The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

tribes mentioned who had demolished Gischala, defeats them, and then rebuilds his hometown
much more beautifully while fortifying it at the same time with walls for the more distant
future.
Only an author who fundamentally approves of the actions he is reporting can relate
[them] in this manner: John appears as a prudent man who thinks calmly; he acts only in
defence against bad elements and thereby does the best for his fatherland. And this
description is to be the introduction to 70 ff., where we immediately encounter John in the
way Josephus constantly characterized the man further on: νεωτέρων ὀρεγόμενος πραγμάτων
καὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων! There is no possibility of any doubt here: at the time when he
recorded sections 43 - 45 Josephus was regarding the personality of John of Gischala entirely
differently from when he was composing the rest of the Life and, as I [42] would like to add
already here, the War. The same assembling of a force of troops by John is portrayed in Life 45
as the necessary defence of the inhabitants of Gischala against the attacks of the neighbouring
tribes, while in War 2.587it is made out to be the formation of a mob of Spartacists
[Spartakistenhaufen]: ⊗ John first plied the trade of robber on his own, afterwards he brought
together an ever increasing number of dare-devils. Only those people were chosen who were
distinguished by physical strength, presence of mind and experience in war, until the mob
finally included 400 men: fugitive riff-raff from Tyros and the surrounding area with whom he
plundered and pillaged all of Galilee. With these last words (War 2.589) he designates the very
same incident that he had celebrated in Life 45 as the victory of John over the plunderers of
Gischala.
It is therefore not really the interdependence of a group of facts that moved Josephus
to paint such a congenial picture of John in Life 43 - 45 — his War, which had been completed
long before, did provide a downright opposite assessment which gave the added benefit that it
corresponded with the view in the rest of the Life — , rather, conversely, Josephus completely
reinterpreted the old presentation of the War when composing Life 43 - 45 because he now held
a different relationship to John. This certainly made the discrepancy between Life 43 - 45 and
the rest of the Life so complete that the currently applied mode of criticism, if it were even to
⊗ Ed.: Laqueur refers to the 1918/19 Spartacist rebellion in Germany (named for Spartacus),
which was quickly put down. The surviving members of the Spartacist League became the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
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