The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

Jews must yield to it. Aquila was active in the first third of the second century; his translation
met a need, which must have asserted itself earlier, i.e. right at that time when Justus began his
attack on the Antiquities that was based on the LXX. There is no longer any doubt: Justus has
made use of the mood of Jewish orthodoxy, which had become powerful, in order to [deliver a]
crushing attack on Josephus’ Antiquities.
And as a result our image of Josephus’ major opponent is also brought to life. Justus, a
resident of the strongly Hellenized town of Tiberias is, as was natural, imbued with Greek
education in his youth quite differently than was Josephus, and from that [time] onwards he
retained complete mastery of the Greek language until the end of his life. But Justus, who had
remained in Tiberias, experienced the transformations that Judaism underwent differently
than Josephus, who had defected from his people. The fierce opposition in which he stood to
Agrippa is well enough substantiated, and therefore he could have only scorn and ridicule for
the author of the War, but also for the [author] of the Antiquities; because what Josephus had
rendered was by no means in accordance with the view of the Jews; the Antiquities was thus
based on a foundation that Judaism no longer recognized, to say nothing of the War. Due to his
training in [273] Greek culture, Justus felt the inner vocation of presenting genuine Judaism in
its historical development to the pagan world. Unlike Josephus, he could write Greek; unlike
him, Justus, who had remained true to his people, knew what they wished to have recognized
as genuine tradition. The attack, which Justus directed against Josephus upon this basis, was
quite serious indeed.
Josephus can have no other rejoinder but that since his youth he has been an expert on
the law – we can believe this of him, but the law that he had learned in his youth was that of
Hellenistic Judaism; he was indeed a priest, – but since his capture he has lost all contact with
the priesthood of the Jews. He was living in Rome and was basking in the favour first of the
emperors and then of Epaphroditus. At the time when he was composing the Antiquities he had
not yet developed any sense for the far-reaching internal movements, which were to take hold
of the Jews around the turn of the century and stamp them for all time; indeed the reaction did
not begin to take hold until the first thirteen books of the Antiquities, which dealt primarily
with this, must have been completed, [which had happened] already quite a while before
93/94; so these books, which were composed in Rome, are still borne entirely by the spirit of
Hellenistic Judaism and the LXX. But when the work actually appeared it must have already
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