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III History Repeating: The Jewish Antiquities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2025
Extract
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.
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References
1 See above, p. 9, for the possible significance of this.
2 See above, pp. 45–6.
3 Nodet 1996; Rajak 2009: 252–3.
4 On the terminology which Josephus uses for ‘translation’ (which actually indicates creative reworking), see L. Feldman 1998a: 44–6 and 2000: 3–4.
5 Extensive discussion of Josephus’ rewriting of biblical narrative is provided in L. Feldman 1998a and b. Other helpful studies include Begg 1993; Maier 1994; Mason 1994; Dormeyer 2005; and Westwood 2023.
6 On Josephus’ Esther narrative (AJ 11.184–296), see Kneebone 2013; on the Moses episode (AJ 2.238–53), see Petitfils 2014; Westwood 2022.
7 Walsh 1961: 138–45; Luce 1977: 139–229.
8 On Josephus and Nicolaus, see Toher 2003; Czajkowski and Eckhardt 2021.
9 For Caligula, see Goud 1996; Wiseman 2013: xix–xxvi.
10 On Josephus and the documents, see Pucci ben Zeev 1998.
11 On the relationship between the overlapping portions of the War and the Antiquities, see Cohen 1979: 48–67.
12 (Largely) D. Schwartz 2016; Czajkowski and Eckhardt 2021.
13 Tropper 2016: 63–105; Mason's introduction to L. Feldman 2000.
14 On the tradition in general, see Clarke 2011.
15 For these authors, see Sterling 1992: 103–35; Labow 2005: 58–72, 126–32; Haubold et al. 2013. The fragments and testimonia of both are conveniently collected in Verbrugghe and Wickersham 1996.
16 Like Josephus, these authors remain badly understudied by classicists. On Josephus’ self-positioning with respect to them, see Davies 2024.
17 On this tradition, see Sterling 2007.
18 See Cowan 2018, with references to earlier scholarship there.
19 On the significance of the term, see Rajak 2001: 241–55.
20 See, for example, Berthelot 2003: 322–55 on how parts of Josephus’ work seem directed at challenging the widespread Gentile prejudice of Jewish misanthropy.
21 On Josephus’ theology, see MacRae 1965; Attridge 1976; Spilsbury 1998; Price 2011a: 237–42; Klawans 2012: 44–91.
22 Berossus: BNJ 680 F1a. Philo of Byblos: Euseb. Praep. evang. 10.
23 On Roman receptivity to such Greek scholarship, see Cornell 2010.
24 Occasionally, Greek and Roman authors explicitly criticize ‘barbarians’ for their supposedly fanciful tales. See, for example, Plut. Mor. 857A–F; Strabo 11.6.2.
25 Hdt. 7.61.3; Diod. Sic. 4.55.5–56.1. Josephus explicitly rejects such Hellenocentric ethnological etymology at AJ 1.120–1.
26 See also Livy 1 praef.6–7, where the author states that he makes no claims about the accuracy of material about the remote past which cannot properly be verified, and will merely record what he finds in his sources.
27 Most of Feldman's key contributions are collected in L. Feldman 1998a and 1998b.
28 Josephus’ ‘constitutional’ approach to Torah and presentation of Moses as lawgiver will be discussed more fully in Chapter 5 below. An important recent contribution is Westwood 2023.
29 See above, pp. 22–3.
30 For the biblical references to a speech impediment, see Exod 4:10; 6:12; 6:30.
31 More expansively on this episode, see L. Feldman 1998b: 91–110.
32 στάσις: AJ 4.12, 13 (twice), 30, 32, 59; tyranny: AJ 4.16, 22; disturbance and disorder (θόρυβος and ταραχή): AJ 4.22, 32, 35, 36, 37, 63. See D. Schwartz 2016: 45; Edwards 2023.
33 Sall. Iug. 64–5; 84–6.
34 See above, pp. 15–18.
35 E.g. the conspiracy of Costabar (AJ 15.253–66); Herod and Marcus Agrippa (AJ 16.12–65); Herod's robbery of David's tomb (AJ 16.179–87).
36 E.g. the expansion of Herod's post-Actium speech to Augustus at Rhodes from three chapters (BJ 1.388–90) to six (AJ 15.188–93), and the vast rhetorical expansion of the trial of Alexander in Rome from three chapters (BJ 1.452–4) to thirty-six (AJ 16.91–126).
37 For a more expansive comparison of the two accounts than can be essayed here, see Landau 2008. See also Van Henten 2011; Bond 2012; Van Henten 2015; Czajkowski 2016.
38 Van Henten 2011.
39 For instance, the murder of the high priest Aristobulus comes early in the Antiquities account of Herod's reign (AJ 15.50–6), but late in the version that appears in the War (BJ 1.437); similarly with the execution of his wife Mariamne (AJ 15.202–31; BJ 1.438–44).
40 E.g. Birley 2000; Pagán 2005: 93–108; Wiseman 2013.
41 On Josephus’ providential theology, see above all Attridge 1976.
42 See Davies 2020 for a full discussion of indications of divine orchestration in these accounts.
43 On this scheme, see Drews 1973; Momigliano 1982: 544–6; Lenfant 2007.
44 Nahum and Jonah predicted the fall of Assyria (AJ 9.239–42, 214); Daniel foresaw the fall of Babylon (AJ 10.239–44); the rises of both Cyrus and Alexander were foretold in the Jewish sacred books (AJ 11.56, 337).