The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

justification for Hyrcanus and Antipater. Therefore this idea is also missing in Ant. 50. And yet
an informative observation can be connected precisely here. When Aristobulus’ intentions to
attack were eliminated from the Antiquities, his friends’ dissuasion lost its sense: nevertheless,
the παρῄνουν οἱ φίλοι (War 135) persists in the παραινούντων πολλῶν (Ant. 50). Thus the
Antiquities was adjusted according to the War. And one more thing: according to the additions
to the Antiquities discussed in section 4 [above] it came down to a war between Aristobulus and
Pompey because the former had revolted behind the back of the Roman army. Nevertheless
Ant. 50 retains Aristobulus’ defence against Hyrcanus from War 135 ff. even though this matter,
according to the preceding [discussion], could have nothing more to do with the outbreak of
the war and therefore is completely redundant here: once again the pattern functions such
that in the Antiquities we can also detect such traces of the War as ought to have been
eliminated by a thorough consideration of the problem by Josephus; but he required these
themes in order to be able to carry on his narrative.
An additional small change in Josephus’ text leads us to another issue. In War 135
Aristobulus’ friends attempted to dissuade him from battle against Pompey by suggesting,
“that the strength of the Romans cannot be vanquished”. This thought, which should and
could have been placed in section 50, is missing from the Antiquities. Similarly eliminated from
Antiquities 58 is the thought expressed in War 142 according to which many “would be seized
with fear in the face of the outstanding discipline of the Romans” so that they wanted to open
the gates to Pompey. This two-fold deletion is no coincidence of course, rather it is
deliberately intended. We already know (cf. page 126 f.) that with his War Josephus was at the
service of the official policy of Rome and for this reason he expressed the idea that any
resistance against Rome was futile. We even derived the Aramaic War inevitably from this
basic trend. But now it is more meaningful to us that Josephus did not adopt such thoughts in
the Antiquities, but eliminated them on principle, i.e. Josephus detached himself from official
Roman [160] policy when he composed the Antiquities. If we just hold this in comparison to
the completely different attitude towards the Herodians, then we already see here before us
the lines of Josephus’ inner development. We cannot yet assemble these lines into a [unified]
picture, but we are gaining more and more material for the inner biography of the author,
which should allow us to improve our understanding of his personality as well as his works!
With respect to the deletions addressed [above], which the Antiquities undertook and
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