The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

confront John with hostility. This did not change until the moment after the fellow envoys had
returned home when Josephus had entered into an agreement with the robbers, which was to
make him master of Galilee, and for that very reason he was to become John’s enemy.
Therefore it is quite natural that the strife broke out immediately afterwards: in
Tiberias John evidently noticed what the goal of Josephus’ dealings was, and it was only self
defence, after all, when he presented things as they were and advised defection from Josephus.
The latter identifies envy of Josephus’ accomplishments three times (85, 122, 189) as the main
reason that motivated John; and surely this was the very emotion that John, who was in power
and on his own home territory, felt towards Josephus, the intruder. In his defence, however,
Josephus significantly does not think in the remotest of perhaps referring to his official
mission from Jerusalem. John demands that they desert Josephus and devote themselves to
him ῾ἀποστάντας τῆς πρός με πίστεως προστίθεσθαι αὐτῷ 87, 123) and a corresponding wording
keeps recurring (158, 273, 333). Josephus speaks everywhere only about loyalty with respect to
his [own] person; he never expresses the concept that defection from him would perhaps be a
defection from [114] Jerusalem or from the Jewish cause, no matter how much this [concept]
would have been within the interests of his own cause. As a result it also becomes obvious that
Josephus did not in the slightest have more rights in Galilee than any other revolutionary who
has made himself autonomous there; he could not dare to touch this point after the departure
of his fellow envoys. John, however, could well take advantage of the situation: if Josephus, the
delegate from Jerusalem assigned to Galilee, instead of returning home like his fellow envoys,
remained in the land and in so doing now relied on the robbers whom he was on the contrary
supposed to disarm as ordered, thereby establishing dominance in Galilee, then this was
certainly an act that must have interested the government in Jerusalem. How significant it is
indeed again for the entire situation that John complained to Jerusalem about Josephus. If,
after the departure of his fellow envoys, Josephus had remained on in Galilee as a
representative of Jerusalem, then he would have had cause to complain about the rebellious
John; in truth, however, the latter is accusing the former because he was hoping for support
from Jerusalem against the man who had twisted the intentions of those who had
commissioned him into their complete opposite!
John stated in his claims that Josephus, who had wrongfully created a position of power
for himself, should be stripped of this [power] (190), and those in Jerusalem readily agreed
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