Chapter 11

The story of dynastic struggles and foreign wars is varied with a short summary of the life of Jonah, introduced at what, according to the Bible, is its proper chronological place,[1] in the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel. The picturesque and miraculous character of the prophet's adventures secured him this distinction, for in general Josephus does not pay much regard to the lives or writings of the prophets. It is only where they foretold concrete events that their testimony is deemed worthy of mention. Of the other minor prophets he mentions Nahum, and paraphrases part of his prophecy of the fall of Nineveh, cutting it short with the remark that he does not think it necessary to repeat the rest,[2] so that he may not appear troublesome to his readers. In the account of Hezekiah he mentions that the king depended on Isaiah the prophet, by whom he inquired and knew of all future events,[3] and he recounts also the miracle of putting back the sun-dial. For the rest, he says that, by common consent, Isaiah was a divine and wonderful man in foretelling the truth, "and in the assurance that he had never written what was false, he wrote down his prophecies and left them in books, that their accomplishment might be judged of by posterity from the events.[4] Nor was he alone, but the other prophets [i.e. the minor prophets presumably], who were twelve in number, did the same." It is notable that this phrase of the _Antiquities_ about the prophets bears a resemblance to the "praise of famous men" contained in the apocryphal book of Ben Sira, which Josephus probably used in the Greek translation.

[Footnote 1: Ant. IX. x. 1.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. IX. xi. 3.]

[Footnote 3: Ant. IX. xiii.]

[Footnote 4: Ant. X. ii. 2. Comp. Is. 30:8_f_.]

While he thus cursorily disposes of the prophetical writers, he seizes on any scrap of Hellenistic authors which he could find to confirm the Bible story, or rather to confirm the existence of the personages mentioned in the Bible. Thus he quotes the Phoenician historian Menander, who confirms the existence and exploits of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser. So, too, he brings forward Herodotus and Berosus to confirm the existence and doings of Sennacherib.[1] He refutes Herodotus again, doubtless on the authority of a predecessor, for saying that Sennacherib was king of the Arabs instead of king of the Assyrians.

[Footnote 1: Ant. X. ii. 4.]

As with Ahab, so with Josiah, Josephus sees the power of fate impelling him to his death, and substitutes the Hellenistic conception of a blind and jealous power for the Hebrew idea of a just Providence. He ascribes to Jeremiah "an elegy on the death of the king, which is still extant,"[1] apparently following a statement in the Book of Chronicles, which does not refer to our Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is treated rather more fully than Isaiah. Besides a notice of his writings we have an account of his imprisonment. He ascribes to Ezekiel two books foretelling the Babylonian captivity. Possibly the difference between the last nine and the first forty chapters of the exile prophet suggested the idea of the two books, unless these words apply rather to Jeremiah,

"The two prophets agreed [he remarks] on all other things as to the capture of the city and King Zedekiah, but Ezekiel declared that Zedekiah should not see Babylon, while Jeremiah said the king of Babylon should carry him thither in bonds. Because of this discrepancy, the Jewish prince disbelieved them both, and condemned them for false tidings.[2] Both prophets, however, were justified, because Zedekiah came to Babylon, but he came blind, so that, as Ezekiel had predicted, he did not see the city."

[Footnote 1: Ant. X. v. 2. Comp. II Chron. 35:25.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. X. vii. 2.]

The episode is possibly based on some apocryphal book that has disappeared, and the historian extracts from it the lesson, which he is never weary of repeating, that God's nature is various and acts in diverse ways, and men are blind and cannot see the future, so that they are exposed to calamities and cannot avoid their incidence.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ant. X. viii. 3.]

Following on the account of the fall of the last of the Davidic line and the destruction of the Temple, Josephus gives a chronological summary of the history of Israel from the Creation, together with an incomplete list of all the high priests who held office. The latter may be compared with the list of high priests with which he closes the _Antiquities_.[1] These chronological calculations were dear to him, but perhaps he borrowed them from one of the earlier Hellenistic Jewish chroniclers. He takes an especial pride throughout the _Antiquities_ as well as in the _Wars_ in recording the priestly succession, which served to emphasize the antiquity not only of his people, but of his own personal lineage, and was moreover congenial to the ideas of the Romans, who paid great heed to the records of their priests.

[Footnote 1: See below, p. 202.]

As might be expected, he dwells at some length on Daniel,[1] whose book was full of the miraculous legends and exact prophecies loved by his audience, and he recommends his book to those who are anxious about the future. He elaborates the interpretation of the vision of the image (ch. 3:7), but finds himself in a difficulty when he comes to the explanation of the stone broken off from the mountain that fell on the image and shattered it. According to the traditional interpretation, it portended the downfall of Rome, or maybe the coming of the Messiah, an idea equally hateful to the Roman conquerors. He excuses himself by saying that he has only undertaken to describe things past and present, and not things that are future. Later he disclaims responsibility for the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness, on the plea that he has translated what was in the Hebrew book, and has neither added nor taken away. The story probably looked too much like an implied reproach on a mad Caesar. He adds a new chapter to the Biblical account of the prophet: Daniel is carried by Darius to Persia, and is there signally honored by the king. He builds a tower at Ecbatana,[2] which is still extant, says the historian, "and seems to be but lately built. Here the kings of Persia and Media are buried, and a Jewish priest is the custodian." Josephus borrowed this addition from some apocalyptic book recounting Daniel's deeds, and he speaks of "several books the prophet wrote and left behind him, which are still read by us." The short story in the Apocrypha of _Bel and the Dragon_, with its apologue about Susannah, affords an example of the post-Biblical additions to Daniel, and in the first century, when Messianic hopes were rife among the people, such apocryphal books had a great vogue. Daniel is in fact elevated to the rank of one of the greatest of the prophets, because he not only prophesied generally of future events like the others, but fixed the actual time of their accomplishment. It is claimed for him that he foretold explicitly the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Roman conquest of Judea. Anticipating the theological controversialists of later times, Josephus sets special store on the Bible book that is most miraculous, because miracle and exact prognostication of the future are for his audience the clearest testimony of God. Hence the predictions of Daniel are the best refutation of the Epicureans, who cast Providence out of life, and do not believe that God has care of human affairs, but say that things move of their own accord, without a ruler and guide.

[Footnote 1: Ant. X. x.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. X. xi. 7.]

When he comes to the history of the Restoration from Babylon, Josephus follows what is now known as the apocryphal Book of Esdras, in preference to the Biblical Ezra and Nehemiah, probably because a Hellenistic guide whom he had before him did likewise. It is clear that he based his paraphrase on the Greek text. His chronicle therefore differs considerably from that given in our Scripture, and on one point he differs from his guide. For while Esdras represents Artaxerxes as the king under whom the Temple was rebuilt, Josephus, relying on a fuller knowledge of Persian history, derived probably from Nicholas of Damascus, substitutes Cambyses.[1] Our Greek version of Esdras I is unfortunately not complete, but the book, differing from that included in the Bible, must have originally comprised an account of Nehemiah. According to Josephus, Ezra dies before Nehemiah[2] arrives in Judea, whereas in the canonical books they appear for a time together. He states also that Nehemiah built houses for the poor in Jerusalem out of his own means, an incident which has not the authority of the Bible, but which may well have reposed on an ancient tradition. The account of the marriage of Sanballat with the daughter of Manasseh the high Priest, which is touched on in our Book of Nehemiah, is described more fully by Josephus,[3] who based this account on some uncanonical source. And following the Rabbis, who shortened the Persian epoch in order to eke out the Jewish history over the whole period of the Persian kingdom till the conquest of Alexander, he makes the marriage synchronize with the reign of Philip of Macedon. Josephus was anxious to avoid a vacuum, and by a little vague chronology and the aid of the fragmentary records of Ezra and Nehemiah and a priestly chronicle, the few Jewish incidents known in that tranquil, unruffled epoch are spread over three centuries.

[Footnote 1: Ant. XI. ii.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. XI. v.]

[Footnote 3: Ant. XI. vii. 2.]

The episode of Esther is treated elaborately, and, following the apocryphal version, is placed in the reign of Artaxerxes. The Greek Book of Esther, which embroidered the Hebrew story, and is generally attributed to the second century B.C.E., is laid under contribution as well as the Canonical book; from it Josephus extracted long decrees of the king and elaborate anti-Semitic denunciations of a Hellenized Haman. He omits the incident of casting lots, and contrives to explain Purim, by means of a Greek etymology, as derived from [Greek: phroureai], which denotes protection. Here and there the Biblical simplicity is elaborated: Mordecai moves from Babylon to Shushan in order to be near Esther, and soldiers with bared axes stand round the king to secure the observance of the law that he shall not be approached. We have some moralizing on Haman's fall and the working of Providence ([Greek: to theion]), which teaches that "what mischief anyone prepares against another, he unconsciously contrives against himself." Less edifying is the addition that "God laughed to scorn the wicked expectations of Haman, and as He knew what the event would be, He was pleased at it, and that night He took away the king's sleep." The Book of Esther does not mention God: Josephus calls in directly the operation of the Divine Power, but represents it unworthily.

With the completion of the eleventh book of the _Antiquities_, we definitely pass away from the region of sacred history and miracles, and find ourselves in the more spacious but more misty area of the Hellenistic kingdom, in which Jewish affairs are only a detail set in a larger background. Though Josephus himself does not explicitly mark the break, the character of his work materially changes. He has come to the end of the period when the Bible was his chief guide; he has now to depend for the main thread on Hellenistic sources, filling in the details when he can from some Jewish record. His function becomes henceforth more completely that of compiler, less of translator, and his work becomes much more valuable for us, because in great part he has the field to himself. Although, however, the Bible paraphrase, with the embroidery of a little tradition and comparative history and its Romanizing reflections, which constitutes the first part of the _Antiquities_, had not a great permanent value, for a very long period it was accepted as the standard history of the Jewish people; and in the pagan Greco-Roman world it appealed to a public to which both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint translation were sealed books. It was written for a special purpose and served it, doing for the Jewish early history what Livy did for the hoary past of the Romans. If it was not a worthy record in many parts, it was yet of great value as an antidote to the crude fictions of the anti-Semites about the origin and the institutions of the people of Israel, which had for some two centuries been allowed to poison the minds of the Greek-speaking world, and had fanned the prejudices of the Roman people against a nationality of whose history they were ignorant and of whose laws they were contemptuous.

VII

JOSEPHUS AND POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH HISTORY

(THE ANTIQUITIES, BOOKS XII-XX)

Josephus is the sole writer of the ancient world who has left a connected account of the Jewish people during the post-Biblical period, and the meagerness of his historical information is not due so much to his own deficiencies as to the difficulty of the material. From the period when the Scriptures closed, the affairs of the Jews had to be extracted, for the most part, out of works dealing with the annals of the whole of civilized humanity. With the conquest of Alexander the Great, the Jewish people enter into the Hellenistic world, and begin to command the attention of Hellenistic historians. They are an element in the cosmopolis which was the ideal of the world-conqueror. At the same time the nature of the history of their affairs vitally changes. The continuous chronicle of their doings, which had been kept from the Exodus out of Egypt to the Restoration from Babylon, and which was designed to impress a religious lesson and illustrate God's working, comes to an end; and their scribes are concerned to draw fresh lessons from that chronicle. The religious philosophy of history is not extended to the present. The Jews, on the other hand, chiefly engage the interest of the Gentiles when they come into violent collision with the governing power, or when they are involved in some war between rival Hellenistic sovereigns. Hence their history during the two centuries following Alexander's conquests, i.e. until the time when we again have adequate Jewish sources, is singularly shadowy and incoherent.

Josephus was not the man to pierce the obscurity by his intuition or by his research. Yet we must not be too critical of the want of proportion in his writing when we remember that he was a pioneer; for it was an original idea to piece together the stray fragments of history that referred to his people. It has been shown that in his attempt to stretch out the Biblical history till it can join on to the Hellenistic sources, Josephus interposes between the account of Esther and the fall of the Persian Empire a story of intrigue among the high priests. He there describes the crime of the high priest John in killing his brother in the Temple as more cruel and impious than anything done by the Greeks or Barbarians--an expression which must have originated in a Jewish, probably a Palestinian, authority, to whom Greek connoted cruelty. And in the next chapter Josephus inserts the story of the Samaritan Sanballat and the building of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim,[1] as though these events happened at the time of Alexander's invasion of Persia. Rabbinical chronology interposes only one generation between Cyrus and Alexander. The Sanballat who appears in the Book of Nehemiah is represented as anticipating the part played by the Hellenists of a later century, and calling in the foreign invader against Judea and Jerusalem in order to set up his own son-in-law Manasseh as high priest. Probably, in the fashion of Jewish history, the events of a later time were placed in the popular Midrash a few generations back and repeated. Jewish legendary tradition is more certainly the basis of the account of Alexander's treatment of the Jews. The Talmud has preserved similar stories.[2] According to both records, the Macedonian conqueror did obeisance before the high priest, who came out to ask for mercy, because he recognized in the Jewish dignitary a figure that had appeared to him in a dream. And when Alexander is made to revere the prophecies of Daniel and to prefer the Jews to the Samaritans and bestow on them equal rights with the Macedonians, the historian is simply crystallizing the floating stories of his nation, which are parallel with those invented by every other nation of antiquity about the Greek hero.

[Footnote 1: Comp. Neh. 13: 23.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. Megillat Taanit, 3, and Yoma, 69a.]

Passing on to Alexander's successors, he has scarcely fuller or more reliable sources. For Ptolemy's capture of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, when the Jews would not resist, he calls in the confirmation of a Greek authority, Agatharchides of Cnidus. But he has to gloss over a period of nearly a hundred years, till he can introduce the story of the translation of the Scriptures into Greek,[1] for which he found a copious source in the romantic history, or rather the historical romance, now known as the Letter of Aristeas. This Hellenistic production has come down to us intact, and therefore we can gather how closely Josephus paraphrases his authorities. Not that he refrained altogether from embellishment and improvement. The Aristeas of his version, as of the original, professes that he is not a Jew, but he adds that nevertheless he desires favor to be done to the Jews, because all men are the work of God, and "I am sensible that He is well pleased with all those that do good." Josephus states a large part of the story as if it were his own narrative, but in fact it is a paraphrase throughout. He reproduces less than half of the Letter, omitting the account of the visit of the royal envoy to Jerusalem and the discourse of Eleazar the high priest. For the seventy-two questions and answers, which form the last part, he refers curious readers to his source. But he sets out at length the description of the presents which Ptolemy sent to Jerusalem, rejoicing in the opportunity of showing at once the splendor of the Temple vessels and the honor paid by a Hellenistic monarch to his people.

[Footnote 1: Ant. XII. ii.]

From his own knowledge also, he adds a glowing eulogy, which Menedemus, the Greek philosopher, passed on the Jewish faith. The Letter of Aristeas says that the authors of the Septuagint translation uttered an imprecation on any one who should alter a word of their work; Josephus makes them invite correction,[1] adding inconsequently--if our text is correct--that this was a wise action, "so that, when the thing was judged to have been well done, it might continue forever."

[Footnote 1: Josephus may have used a different text of Aristeas from that which has come down to us. Or the passage in our Aristeas may be a later insertion introduced as a protest against Christian interpolations in the LXX.]

Having disposed of the Aristeas incident, Josephus has to fill in the blank between the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus (250 B.C.E.) and the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes, nearly one hundred years later, which was the next period for which he had Jewish authority. He returns then to his Hellenistic guides and extracts the few scattered incidents which he could find there referring to the Jewish people. But until he comes to the reign of Antiochus, he can only snatch up some "unconsidered trifles" of doubtful validity. Seleucus Nicator, he says, made the Jews citizens of the cities which he built in Asia, and gave them equal rights with the Macedonians and Greeks in Antioch. This information he would seem to have derived from the petition which the Jews of Antioch presented to Titus when, after the fall of Jerusalem, the victor made his progress through Syria. The people of Antioch then sought to obtain the curtailment of Jewish rights in the town, but Titus refused their suit.[1] Josephus takes this opportunity of extolling the magnanimity of the Roman conqueror, and likewise of inserting a reference to the friendliness of Marcus Agrippa, who, on his progress through Asia a hundred years before, had upheld the Jewish privileges.[2] He derived this incident from Nicholas' history, and thus contrived to eke out the obscurity of the third century B.C.E. with a few irrelevancies.

[Footnote 1: Comp. B.J. VII. v. 3.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. XIII. iii. 2.]

His material becomes a little ampler from the reign of Antiochus the Great, because from this point the Greek historians serve him better. Several of the modern commentators of Josephus have thought that his authorities were Polybius and Posidonius, who wrote in Greek on the events of the period. He cites Polybius explicitly as the author of the statement about Ptolemy's conquest of Judea, and then reproduces two letters of Antiochus to his generals, directing them to grant certain privileges to his Jewish subjects as a reward for their loyal service. We know that Polybius gave in his history an account of Jerusalem and its Temple, and his character-sketch of Antiochus Epiphanes has been preserved in an epitome. Josephus, however, be it noted, has only these scanty extracts from his work. The letters are clearly derived, not from him, but from some Hellenistic-Jewish apologist, and the passages from Polybius, it is very probable, are extracted from some larger work.[1] Here, as elsewhere, both facts and authorities were found in Nicholas of Damascus.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Buechler (J.Q.R. iv. and R.E.J. xxxii. 179) has argued convincingly that Josephus had not gone far afield. For the genuineness of the Letter, comp. Willrich, Judaica, p. 51, and Buechler, Oniaden und Tobiaden, p. 143.]

We know from Josephus himself that Nicholas had included a history of the Seleucid Empire in his _magnum opus_. He is quoted in reference to the sacking of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes and the victory of Ptolemy Lathyrus over Alexander Jannaeus.[1] Josephus, indeed, several times appends to his paragraphs about the general history a note, "as we have elsewhere described." Some have inferred from this that he had himself written a general history of the Seleucid epoch, but a more critical study has shown that the tag belongs to the note of his authority, which he embodied carelessly in his paraphrase.[2]

[Footnote 1: Ant. XIII. xii. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. Ant. XIV. I. 2-3; xi. I.]

Josephus supplements the Jewish references in the Seleucid history of Nicholas by an account of the intrigues of the Tobiades and Oniades, which reveals a Hellenistic-Jewish origin.[1] Possibly he found it in a special chronicle of the high-priestly family, which was written by one friendly to it, for Joseph ben Tobias is praised as "a good man and of great magnanimity, who brought the Jews out of poverty and low condition to one that was more splendid." The chronology here is at fault, since at the time at which the incidents are placed both Syria and Palestine were included in the dominion of the Seleucids; yet Tobias is represented at the court of the Ptolemies. Josephus follows the story of these exploits with the letters which passed between Areas, king of the Lacedemonians, and the high priest Onias, as recorded in the First Book of the Maccabees (ch. 12). The letters are taken out of their true place, in order to bridge the gap between the fall of the Tobiad house and the Maccabean rising. Areas reigned from 307-265, so that he must have corresponded to Onias I, but Josephus places him in the time of Onias III.

[Footnote 1: Ant. XII. iv.]