The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus: A Biographical Investigation

to be constructed with the plunder (128).
In fact, it is not difficult to determine the exact extent of the insertion into the Life that
has just been identified. We read the same thought almost literally In 136 on the one hand, and
in 145 on the other:
136. ἀναλαβών τινας ὁπλίτα ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν
ἐν ᾗ κατηγόμην ἔσπευδεν ὡς ἀναιρήσων
145. ἀναλαβόντες ἑξακοσίους ὁπλίτας ἦκον
ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἔνθα διέτριβον
ἐμπρήσοντες αὐτήν
Thus, similarly to Ant. 20.259 (cf. page 4) and Life 62 (cf. footnote page 46), Josephus has
applied duplications here in the manner of Polybius in order to implant an insertion into the
original text. This is no stylistic artifice, rather [it is] an accommodation that is forced upon
any author when he must insert a new element into an old context. If the whole text is not to
be entirely reworked then there is nothing else to be done other than to establish ties that
uniformly connect the insertion with text surrounding it, [both] before and after. Conversely,
these duplications constitute an important resource for us [in determining] the margins of the
insertions, which may of course be established as such only on the basis of factual
observations.
Our finding will be corroborated in a surprising manner. That is to say, if we engage in
reconstructing the old text as it read before the expansion generated under the influence of
the War, then it can only be a question now of identifying the transition from one duplication
to the next, in general. It is certain that in 137 the words ἰδὼν τὴν ἐπιδρομὴν τῶν πολιτῶν
belong to the expansion; [66] because according to the immediately preceding section 136 it is
indeed not the townsmen who rush to Josephus’ house, but the hoplites. But one truly ought
not to corrupt [verschlechteren] the [textual] transmission by changing πολιτῶν to ὁπλιτῶν,
because according to the War, which is the source for the insertion, it is actually the townsmen
who swarm in front of Josephus’ house. From the discrepancy between ὁπλίτας in 136 and
πολιτῶν in 137 it now follows, conversely, that 136 belongs to the old administrative report.
And now it also becomes immediately clear why Josephus had to corrupt the narrative of the
War by the insertion of hoplites into the Life: the sentence [stating] that hoplites were
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