pecs of some of the Strabo extracts is explained y the fact that Nicolaus was at those points the main authority. Traces of the style of Nicolaus, as seen in the extant fragments of his work, may
*Livy is once named (xiv. 68), but it is not likely that Josephus made any use of his history.
JOSEPHUS
also be found, in the opinion of this writer, in this portion of the Antiquities,
There remains one argument to be considered which has been adduced in favour of this theory of an anonymous source. Destinon (Die Quellen des F’. Josephus, 1882) was the first to call special attention to the use of the phrase xa0as dednwKapey (kadas ded%jAwrac) in several instances where the references cannot be verified in the extant works of Josephus. The phrase is employed at the end of sections dealing with the history of the Seleucid dynasty, or, more generally, with the affairs of Syria and Parthia, where the writer reverts to Jewish history proper. Since there is no trace of any separate work on Syrian history by Jose- phus, Destinon maintained that these ‘references were taken over bodily by him from his source. Further, as the phrase forms a link between the non-Jewish and the Jewish portions, the anonymous writer, from whom Josephus copied it, must, it is urged, have already combined Jewish and heathen materials. Josephus, according to Destinon, in this part of his work, found his history already made for him, and his only task was’ to insert occasional references to other historians such as Strabo and Nicolaus. The Syrian sections with the phrase in question are interspersed throughout the part which is based on 1 Maccabees; and J osephus, it is alleged, did not use that book at first hand, but found it incorporated in the anonymous work. This theory, which at first sight appears highly improbable, cannot be lightly dismissed. Such careless copying of authorities is not without parallels in ancient history ; and the explanation of these references forms an interesting problem on which \the last word has not yet been said. The facts are as follows :—(1) The first instance of the phrase occurs in Ant. VII. 393, xaOds Kal év arrows dedyAwKayeyv [Hyrcanus opens David’s tomb and bribes Antiochus Eusebes with the treasures concealed there]. This might be a reference to the parallel account in BJ I. 61; but references in Ant. to BJ are usually more precise (Ant. XII. 738, 173, XVII. 11), and the allusion to one of the Seleucids is to be noted. (2) In Ant. x1. 305, xadds ev dXXos ded7jAwrat [Philip and Alexander], the reference may be, as elsewhere where the passive is used, to Greek historians generally. (3) In Books XiI. and Xiu. the personal dedyAdkapev and the impersonal d5ed7\wra are used interchangeably with some variation of readings in the MSS, and the reference is usually to the Seleucids (x11. 244, 390, XIII. 36, 61, 108, 119, 186, 253, 271, 347, 371, 372). (4) In Book xiv. the impersonal 6e6/\wrac is always used, and in two instances the phrase be- comes ‘as has been shown by others’ (XIV. 122 im’ ddNwv, 801 rap’ dds). The last instance, also with dedjAwTaL, is XVIII. 54 [the death of Germanicus in A.D. 19]. The reference in these cases is nearly always to Parthian affairs, and, but for the use of the personal ded7Adcawev in Book x1m., there would be no question that Josephus is here direct- ing his readers for fuller information to Greek historians at large. (5) A comparison between BJ and Ant. in the following cases is specially interesting :—
BJ 1. 179 [death of Ant. XIV. 119 [the Crassus] rept Gy od viv same] ws Kal ev dddous Katpos eye. dednAwTAL.
BJ 1. 182 [Parthian Ant. XIV. 122 [the war of Cassius] wept Gy same] ws kal tm’ addwy év eTépots Epodmev. ded7nAwrat.
In the earlier work a promise is made of a further
description ‘elsewhere’: in the latter work the
reader is referred to other writers. There can be
no doubt that Josephus used the same authority
or authorities when writing the parallel portions EXTRA VOL.—30
JOSEPHUS 465
in BJ and Ant., and it looks as if the common source at this point had some such phrase as xaos ev addots Sednixamev, which J osephus has retained with various slight modifications. On the other hand, it might be said that he did contemplate a work on Eastern history which still remained un- written in A.D. 93 (the date of Ant.); that he had his own earlier work before him as well as the common source when writing Ant.; and that he has simply repeated himself, altering the phrase in view of his failure to carry out the projected Syrian history. But the former explanation ap- pears to be the simpler of the two.
The following general observations may be made with regard to the phenomena. (a) The explana- tion that naturally suggests itself is that Josephus wrote a work on the Seleucids and Syrian history. The only external evidence in favour of this is a rather vague statement in Jerome (Com. on Is 11, ad init.: ‘intelligant me non omnium probare fidem . . . sed ad distinctionem Josephi Por- phyriique dixisse, qui de hac qustione plurima disputarunt’), which implies that Josephus had written on the seventy weeks of Daniel. Such a work would of course have dealt with the Seleucid dynasty. But there is no allusion to it elsewhere ; and Jerome, who quotes the interpretations of humerous writers on the seventy weeks in his Com. on Daniel, does not mention it again. Josephus himself in Ant. x., where he treats of Daniel, is quite silent on the subject, although his vanity must have led him to mention such a literary undertaking.