The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

he truly sang the praises of Jewish courage; but it is understandable that it could have
nevertheless stood thus in the historical works. More likely, however, this is a pious
misrepresentation on the part of Josephus. The second addition Ant. 77 - 78 also induced an
intensification of the Jewish-patriotic convictions. Here Josephus summarizes once again the
evil that arose through the conflict between the two brothers: for this reason we had to lose
our freedom, for this reason we had to surrender the land that we had taken from the Syrians,
for this reason the Romans took more than 10,000 talents from us within a short period of
time, for this reason the kingdom which previously belonged to the noble high priests had to
become the plunder of common people. This is the most acrimonious attack against Antipater,
Herod and his family; just as the polemic against Nicolaus (section 9) was borne by the idea of
Antipater’s lowly origin, so [also] the same idea of the unworthiness of the Herodians pervades
the pessimistic reflections in 77 - 78. The addition War 2.602 - 608, for example, is to be
explained by this same attitude and this same period of time. And we shall encounter similar
[163] ideas time and again: Josephus has withdrawn completely from the Herodians, and
therefore he had to twist the view of the War, which was based on Nicolaus, into its opposite
for the Antiquities. And naturally the intensification of Jewish national pride and the emphasis
of the wrong that the Romans dealt the Jews go hand in hand along with this. Josephus, who
had falsified history in honour of Agrippa and the Romans in his War, finds the way back to his
people. How did it come about, however, that our contemporary “source criticism”, which sees
an addition from a foreign source in these impassioned words of Josephus, “judges according
to the first person of speech?”
The desire to spare Jewish feelings has caused Josephus to make some additional slight
changes, which admittedly mean something only to those who understand Josephus’ inner
development. In War 156 Josephus states that Pompey had freed all the towns located in the
midst of the land from the Jews, insofar as these [Jews] had not previously destroyed them. In
Ant. 76 Josephus deletes not only the assertion that these towns had been freed from the
domination of the Jews (ἀφῆκεν ἐλευθέρας takes the place of ἠλευθέρωσεν δ’ἀπ’ αὐτῶν), but
also the information that the other towns had been destroyed by the Jews. A χωρὶς τῶν
κατεσκαμμένων (Ant. 76), which is hardly to be understood without the underlying text must
be replaced by the explicit phrase ὅσας μὴ φθάσαντες κατέσκαψαν (War 156).
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