The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

authority of the government in Jerusalem; these [masses] combined people who were borne by
an intense Jewish nationalism and others for whom the unrest was merely a welcome excuse
for sweeping through regions [while] plundering and looting. Today’s widespread term
“national Bolshevism” would perhaps best characterize the nature of these people in
whom Josephus, just like those who had commissioned him, could see nothing other than
“robbers” at that time. The government in Jerusalem could not permit these masses to remain
active; the intense national opposition of the robbers to all things Roman threatened to bring
the Jews into a permanent conflict with Rome, just as the robbers had, in fact, already
repeatedly become the cause for the Romans to intervene with armed force whereby the
moderates and above all the government in Jerusalem suffered as well. The population of
Galilee had to be protected no less, and finally the government could not tolerate it that armed
bands were active in the land where the government itself did not have an army at its disposal;
it could be abolished at any moment by these robbers. This situation prompted the
government in Jerusalem to send Josephus to Galilee with [248] two other priests, so that they
[would] convince the robbers to lay down their arms (cf. page 103 ff.).
The legation of the three priests reached Galilee safely and attempted to act in
accordance with the mandate of the government in Jerusalem. They view the robbers as the
enemy and take the position that one must stand up for the Romans in the battle against the
robbers; a common interest united the Jewish government and the Roman state. It was all the
more understandable, however, that the robbers did not consider voluntarily laying down
their arms, therewith renouncing the means to power over which they alone had control;
under such circumstances Josephus’ two colleagues returned to Jerusalem, but Josephus,
whose unscrupulousness we first detect here, does not join them. He had called on John of
Gischala during his travels with the legation (Life 70 ff.) and had seen in him what position an
energetic leader could bring himself to once he abandoned the paths of legality; he was tickled
by a similar craving for power and it was simply a matter of finding an appropriate way of
seizing hold of the power.
Josephus was not shy. Wherever such bands of robbers were active, they were willing to
negotiate through money, and the money could be raised if the Galileans were promised
protection from the robbers in exchange. So the Galilees paid the fees to the robbers, who
thereupon, for their part, entered into dependence on Josephus and placed themselves at his
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