The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

can now also determine when this addition was inserted into the War. It has already frequently
been pointed out (cf. Luther, page 57 ff.) how odd it is that Josephus judges Agrippa
unfavourably in the last book of the Antiquities; if this fact were also applied in reverse in order
to determine Agrippa’s death, then the observation is absolutely correct [78] in principle. But
this unfavourable evaluation of Agrippa is so particularly important now because it stands in
contrast to the earlier period when Josephus, as we saw, falsified the story in honour of
Agrippa, and in contrast to the later period when Josephus greatly emphasized his own close
relations to Agrippa (Life 359 ff.) during his vehement attacks against Justus after the year 100.
If we place these facts into a purely external chronological order, then Josephus judged
Agrippa favourably in the seventies and after the year 100; in contrast, in the year 93/94 when
he finished the Antiquities, he stressed an antagonism towards Agrippa. The well-known
passage Ant. 16.187, that is unfortunately corrupted, also belongs within this antagonism. Here
Josephus admits that he is not afraid of arousing the ire of Herod’s descendants if he has
served the truth by his history; only one who writes in opposition to the Herodians, i.e.
Agrippa, expresses himself thus. The expansion War 2.602 - 608 is to be incorporated into this
[time] line; for it too is characterized [by the fact] that Josephus, in contrast to the past (War I)
and the future (Life 143), elaborates his enmity towards Agrippa (War 2.605); thus War 2.602 –
608 is in chronological agreement with the conclusion of the Antiquities.
In this regard, we remember that just at the time when Josephus had completed the
Antiquities he was contemplating the idea of writing the history of the war anew (cf. page 32). If
we therefore already had to introduce the question of whether Josephus perhaps had already
engaged in preparatory work for his new treatment of the war, then we now have found the
answer to this: War 2.602 - 608 is nothing other than a passage destined for the
planned reworking of the Jewish War, and it is for this reason that it agrees
entirely in its political leaning with the Antiquities, at the conclusion of which
Josephus once again embarked upon the narrative of the war. Consequently we do
not have before us the War in its original version any more than we have the [original]
Antiquities; on the contrary, Josephus has diversely [mannigfach] amended his works even after
their completion and first publication, thereby doing something similar [79] to Polybius who
repeatedly reformulated his great historical work afresh and thus only gradually fashioned it
into [the text] that we encounter [today]. All our manuscripts trace back to this autograph of
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