The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

abandoned (cf. pages 33 ff. and 270 ff.).
It is a pure coincidence that the inner development of Polybius displays a certain
parallel to this but it is no coincidence that the literary issue appears in both [authors] in a
similar way. It follows from our evidence that we do not possess the Antiquities as it was
completed and disseminated [in] 93/94 and that we do not have the War in the form in which it
was recorded between the years 75 and 79; and it goes without saying that we do not possess
the administrative report, which we actually had to recover first, in its original version; rather,
after all three of these works had been published 85 Josephus continued to work on them, to
reformulate and expand them, and we have received the stock of Josephus’ writings
[Schriftenbestand] in that form to which they had been ultimately brought by the author. We do
not possess some subsequent collection of works published by Josephus, rather we possess the
transcripts of those copies which had been lying upon Josephus’ writing table until after the
year 100 CE, so probably until his death.
[241] Here appears now once again a peculiarity of the publishing technique of antiquity; as a
start the author probably brings his work to a certain conclusion, but since the edition does
not represent a one-time fixed entity as [it does] by our printing [technique], the author was
intent on keeping his work up to date in order to be able to make it available for transcription
at any time. One must but clearly imagine the case of what [would have] happened if around 95
CE some person requested a copy of the War from Josephus. In such a case we would only be
able to refer [this person] to the printing [Druck] from the 70s, but Josephus had continued to
evolve and in the year 95 [would] offer his client a different version. The rigidity, which we
connect with the concept of “book”, is largely absent in ancient historiographic literature.
How does it actually happen to be then, that most of the greatest ancient historians only wrote
a single work? It is not that they exhausted themselves in the process [and stopped writing],
but rather they have incorporated their entire later development into the one work and
therefore have constantly reshaped this [work].
This development is influenced partly by inner processes, external politics etc. and
partly by the influx of new sources. When Eduard Meyer talked himself into [believing] that
85 Josephus attests to the earlier publication of the War (e.g. Life 361; Contra Apionem 1.50), since
he gave the writing to Vespasian to read; the [earlier publication] of the Antiquities follows
from its old conclusion 20.267 - 268. The administrative report was of course to be remitted to
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