,
insists that there was no secret mystery about it. It gives a touch of
pathos that he speaks as if the Temple services were still being carried
out, whether because he was copying a source written before the
destruction, or because he deliberately disregarded that event. Apion,
like Cicero, had taunted the Jews on account of their political
subjection, which proved, he argued, that their laws were not just nor
their religion true. Josephus meets the charge--which in the
materialistic thinking of the Roman world was hard to answer--by the not
very happy plea that the Egyptians and Greeks had suffered a like
fortune. So, too, he meets the gibe that the Jews do not eat pork, by
saying that the Egyptian priests abstain likewise. He omits in both
cases the true religious answer, which would probably not have appealed
to his public.

[Footnote 1: Yer. Yoma, v. 2.]

At this point the reply to the Alexandrian anti-Semite comes to an end,
and the rest of the book comprises a defense of the Jewish legislation,
"which is intended not as an eulogy but as an apology." The broad aim is
to show that the Law inculcates humanity and piety; but Josephus, before
setting himself to this, again labors to point out that it is
pre-eminent in antiquity over any of the Greek codes. This done, he
gives a summary of the principles of Judaism, which is unlike anything
else he wrote in its masterly grasp of the spirit of the religion and in
its philosophical attitude. So great indeed is the contrast between this
epilogue and the bald summary of the Mosaic laws in the _Antiquities_
that it is safe to say that Josephus had for his later work lighted on a
fresh and more inspired source. His presentation has the regular
characteristic of the Alexandrian school, an insistence on the universal
and philanthropic elements of the Mosaic law; and it is likely that he
had before him either Philo's work on the Life of Moses, or another
work, which his predecessor had used. It matters little that there are
differences of detail between his and Philo's interpretations: the
manner and the general purport are the same, and the manner is not the
usual manner of Josephus, and altogether different from the treatment in
the _Antiquities_.

He lays down with great clearness the dominant features of the Mosaic
constitution. It is a theocracy, i.e. the state depends on God. The
passage in which he makes good this principle is a striking piece of
reasoning in comparative religion, worthy to be quoted in full:

"Now there are innumerable differences in the particular customs and
laws that hold among all mankind, which a man may briefly reduce under
the following heads: Some legislators have permitted their governments
to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, and others
under a republican form; but our legislator had no regard to any of
these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained
expression, may be termed a Theocracy, by ascribing the authority and
the power to God, and by persuading all the people to have a regard to
Him as the Author of all the good things enjoyed either in common by all
mankind or by each one in particular, and of all that they themselves
obtain by praying to Him in their greatest difficulties. He informed
them that it was impossible to escape God's observation, either in any
of our outward actions or in any of our inward thoughts. Moreover he
represented God as un-begotten and immutable through all eternity,
superior to all mortal conceptions in form, and though known to us by
His power, yet unknown to us as to His essence. I do not now explain how
these notions of God are in harmony with the sentiments of the wisest
among the Greeks. However, their sages testify with great assurance that
these notions are just and agreeable to the divine nature; for
Pythagoras and Anaxagoras and Plato and the Stoic philosophers that
succeeded them, and almost all the rest profess the same sentiments, and
had the same notions of the nature of God; yet durst not these men
disclose those true notions to more than a few, because the body of the
people were prejudiced beforehand with other opinions. But our
legislator, whose actions harmonized with his laws, did not only prevail
with those who were his contemporaries to accept these notions, but so
firmly imprinted this faith in God upon all their posterity that it
could never be removed. The reason why the constitution of our
legislation was ever better directed than other legislations to the
utility of all is this: that Moses did not make religion a part of
virtue, but he ordained other virtues to be a part of religion--I mean
justice, and fortitude, and temperance, and a universal agreement of the
members of the community with one another. All our actions and studies
have a reference to piety towards God, for he hath left none of these in
suspense or undetermined. There are two ways of coming at any sort of
learning and a moral conduct of life: the one is by instruction in
words, the other by practical exercises. Now, other lawgivers have
separated these two ways in their opinions, and, choosing the one which
best pleased each of them, neglected the other. Thus did the
Lacedemonians and the Cretans teach by practical exercises, but not by
words; while the Athenians and almost all the other Greeks made laws
about what was to be done, or left undone, but had no regard to
exercising them thereto in practice.

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