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it must be admitted, does the historian, with a view to greater picturesqueness, refrain from add- ing minor details of his own invention with regard to the strength of contending armies, names of localities, and the like (see Driiner, Untersuch. iiber Josephus, Marburg, 1896, p. 39ff.). He, how- ever, professes in several passages to have a high ideal of a historian’s duty (e.g. Ant. XIV. 1ff., XX. 154 ff. ; c. Ap. i. 24ff.); and, speaking generally, one must grant that, so far as it is possible to test him, he reaches a level of accuracy that gives him a high place among the historians of antiquity, setting aside those of the very foremost rank, while in extent and comprehensiveness he is far in advance of any of his predecessors in the same field. |
[For the sources of the Antiquities, see especially Bloch, Die Quellen des Flav. Josephus, Leipzig, 1879; Destinon, Die Quellen des F. Josephus, Kiel, 1882 ; with the reviews of Schiirer in Theolog. Litera- turzeit. 1879, col. 567 ft. ; 1882, col. 388 ff.].
3. The so-called Life (Iwojmov Bios) is appended in the MSS to the Antiquities, and was certainly composed by Josephus as a sequel to that work, although it appears to be separated in time from the larger work by an interval of at least six or seven years. That it was planned as a sequel is shown by the promise at the end of the Ant. (Xx. 266) of a brief account as to the author's family and life; by the fact that the Life begins without any prefatory remarks, being linked on to the Ant. by the particle 5é, and closes with a dedication of the whole work of the Antiquities (Thy wacay Tijs dpxaodroylas dvaypapiv) to Epaphroditus, who had been named in the exordium of Ant. (Vita, 430; Ant. I. 8); and by the fact that a passage from the Life is cited asfrom the Ant. by Eusebius (HE iii. 10). On the other hand, the Antiquities con- tains a formal conclusion of its own (Xx. 267f.), and was completed in the thirteenth year of Domitian (A.D. 93-94, ib.), while the Life implies that Agrippa I. was already dead (359f.); and we learn from Photius (Bibl., Cod. 33) that his death took place in the third year of Trajan (A.D. 100). The probability is that the autobiography was an afterthought, which was appended to later copies of the Antiquities, in which the sentence contain- ing the promise of the Life (Ané. XX. 266) was then inserted for the first time. The immediate occasion for the production of the Life was the 2 tear of a rival history of the Jewish War by Justus of Tiberias, in which the writer accused Josephus of being the real cause of the outbreak of the war with Rome (Vita, 340). Justus had written his history twenty years before, but, according to Josephus, had kept it back until the chief actors in the war were dead, when there was nobody to convict him of inaccuracy (360). The appearance of Justus’ work, with its damaging criticisms, was likely to endanger the secure position which Josephus had won for himself at Rome, and the earlier historian of the war felt bound to defend himselt. 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 com- mander in Galilee before the outbreak of the war, to which have been added a few details as to the earlier and later events of his life, by way of pro- logue and epilogue. The defence which Josephus makes against Justus is an extremely lame one. He has to admit the part which he took in organ- izing the forces of the country against Rome, while endeavouring to show that he was not in favour of the war. It is an obviously one-sided state- ment, marked by excessive self-laudation, and the brochure must be pronounced’ to be the least satisfactory of the historian’s works.
4. Against Apion, a work in two books.—The title, by which it is ordinarily known, is neither a
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suitable one, since Apion is not mentioned until the second book is reached, nor original. It occurs first in Jerome. The older designations, both of which may be original, are Mepi ris rév “Lovdalwy apxavérnros (Kus. HE iii. 9) and Ipds rods “EXAqvas (Porphyry, de Adstin. iv.11). It was undertaken as _a reply to criticisms on the Antiquities, and a refutation of current attacks upon, and groundless prejudices against, the Jewish nation. It gives an interesting glimpse of the anti-Semitism of the first century. The writer begins by _disproving the extreme antiquity claimed for the Greeks, and contrasts the discrepancies found in their writings with the carefully preserved and unanimous records of the Jews. He accounts for the silence of Greek writers with regard to Jewish history. He then proceeds to quote evidence for the anti uity of his nation from Egyptian, Phcenician, Chaldiean, and Greek sources. He passes next to a refutation of the malignant and often absurd accusations brought against his country by Manetho, Cheremon, Lysi- machus, Apollonius Molo, and, the greatest offender of all, Apion. The object of Josephus’ most biting satire enjoyed a considerable reputa- tion as a grammarian and interpreter of Homer, but, from all accounts, he must have been a man of inordinate vanity, and a loquacious charlatan ; the nickname of ‘cymbalum mundi,’ given him by Tiberius, corroborates the impression which we derive from Josephus; he is best known as the leader of the Alexandrian embassy to Caligula in A.D. 38, which brought accusations against the Jewish residents in that city, and was opposed by the counter-embassy of the Alexandrian Jews, headed by Philo. Josephus concludes his work with an able and eloquent defence of the Jewish lawgiver and his code, and contrasts his concep- tion of God with the immoral ideas about the gods current among the Greeks. The book is, in short, an apology for Judaism, carefully planned and well worked out. The satire directed against Apion and the rest is pointed and lively, though sometimes, as in the allusion to Apion’s death (ii. 143), it exceeds the bounds of good taste. The treatise gives us a higher idea than that we should form from his other works of the writer’s literary skill, and of his genuine patriotism and zeal for his country’s religion. A special value attaches to it from the numerous quotations from authors whose works are lost. It must have been written after A.D. 93 (the date of the Antiquities), but whether before or after the Life is uncertain.