The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

Sanhedrin has not been transmitted to us for this time [period], all the same, the government
assuredly lay in the hands of an authoritative body that was configured in the manner of the
future Sanhedrin. With the overthrow of the aristocracy by Caesar this authoritative body also
had to vanish, and thus the narration in the Antiquities that Herod had been accused
before the Sanhedrin on account of his killing the robbers is, in fact, what
source analysis has taught us, [namely] a historical construction by Josephus!
Underlying this construction is the one fundamentally new idea that the robbers were
to be killed only after condemnation by the Sanhedrin. This does not represent some sort of
intensification of the attitude against Herod; after all, he was equally guilty whether he had
encroached upon the authority of Hyrcanus’ position (War) or that of the Sanhedrin
(Antiquities). Therefore, was the Sanhedrin perhaps to be elevated in comparison to Hyrcanus
and emphasized in its later signification? The downright pathetic role that the Sanhedrin plays
in the narrative renders this idea somewhat improbable. We [can] deduce the true reason from
another significant new feature: the mothers of those who were killed by Herod besiege
Hyrcanus’ temple every day [with the demand] that the murderer of their sons be punished,
and Hyrcanus gives in only to them (Ant. 168), and no longer to the palace gossips as in the
War. But now, if the mothers of the “robbers” enter the temple of Jerusalem every day and if
Hyrcanus hears their pleas, then it is no longer, as once [before], a matter of riff-raff, but
rather of Jews and, in fact, of Jewish patriots. Therefore the Sanhedrin must also intervene
now; for according to rights that were certainly later in effect, a Jew was to be condemned only
by the Sanhedrin. The real reason for the intrusion of the Sanhedrin into the
stories about Herod and Hyrcanus lies in the desire to elevate the robbers and
to emphasize their patriotic Jewish nature, and the desire to reflect the powers of the
Sanhedrin, as they existed in the present, back into the time of Herod is only of secondary
importance. The reworking of our passage, understood in this way, stands within another
context into which [184] it cannot be placed by us until later; but this much is already obvious
now, [namely] that the Antiquities in comparison to the War demonstrates here as well a
progression towards the Jewish national feeling, which indeed goes inevitably hand in hand
with a severe distortion of the historical tradition.
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