Josephus

“ The genuine works of Josephus reveal him not as a philosopher or sturdy preacher of Judaism, but as an apologetic historian and apologist, distinguished in either field rather for his industry and his ingenuity in using others' works than by any original excellence. He learnt from the Greeks and Romans the external manner of systematic history, and in this he stood above his Jewish predecessors. He learnt from them also the arts of mixing false with true, of invention, of exaggeration, of the suggestion of the bad and the suppression of the good motive. ”

“ Turning in detail to the precepts of the Law, Josephus gives eloquent expression in the Hellenistic fashion to the idea of the divine unity. "God," he says, "contains all: He is a being altogether perfect, happy, and self-sufficient, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things; God's aim is reflected in human institutions. Rightly He has but one Temple, which should be common to all men, even as He is the common God of all men." ”

“ In answer to which Josephus said thus with a loud voice: "To be sure thou hast kept this city wonderfully pure for God's sake; the temple also continues entirely unpolluted! Nor hast thou been guilty of ally impiety against him for whose assistance thou hopest! He still receives his accustomed sacrifices! Vile wretch that thou art! if any one should deprive thee of thy daily food, thou wouldst esteem him to be an enemy to thee; but thou hopest to have that God for thy supporter in this war whom thou hast deprived of his everlasting worship ”

“ III THE LIFE OF JOSEPHUS FROM THE TIME OF HIS SURRENDER Josephus was little more than thirty years old at the time of his surrender. At an age when men usually begin to realize their ambition and ideal, his whole life's course was changed: he had to abandon all his old associations, and accommodate himself to a different and indeed a hostile society. Henceforth he was a liege of the Roman conqueror, and had to submit to be Romanized not only in name but in spirit. His condition was indeed a thinly-disguised servitude. ”

“ While Josephus was making this exhortation to the Jews, many of them jested upon him from the wall, and many reproached him; nay, some threw their darts at him: but when he could not himself persuade them by such open good advice, he betook himself to the histories belonging to their own nation, and cried out aloud, "O miserable creatures! are you so unmindful of those that used to assist you, that you will fight by your weapons and by your hands against the Romans? When did we ever conquer any other nation by such means? ”

“ Lastly, Josephus turns to the fourth sect, the Zealots, whose founder was Judas the Galilean:
"These men agree in all other things with the Pharisees, but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and they say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. Moreover they do not fear any kind of death, nor do they heed the death of their kinsmen and friends, nor can any fear of the kind make them acknowledge anybody as sovereign." ”

“ Josephus’s Life Threatened by his Men With these words he was about to surrender to Nicanor. But when the Jews who had sought refuge along with him understood that Josephus was yielding to entreaty, they came round him in a body, crying out, “Ah! well might the laws of our fathers groan aloud and God Himself, who implanted in Jewish breasts souls that 124make light of death, hide His face for shame! Is life so dear to you, Josephus, that you will endure to see the light in slavery? How soon have you forgotten yourself! How many have you persuaded to die for liberty! ”

“ As soon as they said this, they began to thrust their swords at him, and threatened they would kill him, if he thought of yielding himself to the Romans. Upon this Josephus was afraid of their attacking him, and yet thought he should be a betrayer of the commands of God, if he died before they were delivered. So he began to talk like a philosopher to them in the distress he was then in, when he said thus to them: "O my friends, why are we so earnest to kill ourselves? and why do we set our soul and body, which are such dear companions, at such variance? ”

“ The last three books of the Antiquities reveal the weaknesses of Josephus as an historian: his disregard of accuracy, his tendency to exaggeration, his lack of proportion, and his mental subservience. He had no longer either the Scriptures or a Greek chronicler to guide him. He depended in large part for his material on oral sources and scattered memoirs, and he is not very successful in eking it out so as to produce the semblance of a connected narrative. ”

“ However, he was afraid that he was invited to come up in order to be punished, until Vespasian sent besides these a third tribune, Nicanor, to him; he was one that was well known to Josephus, and had been his familiar acquaintance in old time. When he was come, he enlarged upon the natural mildness of the Romans towards those they have once conquered; and told him that he had behaved himself so valiantly, that the commanders rather admired than hated him ”

“ The Life, then, by no means answers to its name. It is not a complete autobiography, but simply an apologetic statement as to the actions of Josephus as commander in Galilee, to which have been added a few details as to the earlier and later events of his life, by way of prologue and epilogue.” [20] The defence, in which Josephus attempts to pose as friendly to the Romans, while he has to admit the part which he took in organizing the Jewish forces to oppose them, is extremely weak ”

“ The eloquent insistence on the harmony uniting the Jewish people is another proof that Josephus is here reproducing the ideas of others, for it is in complete and glaring contrast with what he had repeatedly written in his Antiquities and his Wars about the strife of different sects. His books would have supplied the best argument to any pagan criticising his apology. Josephus further ascribes to the singleness of the tradition the absence of original genius among the people. The excellence of the Law produces a conservative outlook, whereas the Greeks, lacking a fixed law, love a new thing. ”

“ However, Josephus contrived another stratagem besides the foregoing, to get plenty of what they wanted. There was a certain rough and uneven place that could hardly be ascended, and on that account was not guarded by the soldiers; so Josephus sent out certain persons along the western parts of the valley, and by them sent letters to whom he pleased of the Jews that were out of the city, and procured from them what necessaries soever they wanted in the city in abundance ”

“ But as soon as Josephus had got the people of Tiberias together in the stadium, and tried to discourse with them about the letters that he had received, John privately sent some armed men, and gave them orders to slay him. But when the people saw that the armed men were about to draw their swords, they cried out; at which cry Josephus turned himself about, and when he saw that the swords were just at his throat, he marched away in great haste to the sea-shore, and left off that speech which he was going to make to the people, upon an elevation of six cubits high. ”

“ Josephus, then but twenty-nine years of age, was entrusted with the command of Galilee. The reason for the selection of the young priest for so important a post, for which, notwithstanding his frequent assertions of his skill and strategy, he seems to have been ill-qualified, is obscure. The history of the sequel fills the greater part of the Life, but it is not very easy to follow the course of events and to read the motives of the leaders at Jerusalem and the conflicting aims of the various cities of Galilee, which Josephus found in a divided state. ”

“ Josephus dwells on the story of two dreams which occurred to the king and his wife Glaphyra, and justifies himself because his discourse is concerning kings, and also because of the advantage to be drawn from it for the assurance both of the immortality of the soul and the Providence of God in human affairs. "And if anybody does not believe such stories, let him keep his own opinion, but let him not stand in the way of another who finds in them an encouragement to virtue." ”

“ It may be that Josephus really believed he had prophetic powers, and thought he was imitating the great prophets of Israel and Judah who had proclaimed the uselessness of resistance to Assyria and Babylon. But they, while denouncing the wickedness of the people, had shared their lot with them. And Josephus, who weakly sought a refuge for himself after defeat, resembles rather the prophets whom Jeremiah denounced: "They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. ”

“ The siege of Jerusalem has passed into the roll of the world's heroic events, and it owes its place there largely to the narrative of Josephus. Moreover, in spite of his pusillanimity and his subservience to his Roman patrons, Josephus did possess a distinct pride of race and a love of his people. It led him at times to glorify them in a gross way, but notably in the books Against Apion it could inspire a certain eloquence; and many hostile outsiders must have learnt from his pages to appreciate some of the great qualities of the Jewish people. ”

“ However, Josephus directly supposes the Jewish settlement, under Moses, to be a Divine settlement, and indeed no other than a real theocracy.↑ These excellent accounts of the Divine attributes, and that God is not to be at all known in his essence, as also some other clear expressions about the resurrection of the dead, and the state of departed souls, etc., in this late work of Josephus, look more like the exalted notions of the Essens, or rather Ebionite Christians, than those of a mere Jew or Pharisee. ”

“ That there must be some connection, if Josephus himself has written the passage about Jesus, goes without saying, in view of the character of the writer. Josephus is always careful to have a logical connection between his statements. The repression of the Jews by Pilate must, naturally, have been regarded by Josephus as “a misfortune.” We likewise understand the concern of the Jewish historian at the expulsion of his compatriots from Rome. ”

“ Flavius Josephus, as the Romans afterwards called him, came of a noble Jewish family--his father, Matthias, belonging to the highest of the twenty-four classes into which the sacerdotal families were divided. Matthias was eminent for his attainments, and piety; and had been one of the leading men in Jerusalem. From his youth, Josephus had carefully prepared himself for public life, mastering the doctrines of the three leading sects among the Jews--the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes--and having spent three years in the desert, with Banus the Ascetic. ”

“ Josephus, the son of Matthias, also who was a priest, and was most distinguished among Jews and Romans, may be regarded as a noteworthy witness to the truth concerning Christ [5]
for he hesitates to call Him a man since He wrought marvelous works, and was a teacher of truthful doctrines, but openly calls him Christ; that He was condemned to the death of the cross, and appeared alive again the third day. Nor was Josephus ignorant of numberless other wonderful predictions uttered beforehand by the holy prophets concerning Christ. ”

“ There is scarcely a suggestion of a Jewish point of view towards the semi-savage godless tyrant. And when Josephus comes to the part of Herod's life which even an historian laureate could not misrepresent to his credit, his family relations, he adopts a fundamentally pagan outlook. ”

“ But Josephus, when he wrote his history and life, was a courtier, and even a traitor to his country—he wanted moral courage, he did not mean to be a martyr, and any testimony in favor of a despised sect is not to be expected from him. The passage in his Antiquities in which Jesus is praised we may give up as a forgery of the third century: it is enough for us to remark, that after having lived for five months with Paul on the voyage from Judea to Italy, he does not write against this earnest teacher of Christianity, as either a weak enthusiast or a crafty impostor. ”

“ We must therefore be wary of imputing to Josephus the opinions he expresses upon the different Jewish sects in this part of the Antiquities. He introduces them first during the reign of Jonathan, with the classification which had already been made in the Wars: [2] the Pharisees as the upholders of Providence or fate and freewill, the Essenes as absolute determinists, the Sadducees as absolute deniers of the influence of fate on human affairs. ”

“ He wrote three histories: "Antiquities of the Jews"; an "Autobiography"; "The Wars of the Jews"; together with a reply to the attacks of an Alexandrian critic of Judaism, "Against Apion." The character of Josephus has been variously estimated. Some regard him as a patriot, who yielded to Rome only when convinced that Jewish destiny required such submission. But the most probable view of his career is as follows. Josephus was a man of taste and learning. He was a student of the Greek and Latin classics, which he much admired, and was also a devoted and loyal lover of Judaism. ”

“ At the close of this work Josephus says: “And so I make bold to say that we are become the teachers of other men in the greatest number of things, and those the most excellent.” Josephus, like the Jewish Hellenists of an earlier date. saw in Judaism a universal religion, which ought to be shared by all the peoples of the earth. Judaism was to Josephus, as to Philo, not a contrast or antithesis to Greek culture. but the perfection and culmination of culture. ”