The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

authenticity of his genealogy in his defence of the Antiquities then it follows that Justus had
repudiated it in order to attack the Antiquities. From this it also becomes obvious why Josephus
emphasizes time and again that it is his priestly profession that enabled him to translate the
Holy Scriptures precisely (C. Ap. 1.54; Ant. 20.264; Life 9), and in a similar vein, Josephus
emphasizes his outstanding academic education thanks to which he excelled in his knowledge
of the law already as a lad (Life 9). Therefore Justus had contested the accurate
translation of the Holy Scriptures by Josephus, and if the latter, in turn, in a segment
originating from that time (Life 418) points out that after the fall of Jerusalem Titus permitted
him to bring along the Holy Scriptures upon his request, then this also belongs to the same
context: evidently Justus had objected that in Rome Josephus did not even have at his disposal
the holy books that he had supposedly translated.
The individual details, which Josephus provides in all these segments that were
recorded at the same time about his priestly descent, about his academic education and
knowledge of the law, about bringing along the Holy Scriptures to Rome, must of course be
received with the necessary precaution since a specific intention underlies them. But Justus’
attack interests us even more than [does] this defence by Josephus. How then does [Justus]
come to making the allegation that Josephus is not the chosen interpreter of the Holy
Scriptures, his translation is unreliable and is not based on a thorough knowledge of the
Scriptures, which were not [even] available to him in Rome? A glance at the Antiquities does
indicate that it can be traced either directly or indirectly by way of the Jewish-Hellenistic
academic school of Alexandria (Hölscher in Pauly-Wissowa, 1959) to the LXX, and that [272]
Josephus’ work contains basically nothing but what Hellenistic-Jewish scholarship had taught,
there is no doubt possible in this. Therefore when Justus nevertheless attacks the Antiquities on
account of its inadequate linguistic knowledge, then he is doing this because he is turning
himself into the mouthpiece of a movement that is directed against the LXX
and against Hellenistic Judaism. This discovery is certainly of incalculable significance;
for with this, Justus’ attack enters into a parallel with the activity of Jewish orthodoxy, newly
awakened right at that time, whose most important manifestation is the production of a new
Greek translation of the Bible by Aquila, which has the purpose of bestowing upon the Greekspeaking
Jews a Bible text that follows the sanctioned Hebrew text exactly. The Hebrew
authority is now recognized and valued to a far stricter degree, and even the Greek-speaking
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