The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

they provide the material from which I endeavour to prove the correctness of my mode of
examination [Betrachtungsart]. Indeed, I shall go another step farther. The detailed discussions
about the “Dabaritta affair” (pages 57 to 79), for example, or about “John of Gischala in
Tiberias” (pages 79 to 90) etc. are justified far less by their subject matter, which may seem
fairly insignificant even to specialists, than by the treatment that we accorded them. And
therefore I might request that even the researchers, who are very far removed from the
subject matter per se, form an impression of my mode of examination [Betrachtungsart] from
the treatment of this [subject matter].
In comparison with any kind of dogmatic prejudice it must be stressed that the manner
and method according to which we are to examine a text may be gained only from the text
itself, and there is only one presupposition that we must make, [namely] that the author of a
text is a rational being similar to us ourselves. Without this psychological presupposition any
engagement with a text would certainly be an impossibility; however, no one will doubt, nor
has anyone doubted that this presupposition in truth is rightly constituted: whenever only
language or logic seemed violated, then either the tradition was deemed faulty and amended
according to the context, or an interpolation has been assumed or other interventions applied,
which were to refashion the text in such a way that a rational being is speaking to us. Without
a doubt, this practice is fully justified in countless cases, however, it is just as certain that these
minor methods specified here are not capable of refashioning the text to one that is reasonable
in all cases. I still remember from my student years how no work has exercised such a lasting
influence on me in this aspect as F. W. Ullrich’s Beiträge zur Erklärung des Thukydides. It endowed
me with the understanding [232] that it is not done with the external methods of textual
criticism, rather a genuine understanding of literary texts is made possible only when we bear
in mind their author’s conditions of life and creativity. A first-class scholarly feat is
represented by Ullrich’s evidence, which has not yet been refuted up to now, that in some
passages of Thucydides [the phrase] ὅδε ὁ πόλεμος refers to the Archidamian War, whereas
elsewhere it signifies the entire Peloponnesian War, and by the realization gained from this
[evidence, namely] that Thucydides continued to evolve in his views about the nature and
duration of the war he was describing. It very well continued to have an effect in Thucydidean
research, but on the other hand it has not been brought to fruition in the manner that it
should perforce have been.
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