The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

this fact, to be sure, but devalues it by adjoining the assertion that he acquired the position
through bribery (180); and instead, the thought from the War, which deals with the love that
the people felt for Herod and with his gradual increase in power (War 213), is omitted.
But here as well, the source of the Antiquities was not the War in the form that we have
before us [today]; for [the War] itself was once again subjected to expansions under the
influence of the Antiquities. We detect them immediately wherever the trial, the δίκη, is
mentioned. The words κατ’ ὀργὴν τῆς περὶ τὴν δίκην ἀπειλῆς (214), however, are not to be
identified as an addition only for this reason, but also because they proceed from the
presupposition that Hyrcanus only threatened Herod, and then allowed him to run. But since
this presupposition was made only on the basis of the Antiquities (cf. page 178 ff.), this group of
words must therefore be abandoned. As a matter of fact, Herod’s revenge strike required no
further motivation at all as long as Josephus did not enter upon the idea that Hyrcanus
basically supported Herod against the Sanhedrin: this thought, however, is suited only to the
Antiquities. Thus section 214 originally read: καὶ οὐ διήμαρτεν τῆς οἰήσεως· ὁ γὰρ Ἡρώδης //
στρατιὰν ἀθροίσας ἐπὶ Ἱεροσολύμων ἦγεν καταλύσων τὸν Ὑρκανόν.
A similar expansion in the transition from sections 214 to 215 is connected to the one
[just] identified [above]; the summons before the court and the release secured by Hyrcanus
are mentioned here as well, and this idea also pervades the subsequent remarks of Antipater,
who in this [passage] thinks that Hyrcanus really “subjected” Herod only “to a shadow of a
violation”. This is no longer [186] the Hyrcanus of the War, who stands in conflict to Herod,
who summons his opponent before his tribunal and from whom Herod is able to escape only
with the help of troops while Sextus Caesar covered for him – rather it is the weak pushover,
Hyrcanus, who very well grants his acquiescence to the summons before the Sanhedrin, but
immediately helps the [man] summoned in his flight; this is the Hyrcanus of the Antiquities.
Therefore the old text of the War, which, as we now know, constitutes the only [work] of value
to source criticism, then reads as follows, subsequent to the segment that has just been
rendered [above]: κἂν ἔφθη τοῦτο ποιήσας, εἰ μὴ προεξελθόντες ὅ τε πατὴρ καὶ ὁ ἀδελφὸς
ἔκλασαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ὁρμὴν παρακαλοῦντες καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπειλῇ καὶ ἀνατάσει μόνῃ μετρῆσαι τὴν
ἄμυναν, φείσασθαι δὲ τοὺ βασιλέως ὑφ’ οὗ μέχρι τοσαύτης δυνάμεως προῆλθεν· // πείθεται
τούτοις Ἡρώδης ὑπολαβὼν εἰς τὰς ἐλπίδας αὔταρκες εἶναι καὶ τὸ τὴν ἰσχὺν ἐπιδείξασθαι τῷ
ἔθνει.
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