The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

appreciating the inner development of historians and, along with this, the possibility of a
varying presentation of the events by one and the same person: it is the realization that indeed
an element of uncertainty is hereby introduced into that source criticism, which wishes to
draw conclusions about the books used from extant works. Let us take for example the
[hypothetical] case that Josephus’ War were lost to us, but had been [236] rewritten by some
other extant anonymous author. Up to now, one would categorically resist ascribing this
anonymous author’s view to Josephus since one glance at the Life would seem to display the
impossibility of such a supposition; and yet the fact would rightly exist. I do not deny that
apparently definite results of source criticism could be overthrown by our findings, and that
on the other hand unexpected new possibilities may open – I think of Appian, for example. The
historian – regarded as a source too – has lost the rigidity that has been [considered] inherent
[to his profession] up to now; he must not [necessarily], but may have had different views of
matters at different points in time.
But this does not hold only for the individual historian, it holds for each individual
work of history – and this is the second finding, which is even more momentous. In precisely
those three works by Josephus, which we have dealt with in greater depth, we have
determined that it is only through reworking that they have assumed the form in which they
appear in our manuscripts. The self-portrayal came into existence only later on the basis of a
text that had lain in Josephus’ writing desk for decades and then had even undergone a first
expansion at that point when the War was being constructed based upon it. This result is
immutably established and no torrent of phrases will be able to assert itself against such a
discovery, which has been drawn from serious source criticism. Research will perhaps also
settle for this more easily; [nobody] will wish to challenge [the concept of] reworkings of older
manuscripts for new purposes and functions, and indeed [the case] here is actually that the Life
as such is a uniform new book, which has simply taken over an extensive old manuscript and
enriched it with a beginning and a conclusion as well as some additions in the middle.
Nevertheless, this case can already make us aware of a phenomenon, which is somewhat
remarkable to us even by itself, and which will gain in importance more than ever later on:
Josephus adhered to his old manuscript downright slavishly when he was formulating the Life.
A writer, who nowadays wished to address the same subject matter after thirty years, but from
a different point of view, would probably take out his old draft too, but he would still adapt it
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