The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

een a historical work with documents; for in such [a work], from which Josephus then
would have extracted the documents, these would have been distributed throughout the
historical narrative and naturally, if this source could also have made some error, then of
course traces of the historical narrative should have been preserved in Josephus, who took
such great pains to provide introductions to the documents. For this reason as well Nicolaus is
completely ruled out, apart from [the fact that] it is generally debatable to what extent the
literal reproduction of documents can be considered compatible with the style of Nicolaus’
historical works.
Josephus has thus found the documents purely as documents, and I now ask which
work of literature could have included a collection of pure documents without any connecting
text? There is absolutely nothing the like; an ancient book has a literary function, however this
is never fulfilled by a disjointed accumulation [227] of documents. The only collection of
documents from antiquity, about which we know something, Craterus’ ψηφισμάτων συναγωγῇ
offers an extensive connecting text (cf. Krech, de Crateri ψηφισμάτων συναγωγῇ, Dissertation,
Greifswald, 1888, page 6); and wherever documents have been produced for decisions of legal
issues, just as their historical-judicial interpretation forms the main reason for their quotation
so also [it forms] the main subject matter for examination – this is known by everyone who has
acquainted himself with the resolution of unsettled disputes by means of inscriptions, and
furthermore lies so much at the heart of the matter that it hardly requires specific evidence. 81
As a result, however, the possibility of deriving Josephus’ knowledge from some sort of [legal]
case records is also eliminated, and through this consideration Willrich’s conjecture is settled
in the same way as has already occurred with that of Niese.
Josephus could find plain documents, without commentary, virtually only in archives,
or obtain them from such places, and therefore there can be no doubt that he himself was
actually the first basically to have produced the material, which was to provide his work with
an incomparable importance for us; thus whatever Josephus pronounces about his documents,
[i.e.] that he obtained them from the archives, is completely substantiated by the manner in
which he deals with them. In the critical passages he explains that even the kings of Asia and
Europe had acclaimed the Jews in documents but he feared that many [people] in their enmity
towards the Jews would not trust such documents since they are not [to be found] everywhere
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