Introduction
In the prologue to the Jewish War, Josephus, justifying his decision to write a contemporary history, takes a moment to scorn those who presume to write histories of the remote past (BJ 1.13–14):
These [Greek historians] might claim superiority in eloquence, but they are deficient in their conception of history. They write about Assyrians and Medes, as if these topics had been recounted with insufficient skill by the authors of former ages. But in reality, they are as far inferior to the early authors in the power of their writing as they are in the soundness of their understanding.
This is, of course, rhetorical positioning, Josephus staking out his territory and defining what kind of history the Jewish War is going to be. We should not, then, hold against him the fact that the next historical work which he would produce, the massive Jewish Antiquities, would be precisely the kind of history which is decried here, a longue durée account of his people's past, extending all the way back to the creation of the universe, much of it based on pre-existing literary narratives written much closer to the events described (and, indeed, prominently featuring Assyrians and Medes).
Josephus was not the only ancient historical author who attempted to write such a sweeping work, and the Jewish Antiquities, at twenty books, is not among the longest of such known compositions; nonetheless, it is one of the most ambitious and extensive works of classical historiography to survive entire, offering a magisterial, if somewhat rambling and uneven, sweep through (on Josephus’ own reckoning) five thousand years of history (AJ 1.13; C.Ap 1.1). The tight Thucydidean economy which characterized the War is gone. This is a different kind of history, with different models and different ambitions, and different rules apply.
The work can be confidently dated, as Josephus himself concludes it by noting that the present time is ‘the thirteenth year of the reign of Domitian Caesar and the fifty-sixth of my life’, in other words 93–4 ce (AJ 20.267). The reigning emperor at the time, Titus’ younger brother Domitian, did not have as strong a connection to Josephus as his two predecessors: he had been in his late teens during the Judaean rebellion and had stayed in Rome. Perhaps as a consequence of this relative distance, the Antiquities, unlike the War, is not addressed to the Flavian dynasty.Footnote 1 Its addressee, rather, is one Epaphroditus (AJ 1.8–9), a wealthy patron of learning, probably a freedperson with an interest in Judaism (the same man would also be the dedicatee of the later Against Apion; C.Ap 1.1).
The broad structure of the work is as clear as its date. The narrative is Temple-centric, with Book 10 culminating in the destruction of the First Temple, and Book 20 ending just prior to the outbreak of the revolt that led to the destruction of the Second, making the Antiquities a work of two halves. The hinge which connects the two halves is the figure of the prophet Daniel, who dominates the end of Book 10 (10.186–281), a man who lived through the destruction of the First Temple and explicitly foresaw the destruction of the Second (10.276). This Temple-centric structuring suggests tendencies of historical interpretation which we have already seen in evidence in the Jewish War: it implies recurrence in history, and it specifically parallels the destruction of the First Temple by Babylon with the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome.Footnote 2
The first half is predominantly an exercise in reworking the Hebrew Bible, with occasional help from non-biblical sources, but Josephus’ book divisions do not usually correspond to the biblical books, giving this history its own, Josephan rather than biblical, architecture. Books 1–4 correspond to the Torah and describe the primordial history of the world and the history of Abraham's descendants down to the death of Moses. Book 5 narrates the Israelites’ conquest of the land of Canaan. Books 6–10 focus on the emergence and fate of the monarchy and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, up to the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian captivity. Thus, the first half of this block of books describes the establishment of the nation, and the second its fate and eventual dissolution and destruction. Book 11 picks up in the Persian period, describing the reconstruction of the Temple and the restoration of the people, up to the conquest of Alexander. Book 12 discusses the liberation movement under the Maccabees. Books 13–20 follow the fortunes of the people under Hasmonaean, Herodian, and Roman rule up to 66 ce. Thus, the material related in Books 12–20 contains significant overlap with the first two books of the Jewish War, which chart the period prior to the Jewish Revolt extending back to the Maccabees, although the Antiquities versions of this material tend to be more expansive, reflecting the greater scope of the later work.
One key difference between Josephus’ practice in his two major works relates to the citation of sources. In the War, he follows Thucydidean precedent in not openly discussing sources. The Antiquities, by contrast, is extremely loquacious and transparent about its sources, reflecting the conventions of larger-scale Graeco-Roman histories. We should not assume that Josephus openly acknowledges every source he used; nonetheless, his new-found habit of citation allows us to identify at least some of the material which he knew and used when putting his magnum opus together. Unsurprisingly, the major sources on which he relies in the first half of the work are the books of the bible (he seems to have known both Hebrew and Greek versions).Footnote 3 Indeed, he repeatedly claims (e.g. AJ 1.5; 1.17; 10.281) that the first part of his history is a ‘translation’ of the Hebrew Bible, neither adding nor taking away from the text, although the work is clearly more creative and interventionist than this formulation might suggest.Footnote 4 Biblical material is often restructured (including by inserting elements from the prophetic books into the chronologically appropriate part of the historical material); embarrassing elements are omitted; and material from other sources (Greek historians and the so-called ‘barbarian’ historians of the Hellenistic period, above all the Babylonian author Berossus and the Egyptian Manetho) is quoted and inserted, either to support the biblical narrative or to be corrected or refuted.Footnote 5 Commentary in the authorial voice (not a feature of the biblical historical books) further ensures that what we get communicates a strongly Josephan perspective, distinct from the biblical sources. Parabiblical legendary material is also introduced, whether from oral or literary sources. Some of the sources of the legendary material survive (for instance, the additions to the Greek version of Esther), while others do not (such as the traditions of Moses as a military commander in Ethiopia).Footnote 6
Thus, the biblical half of the Antiquities follows identifiable principal sources, the historical books of the bible, but regularly supplements, expands, and checks this material with reference to diverse additional sources. Though Josephus’ source material is unusual in the Graeco-Roman historiographical tradition, this procedure – relying principally for factual content on one source per section but reworking and supplementing it extensively – was not, and it seems that the same procedure was followed by a number of Greek and Roman historians who attempted longue durée histories, such as Livy.Footnote 7
Some of Josephus’ principal sources for the second half have also survived. Book 12 is dominated by sections mainly based on two important Jewish texts of the Hellenistic period, though reworked and supplemented: the Letter of Aristeas (AJ 12.11–118) and 1 Maccabees (12.237–13.220). Principal sources for the later books do not survive, but Josephus frequently cites Greek authors (especially Strabo, Polybius, and Nicolaus) for his Hellenistic history in Books 13 and 14. The history of Nicolaus of Damascus was very likely his principal source for the reign of Herod in Books 15–17 (Nicolaus lived at Herod's court, and seems to have devoted significant space to that king in his lost universal history).Footnote 8 There are signs of engagement with Latin, as well as Greek, historiography: Josephus cites Livy in Book 14 (14.68), and his account of Caligula's assassination in Book 19 (19.1–113) very likely goes back to lost works of Roman historiography.Footnote 9 He also quotes Hellenistic and Roman decrees, letters, and documents (some genuine, some of questionable authenticity) with some regularity: he may have used compilations of copies of such material.Footnote 10 Finally, his own earlier Jewish War can perhaps count as a source for the latter half of the Antiquities, given that so much of the same ground is gone over in Books 1 and 2 of that work.Footnote 11 It seems likely that, despite the lack of biblical sources for the later books, Josephus follows fundamentally the same procedure here as in Books 1–10, with a single major source for each narrative section which is extensively reworked, transformed, editorialized, and supplemented from elsewhere.
Some interpreters have seen the second half of the Antiquities as hack-work. Fluctuations in Josephus’ Greek style, together with a proliferation of unfulfilled cross-references, have led some to conclude that Antiquities 12–20 is a cobbled-together patchwork of passages taken almost verbatim from now-lost sources and stitched together rather uncritically by Josephus.Footnote 12 However, such a reconstruction of the author's practice seems uncharitable. In the large stretch of the Antiquities where it is possible for us to compare Josephus with his sources, we do not find uncritical verbatim copying and pasting; rather, we encounter a thoroughgoing and thoughtful process of reinterpreting, rewriting, and reframing, transforming heterogenous sources into a unified work with a singular vision. The intellectual framework of the Antiquities remains coherent and singular in the second half, and it seems unfair to imagine that, at the very moment when Josephus’ sources become unrecoverable to us, he changed his authorial practice and became an uncritical plagiarist. Thus, the modern consensus is that, though based on multiple earlier texts, the Antiquities reworks them significantly and ought to be attributed, emphatically, to Josephus and not to his sources.Footnote 13
Although the Antiquities was a very distinctive project, Josephus seems to have been conscious of parallels with several precursor texts and traditions. Most obviously, his repeated presentation of the work as a faithful translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek makes the first half of the Antiquities a parallel endeavour to the Septuagint. Indeed, Josephus acknowledges this parallel early in the preface, when discussing his own quest for evidence that Gentile readers might be interested in this story (1.10–12):
I discovered that the second Ptolemy, a king who was particularly passionate about education and the collection of books, was exceedingly enthusiastic about translating our law and its associated political constitution into the Greek language. At the same time, [the high priest] Eleazar, who was second in excellence to none of our high priests, did not begrudge that king this favour: he would surely have refused if it were not in keeping with our established traditions to share our good things with others. And so I decided that it was fitting for me to follow the example of Eleazar's generosity, believing that there are still today many people like Ptolemy who are eager for knowledge.
Later, too, when recounting the story of the Septuagint's translation, he conspicuously uses the same language that he applies to his own project, particularly noting that nothing was added to or subtracted from the text (12.11–118, esp. 108).
Greek historiography also presented precedents and parallels for this project. The tradition of writing local histories, focused chronicles of particular peoples or communities, was very well established in the Greek world, and Josephus indeed shows good knowledge of Greek local historiography in the Against Apion (C.Ap 1.15–18).Footnote 14 Specific, and highly relevant, variants of local historiography were the autoethnographic histories of certain ‘barbarian’ authors written for the Greek-speaking world, a tradition which was initiated in the early Hellenistic period by Berossus and Manetho.Footnote 15 Josephus quotes frequently and extensively from these authors and, at least in Against Apion, presents himself as someone working in the same tradition as them, although the Antiquities was significantly more ambitious in scale than either of their works (both Berossus and Manetho told the histories of their peoples in three books).Footnote 16
A succession of Jewish authors whose works now only survive in fragments (with the exception of the works of Jason of Cyrene, preserved in epitomated form as 2 Maccabees) had written Jewish history and chronography in the style of Greek historiography prior to Josephus: Eupolemus, Artapanus, Demetrius the Chronographer, and others.Footnote 17 Josephus does not cite these authors, but he may well have known of them, and perhaps may even have envisioned the Jewish Antiquities as the greatest monument and achievement of this genre (it is considerably greater in scope than any known prior work of Hellenistic Jewish historiography). Finally, large-scale totalizing histories of Rome were becoming common in Josephus’ time, best represented today by the works of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and may have furnished an example to an author attempting a similarly large-scale history of a different people. Dionysius, in particular, has been cited as a significant model for Josephus.Footnote 18 His Roman Antiquities has a similar title to Josephus’ work: both authors identified their works as ἀρχαιολογία (usually rendered as ‘Antiquities’ in English), histories of origins and early times.Footnote 19 Like the Jewish Antiquities, Dionysius’ work was divided into twenty books. Nevertheless, close and precise parallels between the two texts are hard to find, and Josephus never refers to Dionysius, despite his frequent citation habits in his work, potentially casting doubt on the idea of a close relationship.
Finally, some reflection on the purpose of this huge undertaking may be in order. In the Book 1 preface, Josephus offers us two motives for writing the work (1.5, 14–15):
I decided to attempt the present work because I believe that it will evidently benefit the Greeks to read it, since it will encompass our entire ancient history and describe the arrangement of our political constitution, translated directly from the Hebrew writings.
Overall, anyone who reads this work will learn above all that people who zealously attend to the will of God and do not dare to transgress excellent established laws will meet with unbelievable success in all things, and will be blessed with happiness by the deity. Conversely, for those who deviate from accurately following his laws, the possible becomes impossible, and whatever good thing they envision and try to achieve will result in unmitigated catastrophe.
The first quotation envisages the Antiquities as an act of service to a Greek-speaking audience, which could, of course, be complex and broad, including Greeks, Jews, Romans, and many peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The service comes, it seems, from the work's status as a translation of the ‘Hebrew writings’: thus, the Antiquities aims to make accessible to Greek speakers historical records not in their language. We can relate this to the epistemological landscape of historiography and ethnography in the Roman world, a world in which knowledge about ‘barbarian’ peoples was always predominantly furnished to the ‘educated’ public by Greek or Greek-style scholarship. Josephus, then, promises his readers access to an unknown version of Jewish history, and perhaps, by implication, correction of erroneous Greek notions in circulation.Footnote 20 Moreover, as we will soon see, he takes steps to ensure that his account conforms to Graeco-Roman historiographical conventions, and to make the principal figures of Jewish history seem appealing according to Graeco-Roman standards. This reinforces the impression that one of the motivating objectives of the Antiquities is to sell non-Jewish readers on a positive (and unfamiliar) version of Jewish history, rooted in Jewish sacred texts.
The second passage suggests a theological-moral purpose here, too. Those who are obedient to God's will and to tradition prosper; those who are not, fail. Throughout the work, Josephus will depict God rewarding virtue and punishing vice; however, such universalizing tendencies are qualified by his insistence on the importance of Jewish law, and by occasional claims that God has a special care for Israel.Footnote 21 A number of Josephus’ interventions into the biblical narrative suppress material which may call God's justice into question, implying that he took this moral dimension seriously. Jewish readers may have found additional comfort in Josephus’ validation of the importance of Torah, as well as the implications of the recurrent patterns he identifies in history, particularly the Rome–Babylon parallelism (as he also did in the Jewish War). In summary, then, the Jewish Antiquities sets out to present its readers with a version of Jewish history derived from Jewish, rather than Greek, sources. However, aware that this version of history will seem novel and perhaps unappealing to non-Jewish readers, Josephus shapes the narrative to render it attractive to those familiar with Greek historiography. At the same time, he insists on a just intelligence guiding history, rewarding virtue, and punishing vice, while reassuring Jewish readers that their laws are vitally important and that their people's present troubles are a mere blip in God's eternal plan.
‘Remember you were slaves’: from creation to destruction
To a putative Graeco-Roman reader of the Antiquities, one of Josephus’ most puzzling authorial decisions may well have been the starting point. He chooses to begin ‘in the beginning’, with a paraphrase of the Genesis creation account (1.27–36). Initiating a work of history with cosmogonic material was not at all typical in Graeco-Roman historiography. It may, indeed, be a signal of allegiance to the ‘barbarian’ model of autoethnographic history: Berossus began his works with his people's creation myths, as did the later Phoenician historian Philo of Byblos, perhaps making the inclusion of such content a hallmark of ‘barbarian’ historiography.Footnote 22 Josephus then proceeds to recount the rest of the Genesis primordial history, the history of early humanity, and other tales of early mythic history, including the stories of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, many of which would have been unfamiliar to non-Jewish readers, and which often contain moments of narrative absurdity that may have made them difficult to credit. Nowhere does Josephus explicitly mark a difference between ‘myth’ and ‘history’ in his work: the whole account derives, as we are repeatedly reminded, from ancient records which are unimpeachably accurate. Nevertheless, in so confidently presenting material which so many of his intended readers would likely have found outlandish, he creates significant difficulties for his work.
Many of those difficulties would have derived from the established ‘knowledge’ of putative non-Jewish readers. Greek antiquarian scholarship, a long-standing tradition before Josephus’ time, had created reconstructions of early human history, and the prestige that attached to Greek scholarship under Rome ensured that those reconstructions had travelled far and become authoritative.Footnote 23 Greek authors demonstrate an awareness that ‘barbarians’ have their own stories about early history, and some of them (notably Herodotus) demonstrate genuine curiosity about those tales, but these ‘barbarian’ histories did not enjoy equal prestige or authority in Josephus’ intellectual world.Footnote 24 The Greek tradition was derived, ultimately, from Greek myth, from the meticulous correlation and comparison of different local traditions, often rationalized, to produce tales of early humanity which were decidedly Hellenocentric, based on Greek stories and Greek heroes. Foreign peoples came to be incorporated into these schemes by having their origins traced to figures from the Greek repertoire: the Persians were seen as descendants of Perseus, and the Medes as originating with Medus, son of Medea.Footnote 25 Authoritative historiographical wisdom thus wrote the local traditions of ‘barbarians’ out of their own histories. Already, the Jewish Antiquities, with its strong insistence on the reliability of ‘barbarian’ stories, is emerging as awkward, prickly, and non-conformist, pushing back against the understanding that prevailed in ‘respectable’ intellectual culture.
Although Josephus does not explicitly distinguish between early and later periods of history, there are manifold signs in the first books of the Antiquities that he did recognize the problem that the ‘mythic’ primordial stretches represent, and that he took steps to overcome possible resistance on the part of his readers. Several times in Book 1 when recounting the creation and primordial history, Josephus introduces his account with the phrase ‘Moses says’ or similar (1.26, 33, 34, 37), a qualification which he nowhere else makes when discussing material derived from biblical books, and perhaps a strategy of distancing, partially disclaiming responsibility for improbable content. There is also a persistent interest in corroboration, particularly in citing non-Jewish authors (both Greek and ‘barbarian’) to support more fanciful narratives: he cites the Third Sibylline Oracle in support of the Tower of Babel (1.118); he calls up Herodotus’ testimony on the conquests of Shishak (8.260–2); he refers to Greek accounts of the sea parting for Alexander in support of Exodus (2.347–8). Material evidence is likewise pressed into service, with Josephus drawing attention to objects or epigraphic documents which survive from early history ‘to this day’; sometimes such evidence is further verified by autopsy, as when Josephus claims to have seen the pillar of salt which used to be Lot's wife (1.203; see also e.g. 1.70–1; 10.264–5).
Josephus also, periodically, concludes a particularly far-fetched story by stating that he is simply presenting material as he found it, and that he leaves it up to the reader to decide whether or not it is true (e.g. 1.108; 4.158; 10.281). This is an adoption of Herodotean practice, but there is an important difference. In Herodotus, such statements are usually a mark of genuine authorial aporia, an indication of the uncertainties of reconstructing remote history and the limits of what is knowable.Footnote 26 In Josephus, by contrast, they generally follow passages where the author has explicitly argued for the credibility of his narrative: rather than rendering the account's credibility an open question, they mark moments when the author has tried to stack the deck in favour of belief. The following quotation, about the age of Noah at his death, illustrates this procedure well (1.104–8):
After the flood, Noah lived for 350 years, enjoying a blessed life, and died at 950. I hope that nobody, comparing the lifespans of primordial people with those of today and the brief span of years which we live, will conclude that these records are false on the grounds that they could never have reached such advanced ages because nobody today lives so long. We should remember, firstly, that they were particularly dear to the deity, created by God himself. In addition, their diet was healthier, so it was natural that they should live so long…I should add that these claims are corroborated by all historians of antiquity, Greeks or barbarians. Manetho the chronicler of Egypt; Berossus, who compiled Babylonian history; and Mochus, Hestiaeus, and the Egyptian Hieronymus, all of whom wrote histories of the Phoenicians, all agree on this matter. Hesiod, Hecataeus, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, Ephorus, and Nicolaus report that the ancients lived to be one thousand years old. But let everyone come to their own conclusions on this matter.
Thus Josephus preserves the Herodotean form, but the force is entirely different. Rather than a genuine indication of uncertainty or a sign of authorial open-mindedness, his use of this formula, coming as it does after a long litany of one-sided arguments and corroborating testimony, simply serves to make the reader who chooses not to believe look obtuse.
Overcoming readers’ potential resistance to outlandish material is not the only preoccupation evident in Josephus’ treatment of biblical narrative. Presentation of character, too, is changed. Biblical historiography handled characterization differently from classical historiography; some of the key figures of biblical history could be seen to lack virtues which would have been highly regarded by many Greek and Roman readers. And so Josephus reshapes major characters as he finds them in his sources, in ways which seem tailored to the expectations of contemporary readers educated in Greek historiography. The American scholar Louis Feldman devoted much of his career to meticulous and revealing studies of Josephus’ characters in comparison with their biblical versions – essential reading nowadays for anyone engaging with this topic.Footnote 27 I do not have space here to do justice to this extensive field of scholarship, but one example – the example, indeed, of probably the most significant figure in Jewish ‘history’ – can well illustrate Josephus’ approach to reimagining these characters for his age.
Right at the outset of the Antiquities, Josephus strongly insists upon Moses’ status as a philosopher (1.18–21):
But, since almost everything derives from wisdom of our lawgiver Moses, it is necessary for me to include a brief preface about him, in case readers should be confused about why much of this work, which supposedly describes our constitution and history, concerns natural philosophy. It should be understood that Moses considered it essential above all for anyone who wishes to lead their own life wisely and also lay down laws for others to study the nature of God. Following this, having subjected God's nature to rational scrutiny, the lawgiver's role must be to imitate as far as possible that most excellent model and strive to live up to it. Without this understanding, the lawgiver will not be able to form a correct conception. Nothing that he might write about virtue would convince his readers, unless they were first taught that God, as the universal father and master who sees all things, bestows happiness on those who follow his laws, but sends bitter misfortunes on those who deviate from virtuous ways.
Several things leap out from this encomiastic portrait: Josephus’ tendency to present Torah as a political ‘constitution’ (found throughout his works); his decision to present Moses as a lawgiver, rather than as the recipient of laws from God; the implicit favourable comparison with lawgivers famous from Greek history and legend; but, above all, the strong insistence on Moses’ philosophical insights.Footnote 28 This plays into those pre-existing positive Gentile readings of Judaism which stressed its philosophical nature.Footnote 29
Later, in Book 2, during the actual account of Moses’ life, Josephus includes some extra-biblical legends which concern Moses’ military experience. The Ethiopians were pressing urgently on Pharaoh's borders; the Egyptians consulted oracles, through which God instructed them to use Moses as their general; the Egyptians happily did so, believing that he would be killed in action, such were the odds he was facing. But Moses conducted himself with extraordinary competence and skill, successfully routing the marauding enemy and delivering Egypt from dire peril (2.238–53). Moses is also described as a gifted speaker, another essential quality of leadership in Graeco-Roman eyes, as Josephus repeatedly insists (3.13–14; 4.328), even going so far as to suppress biblical references to Moses’ speech impediment to make him seem more assured and impressive as an orator.Footnote 30
These transformations of the biblical sources serve to imbue Moses with qualities which he does not obviously possess in Exodus: philosophical insights, military expertise, and rhetorical flair. Such endowments were highly prized by Graeco-Roman readers. In order to persuade those readers that the Jews were a worthy people, and that their ‘constitution’ was a worthy constitution, Josephus needed to make their ancestor and lawgiver an admirable figure according to contemporary standards. At the same time, Greek-accultured Judaean readers are reassured that Moses can stand comparison with heroic figures of Greek antiquity, even by Greek standards. These carefully calculated transformations of his source allowed Josephus to do all this, and the final result is a Moses who is significantly different from the version in the biblical original.
It is not only the presentation of characters which Josephus tailors to the tastes and expectations of Greek historiography, but the way that stories are told, too. A look at how he handles the biblical tale of Korah's revolt against Moses illuminates his practice.Footnote 31 Chapter 16 of the biblical book of Numbers describes how a prominent Levite, Korah, together with his associates Dathan and Abiram, complained against Moses after he appointed his brother, Aaron, to the high priesthood. The whole community is holy, they argue, so who is Moses to set himself and his family above the rest? Korah's allies also complain that Moses had led the Israelites out into the wilderness and failed to bring them into the promised ‘land of milk and honey’. In response, Moses suggests that Korah and his partisans, alongside Aaron, should bring censors before the Lord, who will indicate which of them is holy. When they do this, the Lord appears to the Israelites and, at Moses’ urging, God makes the ground open up and swallow Korah and his supporters before the whole assembly (Num 16:31–4). In a slightly awkward narrative inconsistency immediately after this, we are subsequently informed that fire fell down upon the rebels (Num 16:35), giving them two different modes of death. The whole episode reinforces Moses’ authority and closeness to God, and the correctness of his appointment of Aaron and his descendants to the priesthood.
This story is expansively retold, with substantial elaborations, in Antiquities 4, and the nature of those elaborations illustrates Josephus’ approach to biblical materials throughout the work (4.11–58). Terminology with Thucydidean resonances, and echoing the terminology of the Jewish War, proliferates: στάσις (‘unparalleled among Greeks and barbarians’) occurs frequently in the account, as well as the language of tyranny, disturbance, and disorder.Footnote 32 The question of motivation is interesting. In Numbers, there are essentially two motives for Korah's sedition: that Moses is unjustly seeking to set himself up over a people who are all holy and beloved of God (Korah's associates even claim that the endgame is to ‘enslave’ the Israelites), and the complaints of Korah's followers against Moses’ apparently ineffective leadership of the people in the wilderness (Num 16:3, 14–16). In the Antiquities, the rebels’ motivation is predominantly explored through rhetoric, both in a long oration, partly in direct speech and partly in oratio obliqua, delivered by Korah himself, and also in a fiery collective oration attributed to the people who have been incited by Korah (AJ 4.15–19, 22–3). Korah claims that Moses is seeking glory for himself in the feigned name of God; that his bestowing of the priesthood on Aaron by diktat rather than through democratic consultation, like a tyrant, was in defiance of Moses’ own laws; that the people must punish Moses before his power grows out of hand; and that more suitable candidates for the high priesthood (tellingly including Korah himself) exist among them. After allowing Korah to outline these grievances in an oration which draws liberally on the repertoire of Greek rhetoric, Josephus makes the following observation in the authorial voice: ‘In saying these things, Korah wanted to create the impression that he was solicitous for the welfare of the people, but really his plan was to have the high priestly office transferred to himself by the popular assembly’ (4.20).
This interjection reflects two important elements of Josephus’ practice when elaborating biblical narrative: the introduction of direct authorial comment, and a psychologizing instinct to explore his characters’ inner drives and emotions. It also, of course, reinforces the already-established picture of Korah as a Thucydidean demagogue, or indeed a character analogous to the ‘tyrants’ of the Jewish War. This characterization is underlined by the introduction of Korah, in which it is emphasized that he was a gifted speaker, especially so when addressing the δῆμος (‘popular assembly’) (4.14). Thus, he is a rabble-rouser, posturing, Cleon-like, as a ‘watchdog of the people’, while secretly driven by entirely selfish motivations. In addition to Greek parallels, the close of the sentence, about Korah aiming to have ‘the high priestly office transferred to himself by the popular assembly’, may have reminded some readers of sinister parallels from the history of the late Roman Republic, such as Marius usurping Metellus’ command against Jugurtha through a vote of the popular assembly.Footnote 33 There is nothing in Josephus’ biblical source to parallel this complex, layered, and allusive portrait of rebel motivations.
Nor is there any real biblical precedent for the elaborate rhetoric in Korah's speech. Indeed, one of the most striking differences between Numbers and the Antiquities is just how ‘rhetorical’ the latter is. Josephus enlivens the episode with four orations: one by Korah (4.22–3), one by his followers (4.14–16), and two by Moses (4.25–35, 40–50), more than satisfying Graeco-Roman historiography's generic expectation of rhetorical set-pieces. Josephus also, characteristically, streamlines narrative difficulties in his original, specifically the aforementioned inconsistency on how the rebels died. In his version, the ground opens up and swallows those associated with Dathan and Abiram, while fire consumes Korah and his followers (4.51–2, 54–6). Thus, Josephus preserves both biblical narratives of the deaths of the rebels, while drawing a distinction which eradicates the inconsistency.
We are left with a narrative which is clearly and recognizably based on that in Numbers, but which has been thoroughly transformed for a new audience into a tale which, despite its bizarre denouement, conforms broadly to the way in which revolts and rebellions were often handled in Greek historiography, including in Josephus’ own earlier work, where a demagogue and would-be tyrant incites the wider populace, for predominantly selfish motivations, to reject the established leadership. These transformations of the biblical source – the addition of authorial comment and sententiae, the smoothing of narrative inconsistency, the insertion or radical expansion of speeches, and the heightened attention to psychology and motivation – are typical, and illustrative of the ways in which Josephus makes this sort of material more palatable to Greek historiographical norms throughout the biblical portion of the Antiquities.
It remains to reflect on how to interpret these transformations. Traditionally (as in the works of Feldman), such modifications of biblical sources would be read as signs of Josephus aiming to reach out to Gentile readers by reshaping biblical material to their tastes. However, this ought to be problematized. As was shown in Chapter 1, by the time of Josephus, Jews in the Mediterranean had been living in a world of Greek cultural hegemony for centuries.Footnote 34 The types of narrative transformations we have encountered in this chapter may very well have been appreciated and enjoyed by Greek-educated and Greek-accultured Jewish readers who knew the ‘classics’ as well as Josephus, just as much as by any envisioned Gentile audience. It would perhaps, then, be mistaken to interpret Josephus’ Greek authorial touches solely through the lens of ‘outreach’: instead of a manipulative attempt to make the bible palatable to non-Jews, what we may well have in the Antiquities is an authentic Hellenistic Jewish reading of ancient texts which aimed to make them speak to both Jews and Gentiles in a changed world.
Chant down Babylon: from restoration to destruction (again)
At Antiquities 11.296, Josephus rounds off his retelling of the Esther story and, with that, reaches the end of the portion of the Antiquities which depends on biblical sources. Moving forward, he faced a potential difficulty. In his earlier Jewish War, he had begun his account of the build-up to 66 ce at the Maccabean Revolt. From that point on (beginning at AJ 12.237), Josephus is essentially covering the same material in the Antiquities as he had in Books 1 and 2 of the Jewish War. The title of this chapter, ‘History Repeating’, alludes primarily to the Temple-centric structure of this work, to the vision of the destruction of the Second Temple as a repeat of the destruction of the First. But for the latter half of the Antiquities, the title could have a secondary application too: the later books require Josephus to repeat the history which he has already written, albeit on a much-expanded scale. So how did he respond to this challenge, the challenge of repeating himself in a way which made his new work significantly distinct from his first?
A case study can illuminate this question. The second half of Book 1 of the Jewish War comprises an account of Herod's reign, providing readers with what looks, in essence, like a Greek biography of the king (BJ 1.286–673). Josephus is even more expansive when relating Herod's reign in the Antiquities: much of the second half of Book 14 is devoted to Herod's youth and rise to power, and Books 15–17 are almost entirely devoted to his reign. The inclusion of material not covered in the War accounts for much of the expanded scope: most of the additional material concerns either Herod's relations with prominent Romans (above all Marcus Agrippa) or further details of the conspiracies and atrocities which characterized his reign.Footnote 35 More expansive rhetorical set-pieces also account for some of the bloat.Footnote 36 But what is most interesting about comparing the two versions is that the Herod of the Antiquities creates a significantly different impression on the reader from the Herod of the War. Above all, this is to do with differences in how Josephus structures his two accounts.Footnote 37
The War biography of Herod is, explicitly, arranged thematically. Josephus begins with a section chronicling Herod's successes in war (BJ 1.286–400), followed by an overview of the king's expansive construction programme, itself thematically arranged according to whom each project honoured (1.401–30). Both of these sections are broadly positive in outlook. However, after this he marks a turning point: ‘But Fortune took fearsome revenge for his political successes through his private affairs, and his ill fortunes arose from the woman to whom he was most devoted’ (1.431). The remainder of the account focuses on the king's dismal private life. At the very end of the Herod account, Josephus provides an obituary notice which similarly stresses and exposes this thematic arrangement (1.665):
In many respects he was as fortunate as any man ever – he became king despite his common birth, he held power for very many years, and he left his kingdom to his children. However, in his private life he met with the most extreme misfortunes.
Thus Josephus is clear enough with his readers about how he has conceptualized Herod and arranged his narrative: the king was a great success publicly, but a disaster in terms of dynastic politics, and these aspects of the king's reign will be dealt with sequentially, rather than in chronological order. However, despite Josephus’ openness about this thematic structuring, it is still difficult for the reader of the War to escape the impression that what we are reading is, in fact, a decline narrative, and this impression derives directly from Josephus’ ordering of material, with a litany of glorious successes followed by a long list of acts of tyranny and brutality. The language of tragedy proliferates in the account, figuring Herod as a tragic tyrant, a type which practically requires a decline into tyranny.Footnote 38 Josephus’ own language can at times reinforce this impression, working in tension with his open exposure of thematic arrangement: note how, in the first quotation above, his domestic troubles are presented as ‘revenge’ for his public successes, a formulation which surely requires a temporal sequence of success followed by misfortune. In sum, Josephus’ structuring of the Herod account inescapably creates the misleading impression of a king who started strong but declined into unrestrained paranoia and tyranny.
This impression is not in evidence in the Antiquities, because here Josephus arranges his material chronologically. Thus, by reading the Antiquities, we learn that some of Herod's greatest triumphs as cited in the War took place late in his reign, and similarly some of his most shocking atrocities happened early.Footnote 39 The War Herod can neatly be understood as an established stock character, the tragic tyrant, and his life is made to seem as if it fits a familiar sequence of glory and decline. The Antiquities Herod cannot be so pigeonholed: here, Josephus gives us a more complex and (to this reader) compelling character, someone who, at all stages, was capable of both visionary statecraft and appalling brutality. In these ways – by incorporating additional material, digressing, expanding the rhetoric, and radically restructuring his earlier work – Josephus provides us with a distinct account from the one he had produced previously, despite a significant repetition of subject matter.
As the Antiquities meanders towards its near-contemporary conclusion, one of its most notable features is a tendency, in the last books, towards history which extends far beyond Judaea, and which does not always have a strong connection to the work's theme of the history of the Jewish people. The most well-known instance of this comes in Book 19, where Josephus provides a detailed, vivid, and apparently quite well-informed account of the assassination of the Roman emperor Caligula (19.1–113). This is one of the few parts of the Jewish Antiquities which has attracted serious attention from classicists and Roman historians, in part because an unfortunate gap in our sole manuscript of Tacitus’ Annals means that we are entirely dependent on Josephus for a detailed account of this significant event.Footnote 40 But the Caligula episode is just one of several sections in the last few books of the Antiquities where Josephus extends the reach of his history far beyond its core subject: the Caligula assassination is followed by an equally detailed account of the accession of Claudius (19.114–273), and elsewhere in the later books we find lengthy narratives of affairs within the Parthian Empire, specifically the careers of the Jewish ‘bandit-leaders’ Anilaeus and Asinaeus (18.310–79), and the tale of the ‘conversion’ to Judaism of members of the royal family of the kingdom of Adiabene (20.17–96).
The theme which connects all of these episodes, both to each other and to the broader outlook of the Antiquities, is divine providence.Footnote 41 Josephus makes it abundantly clear that, beyond all of the plotting and conspiracies which he charts among the Roman elite, it is his God who is behind the assassination of the emperor (and, indeed, the frustration of Caligula's plan to introduce a statue of himself into Jerusalem, the narrative in Book 18 which provides Josephus with his explicit motivation for including an assassination account in the following book).Footnote 42 Similarly, Claudius’ accession is divinely orchestrated (19.65–69); providence is also behind the accession of Caligula (18.211–14); in the Adiabenian episodes, God protects the Jewish protagonists from an array of threats and plots (e.g. 20.75–91); and in the case of the bandits, they flourish as long as they follow God's laws, but suffer catastrophe as soon as they depart from them (20.332–40, esp. 340, where the brothers’ success is attributed to their adherence to the laws). The universal power and providential direction of the Jewish God, fully on display in these episodes, connects Josephus’ account of the history of recent decades with the broad sweep of biblical history which has gone before it, in a unified vision of world history as intelligently guided by a particular deity, the God of Abraham, Moses, and Josephus.
To some readers, this centring of the Jewish God may have seemed inappropriate, especially in the light of recent history. Had not the revolt of recent memory demonstrated clearly the failure of this deity to protect his own people? What impertinence, then, to ascribe to him control over the highest affairs of Rome! But the groundwork for this conception has been laid throughout the Antiquities. In particular, in Books 10 and 11, towards the end of the biblical narrative, Josephus relates Judaea's history as a repeatedly colonized region in terms which would have been very familiar to any reader conversant with Greek historiography. Greek historians since Herodotus had conceptualized the history of Asia as a series of imperial hegemonies and a narrative of translatio imperii (‘succession of empire’), most commonly passing from Assyrians to Medes to Persians to Macedon to Rome.Footnote 43 Josephus configures his account of Judaean history in these familiar terms, taking care explicitly to mark the transitions at the beginning of each new stage in the sequence: the transition of Assyria to Media at AJ 10.30; Babylon to Persia at 10.248; Persia to Alexander at 12.1. However, he also makes it explicit that each change of hegemony was orchestrated by the Jewish God.Footnote 44 Thus, the Greek notion of translatio imperii comes to be fused with a biblical understanding of history: it becomes the vehicle through which God's plan unfolds, as the deity raises up and casts down successive Gentile superpowers in order to punish or redeem his people. And Rome, crucially, is a part of this same sequence.
This is where differences most clearly emerge between Josephus and those possible models of his, Livy and Dionysius, who related the history of the Roman people from their origins to their present imperial domination. Historians of Rome wrote history as focalized through the perspectives of the imperial masters: it becomes a story of the march toward universal domination, which positions Roman rule as the telos of human experience. Josephus, conversely, offers world history from the perspective not of the winners but of the losers, the colonized, and that perspective puts a wholly different spin on things. No longer the ‘end of history’, Rome is just another transient superpower, a temporary state rather than imperium sine fine (‘empire without end’). Rome has been raised up by the God of the Jews. One day, like its Babylonian analogue and the other great empires in this long tale, it will be cast down in its turn, all in furtherance of an eternal divine plan which revolves entirely around the relationship between God and his people. In this way, too, history repeats.
