The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

to his new [237] views in such a way that a source critic [Quellenkritiker] would perhaps
suspect that an old draft was remodelled here but it would be virtually impossible to identify
exactly the junctures where old meets new in almost all cases. A self-contained whole would
thus be produced; but Josephus does not pursue this objective; had he intended to create a new
work, then he could have done something similar in the Life as he actually did in the War,
where he faced his old text with such freedom that a new one arose. So in the Life Josephus
intended only to republish the text of the old administrative report therefore he furnished it
with additions, whereas the War represents a new work, which was based upon the
administrative report as [its] source.
To be sure, this procedure adopted by Josephus in his Life hardly has any analogy in
modern literary practice; analogies are found more frequently in antiquity and this is what
matters to us above all. As is well known, Xenophon used the materials of his Hellenica in order
to compose a panegyric of Agesilaus, which for long stretches is nothing more than a literal
borrowing from the Hellenica. To be sure, Xenophon’s political viewpoint remained the same,
yet stylistically the Agesilaus falls apart since the introduction is formed in a far more
rhetorical manner than the narrative, which was copied verbatim from the Hellenica. If someone
were to demand that I answer the question why Josephus depends on his administrative report
to such a slavish degree in his Life that he transfers it verbatim and only provides it with a new
introduction and conclusion and supplements the middle respectively, then I would counter
with the question, why then did Xenophon do the same thing?
We owe an equally apposite parallel to Demosthenes. A few months after he had
delivered his speech “On the Chersonese”, this Attic orator and pamphleteer did not shrink from
replicating the second part of the Chersonese speech in his 4th Philippic verbatim and furnishing
it only with a new introduction and some additions here and there. There can be no doubt here
either that what was actually occupying Demosthenes during the publication of 4 Philippic was
[contained in] the substance of the added segments, i.e. above all, his attitude towards the
theorika. Nevertheless, he [238] retained the old text of the Chersonese speech, which had
been delivered under other circumstances, and the consequence is that 4 Philippic has acquired
an unclear structure, which has also been fully grasped in its peculiarity by A. Körte, to whom
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