Josephus vs. Jeremiah

At age 13, I was called a traitor.

I was born in British Mandatory Palestine in what is now Israel. In our Zionist schools as well as in our youth movement we held annual mock trials of Josephus, the great Jewish historian of the first century C.E. In one of them, I was cast as Josephus.

In court I was asked to identify myself: “Are you Josephus Flavius?” (His full name was in fact Titus Flavius Josephus, but this was not known to us at the time.) This seemingly innocuous question was actually a very loaded one. To our patriotic Hebrew ears, being called by his Hellenistic name was already an ominous sign of selling out. I understood it instinctively. I pompously answered the court with his Hebrew name: “I am Yosef ben Matityahu from a Hebrew origin, a priest from Jerusalem.”

What charges had I to face as a 13-year-old Josephus? Well, the obvious ones:

1. Abandonment and neglect of duty while serving as commander in the Galilee.

2. Desertion of my comrades in arms by not obeying the sacred pact to commit collective suicide after the fortress at Yodfat fell to the Romans in 67 C.E.

3. Defecting to the enemy camp and, worst of all, collaboration with the Romans in trying to persuade fellow Jews under siege in Jerusalem to surrender.

Josephus had been born in 37 or 38 C.E. in Jerusalem to a distinguished priestly family. Already at age 26, he was sent to Rome on a diplomatic mission. Soon after his return, despite lacking any military experience, he was sent by the Jewish rebellion governing body to serve as the chief northern commander of the Jewish revolt. In his own account, he did a great deal to prepare the northern part of the country (the Galilee) for the war, fortifying crucial cities and raising a considerable army. But already as the northern commander, he was accused of trying to find bridges to the Romans. (“A traitor and a bridge,” as the Northern Ireland politician Ian Paisley noted, “are very much alike for they both go over to the other side.”¹). In the eyes of his many detractors, Josephus was already a suspect even before the revolt actually started in 66 C.E.^a

What is the story behind the charge of treason?

When the Romans attacked settlements in the Galilee to quell the revolt, Josephus was in Yodfat, the most fortified city in the north. The Roman siege of Yodfat lasted 47 days. On several occasions Josephus tried to persuade his fellow combatants to open the gate to the Romans so as to avoid the destruction of the city, but they turned deaf ears to him. After Yodfat fell, Josephus and a few dozen of his fighters found shelter in a cave. When their hiding place was discovered by the Romans, Josephus’s comrades refused to surrender and made a suicide pact. Josephus rigged the lottery that determined the order of their mutual killing. He remained the last and then surrendered.

Josephus was taken to Rome as a trophy to be executed at the Triumph procession. He managed to wriggle out of prison, however, by prophesying to the Roman commander Vespasian that Vespasian was about to become emperor, following the death of the emperor Nero and his successor Gala. The “prophecy” proved correct and gained currency. Josephus was released. He went first to Alexandria, but then joined Titus, Vespasian’s successor as commander of the Roman force besieging Jerusalem. Josephus’s role was to be an agitator, to seduce the besieged Jews to surrender. More specifically, he stood outside Jerusalem’s walls, shoulder to shoulder with the Romans, facing his fellow Jews who were inside and calling on them to lay down their arms.

There is nothing anachronistic in these charges. They were regarded as acts of betrayal then and are so regarded now.

After the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 C.E., Josephus was settled in Rome as portage of the emperor’s family. He was granted Roman citizenship as well as a pension and was allowed to live in the emperor’s palace. He led the life of a Roman dignitary and a scholar. But from his fellow Jews he encountered only intense hatred.

In my defense (as Josephus in the trial), I raised the analogy with the prophet Jeremiah when, more than half a millennium earlier, Jerusalem had likewise been under siege (indeed, an analogy that was very much on Josephus’s mind), only to be rebuffed by my classmate judges: How can you compare Jeremiah, the true prophet, to yourself, Josephus, the traitor?

Jeremiah had preached total surrender to a ferocious foe, the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar in the early sixth century B.C.E., when Jerusalem was also under lethal siege. Jeremiah’s defeatist call to give in grossly undermined the spirit of the besieged Judahites. He was giving comfort to the enemy, as the cliché has it.

Moreover, Jeremiah tried to escape from Jerusalem. He, too, was accused of trying to defect to the enemy (he didn’t deny that he tried to sneak out of the city, but he did deny that he tried to defect).

What, then, is the difference between Josephus, so often charged as a traitor, and Jeremiah, revered as a prophet?

Or, to put it differently, what is the difference between a historian and a prophet, especially a Biblical prophet, in their approach to history?

Josephus conceived of truth in history in terms of a court of law. A court of law, even in its truncated version of a mock trial, provides a dramatic way to present history. Indeed, my generation in Israel encountered for the first time what happened in the Holocaust mainly from the dramatic trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Yet my concern here is not with the didactic effectiveness of the court format in the teaching of history. My concern is with the court of law as a model for the role of the historian. Josephus advocated the idea that history is about telling the truth. In this trial, writing his own account of history, Josephus is both the judge and the defense lawyer.

Josephus offers two kinds of defenses: defense of creed and defense of his people. His book Against Apion provides a defense of Judaism. His Antiquities of the Jews is a defense of the Jewish people. In his other great book, The War of the Jews, he is in a double bind. He tries to defend the majority of Jews by claiming that their irrational revolt against the Romans was forced on them by a reckless minority of Zealots, and he tries to defend the Roman Flavian dynasty.

It is not easy to square the circle of Jews and Romans. He does it by putting all the blame for the destruction of Jerusalem squarely on the Zealots, a political movement of Jews who incited the people to rebel. The Zealots didn’t shy away from using what we would today call terrorist acts in order to impose their will on the people of Jerusalem during the Roman siege.

Josephus blissfully ignores the wide popular support for the revolt, including his own in the early stages of the revolt. And he shamefully ignores the brutality of the Romans.

Jeremiah is, in a sense, also a historian. But his appeal to history is not out of an interest in human affairs as such, but rather in history as a source of obligations to God. The religion of the Bible is, broadly speaking, a historically based religion; the primary arena of the Bible is history; the divine manifestation is set essentially in history.

Biblical history starts with creation. Creation is a constitutive historical event, rather than a natural event. It is constitutive in the sense that it is an event that creates human obligation—an obligation to express deep gratitude to the Creator. Human beings in general, and not just the people of Israel, should be grateful for this creation. Indeed, this is the Lord’s message via Jeremiah to the nations:

“Tell this to your masters: With great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people … I give it to whomever I please” (Jeremiah 27:4–5).

But the principal thrust of the Bible is the special obligation of gratitude owed by the people of Israel for deliverance from the “house of bondage” in Egypt. The Bible’s constitutive event for the Israelites is the Exodus from Egypt. The Bible as a whole is a set of reminders and a plea for gratitude for this liberation. Obeying God’s commandments, that is, obeying God’s will, is the ultimate expression of gratitude.

In this sense, the Biblical prophets are not historians; their concern is idolatry. Their campaign against idolatry has been a message that, according to Jeremiah, began “from the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again” (Jeremiah 7:25). The heart of idolatry is forgetfulness and ingratitude. In combating idolatry, the prophets combat forgetfulness. They become, so to speak, the high priests of memory that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and God’s house, the Temple.

The prophets of the Bible are constantly losing this battle: Idolatry goes on. But being a loser doesn’t mean being unworldly. Jeremiah is a shrewd observer of the political scene. Early on he spotted the shift in the balance of power in the Fertile Crescent to Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon at the expense of Egypt and Assyria. Jeremiah was acutely aware of the implications of this shift for the future of Jerusalem.

The reality of power also has religious significance. Worshiping power, and especially superpowers, is idolatry. Accepting any ruler other than God is idolatry, which should be resisted at all costs, including readiness to be tortured to death.²

The Bible contains powerful manifestations of this idea. For example, Gideon early on turns down an offer to be king by famously answering: “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you” (Judges 8:23).

Jeremiah and Josephus both reject the idea that obeying a foreign ruler and turning Judea into a vassal state is idolatry. On the contrary, both advocated accepting the yoke of foreign power: Babylon in Jeremiah’s case, Rome in Josephus’s. Major earthly powers are agents of God; resisting the reality of these powers can be an arrogant act of rebellion against God rather than a religious act of zeal against idolatry.

So what is the difference between Josephus and Jeremiah? Why is Josephus remembered so utterly differently from Jeremiah?

Part of the difference is explained by the different attitudes the two had toward power. Jeremiah is a true prophet in the sense of daring to speak truth to power. Josephus was co-opted by power, if not corrupted by it. After all, Josephus was an official historian of the Flavian dynasty. For Josephus, it was Thucydides, author of The Peloponnesian Wars, not Jeremiah, who served as his model for writing history.

To be a Biblical witness is not only to be an observer. It is to be a warner, an admonisher. Jeremiah took upon himself to warn his people from what he saw as coming to them. So did Josephus. Yet Jeremiah, despite his defeatism during the siege, acquired in Jewish memory the status of a moral witness to the destruction of Jerusalem, while Josephus is regarded only as an expert witness—by no means a moral witness.

Josephus was tainted by his relation to power; Jeremiah was willing to risk everything. Josephus’s relation to power should not disqualify him as a witness in the court of history but it does disqualify him as a moral witness: A moral witness is never in the service of the ruling power.

Although Josephus’s model as a historian was Thucydides, he nonetheless asks his readers to excuse him for giving vent to his hostile emotions toward the Jewish rebels.³ Expressing emotions is a deviation from the Greek canon of writing history. But more importantly Josephus also asks his readers to excuse him for indulging in lamenting the destruction of his illustrious beloved city, Jerusalem.⁴

Lamentation over Jerusalem is also strongly associated with Jeremiah. Indeed, the name of the Biblical book of Lamentations is, in ancient Jewish tradition, the “Lamentations of Jeremiah.” We don’t know who wrote the Biblical book; few Biblical scholars, if any, believe it was Jeremiah. Yet the Jewish tradition of ascribing it to Jeremiah is just too good to be false.

Should historians express solidarity with their people in writing their history? Between truth and solidarity there is tension rather than contradiction. Solidarity is no replacement for truth, but it can complement the truth. Truth is about sense; solidarity is about sensibility.

A historian, a good one, needs both: sense and sensibility, rather than pride and prejudice.

In the case of Josephus the jury is still out. With all his shortcomings, however, no historian of the destruction of the Temple surpasses him.

At age 13, I was called a traitor.