The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

in the original version signifies: Antipater stands in opposition to Aristobulus and fears for his
existence now that the latter had become king. He therefore tries to overthrow Aristobulus;
thus the line of thought: φίλος δέ τις Ὑρκανοῦ Ἰδουμαῖος Ἀντίπατρος ....... ἀλλοτρίως εἶχεν
πρὸς τὸν Ἀριστόβουλον καὶ // δεδιὼς μή τι πάθῃ διὰ τὸ πρὸς αὐτὸν μῖσος ἐπισυνιστᾷ (8a, 11b).
What stands between is an obvious insertion in this context whereby the final words of section
8 and the beginning of section 11 act as interfaces [Verzahnung], while sections 9 and 10 contain
the factual nucleus: this deals with the ancestry of the Herodians in a form that in fact
dismisses the claim of Nicolaus of Damascus that Antipater descends from the first Jews who
had come from Babylonia to Judaea, [while] alluding that Nicolaus had wished to flatter Herod
with such a claim (9). Section 10, on the other hand, deals with Antipater’s father, Antipas, and
his relations with the Arabians, Gazaites, and Ascalonites. For the evaluation of the
relationships among the sources this section is of very special significance: it has already been
shown externally that there is an expansion of the text in sections 9 - 10, [but] the observation
that a correction of the War goes hand in hand with this insertion seems even more important
to me. In the War it says of Antipater that he has “played the foremost role among the people
on account of his ancestors, his wealth, and his further strength”; the Antiquities indeed adopts
the “wealth” and the “strength”, whereas it deletes the ancestors from this context
exactly because [the Antiquities] maintains the view expressed in the insertion
that the Herodians do not descend from the first Jews. It ensues from this that the
tradition followed in the War is traced back to Nicolaus who is attacked in the Antiquities on
account of the comment, presented in the War but deleted in the Antiquities. Therefore, when
Josephus composed the Antiquities he interpreted the statement from the War, [namely] that
Antipater was the first [138] on account of his ancestors, in a deliberately terse manner in
order to construct on this basis a polemic against Nicolaus whom he had followed [when
writing] the War. To the well-known reasons, which have already been made from another
aspect for [identifying] Nicolaus as the source of the War, this one must be added as the more
convincing [one].
Another conclusion is even more important for our context: indeed, it follows directly
from the facts mentioned [above] that in the War there is by no means a condensed excerpt
from the same source that would have been reproduced in greater detail in the Antiquities;
rather the War [itself is the] underlying source of the Antiquities, which brings a new bias into
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