Books in Brief

018

Josephus—The Jewish War

Gaalya Cornfeld, general editor; Benjamin Mazar, Paul L. Maier, consulting editors

(Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1982) 526 pp., $39.95

No ancient event of limited duration has been better documented—often on a day-today basis—than the Jewish war against Rome from 66 to 74. This phenomenon is the result almost solely of Josephus’s classic account of what scholars call the First Jewish Revolt (distinguishing it from the second Jewish Revolt against Rome of 115 to 117 and the third Jewish Revolt of 132 to 135 led by Bar Kokhba).

The present translation of Josephus’s The Jewish War is the eighth into English. William Whiston’s translation of Josephus’s complete works was finished in 1737. I have counted 217 reprintings of this translation alone, an average of almost one per year. In Whiston’s translation, Josephus’s works have occupied a place on the shelf of the literate English-speaking public between the Hebrew Scriptures, on the one hand, and the New Testament, on the other; most of the events described by him cover precisely this interval.

The earliest book by a Jewish author printed in America, other than the Bible, was Sir Roger L’Estrange’s translation of The Jewish War, published in Boston in 1719. The second book published in America by a Jew was a translation of Josippon, a Hebrew paraphrase of Josephus’s The Jewish War, by Peter Morwyne, (which was dared 1718 but was actually printed in 1722).

It would be hard to imagine someone better qualified to write an account of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome than Josephus. Josephus, whose Hebrew name was Joseph ben Mattityahu, was born in Jerusalem in 37. He was related on his mother’s side to the royal Hasmoneans. On both his parents’ sides, he boasted a priestly lineage. One scholar has even speculated that Josephus hoped to become not only high priest but also king of Judea. According to his autobiography, when he was only 14 the chief priests and the leaders of Jerusalem were going to him for explanations of Jewish law. Between the ages of 16 and 19 he joined successively the three major Jewish sects (Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes) in order to select the best. (He ended up as a Pharisee.) When he was only 27 he went to Rome and managed to get the Emperor Nero to release some priestly friends from bondage.

When the war with the Romans broke out in 66, the youthful Josephus, though he had no previous military experience, was appointed by the Jewish revolutionary council to be the general of the Galilean sector, the area where the Romans were most likely to attack first. After fighting with considerable ingenuity at first, he and his army were finally besieged at Jotapata. When the battle seemed hopeless, he entered into a suicide pact with his men, but somehow managed to be among the last two survivors and eventually surrendered to the Romans instead of committing suicide. Some time later Josephus was freed from captivity, apparently because his prophecy that the Roman general Vespasian would be named emperor came true.

A controversy has raged ever since as to whether Josephus was a traitor. On the one hand, we may note that he was apparently never censured by the government that appointed him; true, he was sharply critical of the revolutionaries, but so was the leading Pharisee of his day, Johanan ben Zakkai, who likewise predicted that Vespasian would become emperor. On the other hand, our suspicions are raised by the fact that he received from the Romans a tract of land outside Jerusalem, some sacred books, the liberation of some friends, Roman citizenship (whence his name Flavius Josephus, after his benefactor Flavius Titus), lodging in the former palace of Vespasian in Rome, and a pension apparently large enough so that he did not have to work a day in his life.

When Titus, Vespasian’s successor as Rome’s general in Judea, returned to Rome after the war, he took Josephus with him. There, Josephus composed his first work, The Jewish War, originally written in his native Aramaic (it is completely lost). Fortunately, with the help of assistants he translated it into Greek some time between 75 and 79. The Greek translation has survived. The Jewish War was written, he declares, to correct the distorted picture of the war given by previous historians (all of their works are lost); but the very title, Concerning the Jewish War, shows that Josephus was writing from the standpoint of the Romans. His longest work, The Jewish Antiquities, in 20 books, which was completed in 93, traces the history of the Jews from creation to the outbreak of the war against the Romans. It was intended for the non-Jewish (and probably also Jewish) Greek speaking world as a defense and panegyric of the Jewish people. His autobiography, defending himself against the charges of his detractors, notably a certain Justus of Tiberias, and his treatise Against Apion, which refutes the canards of intellectual anti-Semites, particularly the Alexandrian rhetorician Apion, were completed shortly before his death about the year 100.

The literature about Josephus and his work is enormous. In my critical bibliography of items dealing directly or indirectly with Josephus during only a 45-year period, from 1937 through 1981, I have listed 4,110 entries. On the Masada episode alone, I have counted 131 items.

Why the popularity of Josephus? In the first place, there is always interest in one who, like a recent president of the United States, has left us enough material with which to indict him. Although Josephus destroyed his original “tapes,” scholars always enjoy trying to reconstruct them from the reworked versions that he has left us in his autobiography and in The Jewish War. Moreover, Josephus is the first Jew on record who attempted to come to terms with his Jewishness by translating into words the guilt he felt about his betrayal of his people. He is also the author of the first extant autobiography that has come down to us from antiquity, and in it he exposes himself to his readers, often unwittingly; it is tempting for scholars to psychoanalyze him. Josephus is, in a sense, the first modern Jew, as indeed he is portrayed in Feuchtwanger’s trilogy of novels (Josephus, The Jew of Rome and The Day Will Come). Josephus tried to remain true to his Jewish tradition while, at the same time, imbibing the best of Greco-Roman culture. Finally, because Josephus is a historian and geographer of ancient Palestine, where archaeology is now a national hobby and where digging has been called a form of prayer, he is a major guide to archaeological excavations in the area.^a So naturally he is popular.

Gaalya Cornfeld’s translation of The Jewish War has been produced in a “coffee-table” format. It is expensive and lavishly illustrated. Many of the illustrations are from the most recent archaeological excavations, and some of them are in full color. Unfortunately the relation between the illustrations and the text is not always clear; sometimes the references in the text to the illustrations do not indicate to which illustrations they refer. This is also true with respect to textual references 020to maps. The several maps, however, are generally helpful.

The translation itself is a new one, written in clear and vigorous English. A comparison with the previous translations, however, reveals a relationship, often a close one, with Henry St. John Thackeray’s generally excellent and widely used translation in the Loeb Classical Library. Nevertheless, Cornfeld has failed to correct most of Thackeray’s errors. Thus in the first sections of Book 1, Cornfeld has retained the phrase that the Jewish war “has not lacked its historians,” a phrase not found in the original Greek, but used by Thackeray. Cornfeld, like Thackeray, speaks of the war as being the greatest “of all other recorded conflicts,” whereas the original Greek describes the history of the war as one “which we have received by hearsay.”

Cornfeld’s commentary on Josephus’s text is the most extensive that we have in English. In language easily intelligible yet not condescending to the layperson, Cornfeld’s commentary gives the background of the events described in the text. Again, however, it is sometimes difficult to correlate the notes with the text.

Many of the events described in The Jewish War are also recounted in Josephus’s later book, Jewish Antiquities, which is Josephus’s comprehensive history of the Jewish people and which includes Josephus’s retelling of Biblical history. Cornfeld helpfully notes where the Antiquities corrects the War.

Cornfeld hardly ever gives us his own view. For the most part, he prefers to summarize the views of a few, admittedly outstanding, Israeli scholars, notably Gedalya Alon, Benjamin Mazar, Abraham Schalit, Menahem Stern, and Yigael Yadin.

Cornfeld is particularly helpful in correlating Josephus with the results of modern archaeology. He is thoroughly acquainted with the most recent archaeological finds in ongoing excavations.

Of course, there are errors. Cornfeld says that the Greek translation of the War was written for the benefit of Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora; but Josephus himself (War 1, 6) says that his work was written for Greeks and such Romans as were not engaged in the contest—clearly a reference to non-Jews. Cornfeld tells us (p. 8) that modern scholarship has detected at least two hands of different quality in the finished work of the War; in fact, it is in the Antiquities that Thackeray detected different hands; and even this assertion by Thackeray has since been challenged by several scholars.

In general, Cornfeld is unprejudiced and well-balanced in approaching the question of Josephus’s methodology and reliability. He is sound in starting with the assumption that Josephus is to be relied upon unless proven otherwise. One factor supporting such a view is that because Josephus had so many enemies who were constantly seeking to discredit him, he had to be extremely careful with his facts. Moreover, Josephus was the friend of two Roman emperors, Vespasian and Titus, each of whom fought in Palestine against the Jews. Indeed, Josephus was Titus’s protege; Josephus even took Titus’s surname, Flavius; Josephus lived in Titus’s mansion. It therefore seems highly probable that Josephus had access to the official Roman records of the war. In his autobiography (361) which he wrote as a response to attempts to discredit him and in Against Apion (1, 50), Josephus tells us he submitted his work to Vespasian and to Titus as well as to King Agrippa II, (the King of Judea at the time of war against the Romans) for their approval prior to publication. Finally, Josephus apparently had no other duties during the approximately ten years that he wrote the account of the war. This would amount to about 1,800 lines a year or approximately five lines a day. In view of the fact, moreover, that Josephus had assistants (Against Apion I, 50) to help him with the Greek, he must have been able to exercise considerable care in his research and in his writing.

Cornfeld is particularly to be commended for including analyses of the economic factors that influenced the course of Jewish history during this period. He astutely notes (p. 40) that the loss of the coastal plain following Pompey’s drastic reorganization of Judea in 63 B.C. resulted in the creation of a large class of landless Jewish peasants. Moreover, cutting off the Decapolis cities from the Jewish state compelled many Jews to return to farming. The consequent overpopulation of the Jewish stronghold of Galilee and the reduction in size of the average peasant’s holdings led to economic distress. These factors must have contributed to the unrest that reached its climax in the revolt against Rome in 66. The strong messianic movement at the time, of which Josephus hardly takes note, also had economic roots.

Cornfeld also sheds interesting light on Roman policy toward the Jews in Palestine. In effect, though Cornfeld does not say so in so many words, the Romans sought to strengthen the “Palestinians” by repopulating a number of cities in Palestine, especially along the coast, with Gentiles and by declaring these cities “free,” or formally annexing them to the new province of Syria, or granting them autonomous rule. The Romans thus maintained a balance of power through constant tension between the Jewish population and the new Gentile colonists. The clashes between the Jews and the “Palestinians” were inevitable and were, indeed, as Cornfeld realizes, an important cause of the outbreak of the war against the Romans, since the Jews accused the Roman administrators of favoring the “Palestinians” in these clashes. In truth, as Cornfeld correctly comments, Josephus, probably for apologetic reasons, plays down the strife between Jews and Gentiles in such trouble spots as Caesarea.

To BAR readers, the most interesting question may be the extent to which Josephus is confirmed by archaeology. Cornfeld’s answer is that archaeology indicates that Josephus is generally, but not always, accurate. Thus, underwater exploration of the harbor of Caesarea confirms Josephus’s description (The Jewish War I, 412–413) of the remarkable engineering feat involved in the construction of the harbor.^b As to Jerusalem, Cornfeld believes that Ehud Netzer’s and Sara Ben Arieh’s excavations of the “Third Wall” in 1972 confirm Josephus’s statement (The Jewish War II, 218) that the Third Wall dates from the time of Agrippa I (41–44) and also confirm Josephus’s description of that wall. But Josephus is mistaken, says Cornfeld (p. 337), in identifying (War IV, 137) the Upper City of Jerusalem with the citadel of David.

Cornfeld concludes (p. 418) that Josephus did not succeed in whitewashing the Romans, that he unwittingly, or perhaps consciously, told the truth, often through “slips of the pen.” Or, as Gedalya Alon so insightfully put it, “By revealing only a little, he disclosed a lot.”

Despite reservations, we must express our gratitude to Gaalya Cornfeld for helping to disclose the mind of Josephus and for indicating the extent to which we may trust him as a historian.

Josephus—The Jewish War

Gaalya Cornfeld, general editor; Benjamin Mazar, Paul L. Maier, consulting editors

(Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1982) 526 pp., $39.95