The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

Ant. 167 transferred from War 209: οἳ κτείνειν ἀκρίτους οὐκ ἐφιᾶσιν), whereas in its essence
the War includes nothing about a court procedure and sees Herod’s crime in his having killed
men without royal command (beginning of 209), and therefore considers Herod’s action as an
offence against the king. The phrase ὃν εἰ μὴ βασιλεύς ἐστιν – οὐκ ἐφιᾶσιν (209), which fits
organically into the outlook of the Antiquities, therefore stands as a foreign entity within the
context of the War. Consequently, it was taken from the Antiquities and the War was expanded
subsequently under the influence of the Antiquities here as well. It is then in accordance with
this, too, that after the deletion of the questionable phrase, the complete parallel between War
and Antiquities in this passage emerges immediately; therefore when Josephus was recording
the Antiquities he did not read the questionable phrase [180] in the War; it was inserted only
subsequently.
Finally, a third [point]: the sentence in War 209 according to which the palace gossips
raise the accusation against the Herodians that to all intents and purposes they already felt
themselves to be lords who had deposed Hyrcanus since “Herod has killed so many people
against the Jewish law without any command from Hyrcanus” – this sentence is inherently
contradictory; because what are the words “against the Jewish law” [to mean]? Factually they
are incorrect; for we learn immediately that Jewish law prohibits every execution without
judgment by court, so even if the king or the ethnarch commands it. This question, however,
does not even interest the palace gossips at all; they wish only to prove that Herod has
arrogated Hyrcanus’ rights to himself by conducting executions without [the king’s] command.
The question of the legality of the executions is thus completely ruled out; on the other hand it
belongs inevitably within the circle of ideas of the Antiquities where this very problem is the
sole issue. Therefore the words παρὰ τὸν τῶν Ἰουδαίων νόμον were inserted on the basis of
the Antiquities at the same time as the final phrase in section 209 and the insertion at the end of
section 211 and beginning of section 212.
According to this, the circumstances here are just like those in the segments of the War
addressed on page 74. There we also inevitably established late additions to the War, which
originated from the shift in Josephus’ opinion; the same holds for our passage and therefore
our most important task is to identify the shift itself and the essence of its origins. Of course
this must yield a new building block for our attempt to sketch an outline of Josephus’ inner
development. Firstly, however, it is obvious that solely the War may be used as the basis for a
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