The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

and to compose his own presentation of the events in which Josephus’ activity with all its
animosity against Rome would be presented to the reader. Josephus, who was living in Rome at
the time, found this so distressing and was anticipating such unpleasant consequences for
himself that he decided to counter the charges in his self-portrayal. Although he had already
concealed much in the War, he now sought more than ever to deny everything that could
convey an anti-Roman attitude on his part. Needless to say, he did not succeed in this attempt.
Admittedly, it is true that Justus’ work has in some ways exercised an influence on the
formulation of Josephus’ Life, but in no way does this explain its peculiar condition; for Justus
had not only provided his presentation of the history prior to the war in a form that differed
from Josephus and that was repudiated by the latter in the Life, but he also recounts the actual
history of the war differently from Josephus who at times emphatically stresses the sieges of
Jotapata and Jerusalem as examples of their different views (Life 357). In spite of this, Josephus
did not expose these events to a new presentation in his self-portrayal, which instead stops
precisely at the point where the war erupted on a grand scale, in order to make room for a
reference to the War (Life 412). So for this very reason the factual content of Justus’ work
cannot be of decisive importance for the structure of the self-portrayal. But another point is
more important.
If it is stressed time and again that Josephus’ status in Rome would have been damaged
by Justus’ attack, then it should be pointed out that anyone there who wished to know it, had
knowledge of the fact that Josephus had been captured as leader of the Jewish army in
Jotapata, that he took full credit for having been in command of the [9] serious battle in his
history of the war to which he also explicitly refers in the Life, and that he owed his liberation
from imprisonment uniquely to his personal relationship with the Flavians, who were fully
aware of his past. And now we are expected to understand that 30 years after the conclusion of
these events, Josephus’ status could have been damaged and not by the revelation of the
possibly significant question of whether he had participated in the conflict against Rome in a
leading position – for this he frequently admits in the War and in the Life without dispute –, but
rather by the revelation of an problem that bears no relevance to Josephus’ status with respect
to Rome, namely, whether he had led the rebellion in the one town, Tiberias; for, as a matter of
fact, Josephus’ factual argument against Justus hinges exclusively on this point.
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