The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

that Schürer, along with others, should not have made the statement that it was upon
Hyrcanus’ orders that Antipater had brought up the troops to lend assistance. Either Nicolaus
must be accepted as the base consistently through to the end, and then one has as a result both
the right and the obligation to consider Hyrcanus merely as a company nameplate for
Antipater, or else Nicolaus’ absolutely one-sided view of matters must be emphasized from the
outset and his basic outlook must be rejected.
Certainly, this last path appears advisable to me, not really because of the specious
criticism of someone like Josephus, and even less so because of the “improvements” that he
brought to his source in [writing] the Antiquities, but rather because the additional sources
[Nebenquellen] contradict Nicolaus with respect to the crucial facts. Once it has been
established that Hyrcanus took part in the Egyptian expedition – and this cannot be disputed,
cf. page 169 – then the presentation of someone like Nicolaus, [171] who deliberately
remained silent about it, can be described only as one-sided and misleading (cf. page 152). It
also corresponds to this that Hyrcanus was in no way a dimwit, which would have to be the
case if Nicolaus were correct. And what are we to think of a [work of] historiography like that
of Nicolaus, which simply remains silent about the most important event of this time, [namely]
Hyrcanus’ appointment as ethnarch, because this information would be apt to diminish [the
importance of] Antipater’s position. Yet we shall pursue these matters no further; they lead us
too far away from our task of establishing Josephus’ development and they cannot be settled in
the form of short remarks. May objective research therefore take the result gained from
source analysis as the foundation for its examination! This conclusion, however, indicates here
too [that] the only genuine tradition exists in the War and in the quotations inserted into the
Antiquities. The Antiquities itself provides only a reinterpretation of the material, which is
worthless for history but has all the greater significance for Josephus’ development.
9. Herod and the elimination of the robbers
War 201 - 212 = Ant. 156 - 178
The reputation of Antipater and his sons Phasael and Herod, who were now reaching
adulthood, was continuing to increase, as the War could logically [relate in the] report
to such an extent that he comes to perceive his [own] actual λόγος within them.
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