PROJECTED WorxKS.— At the close of the Antiquities, Josephus, after promising a brief autobiography, the Life which we possess, an- nounces his intention, God willing, of writing two future works: (1) A summary of the Jewish War and the subsequent history of his nation down to the thirteenth year of Domitian; and (2) a work in four books ‘on the opinions held by us Jews concerning God and His Being, and concerning the Laws, why some actions are permitted to us by them and others are forbidden.’* Neither of these works has come down to us, and there is no reason to suppose that either was carried out. But the work ‘ On Customs and Causes,’ Ilep! €0v kal airvdr [Ilept Gay kai vouwy or 7 alrtoroyla are other names which he suggests for it], appears, from the men- tion of the four books, to have been already inapped out in his mind, and was possibly begun. The project had been formed perhaps even at the time when the Jewish War was written (BI We 237), and there are frequent allusions to it in the earlier books of the Antiquities. The treatise was to contain, ¢.g., an explanation why the first day
* It is unnecessary to suppose that Josephus contemplated two distinct works—one on the Being of God, and one on the Laws.
is spoken of as ‘day one’ (Ant. I. 29; cf. Philo, de Opif. Mundi, 9, dua rv rod voynrod Kécuou pdvwow Movadexnv &xovros diow); the reasons for the dress worn by the high priest (BJ v. 237), for the practice of circumcision (Andé. I. 192, 214), for the changing of the shewbread every sabbath (Ant. Ill. 143), for the various sacrifices (Ané. IIL. 257), for the distinction between clean and unclean meats (Ant. 111. 259); and a general rationale of Jewish laws and customs (Andé. Iv. 198). It is to be regretted that this project remained, apparently, unfulfilled. Such a work would probably have preserved a considerable amount of valuable tra- ditional lore, and put beyond a doubt the question whether Josephus was acquainted with the writings of Philo. At any rate, a comparison between the allegorical treatment of Scripture by the two writers would have been interesting.
WORKS ATTRIBUTED 10 JOSEPHUS.—The so- called Fourth Book of Maccabees, or Iepi adroxpdropos Aoyispod, was attributed to Josephus by Eusebius (HE iii. 10) and other Patristic writers. This rhetorical exercise has some points in common with Josephus; but that he was the author of it is disproved by the fact that it appears as an anony- mous work in many MSS, by differences of style, and by the fact that it is based on 2 Maccabees, a book of which Josephus shows no knowledge in the Antiquities. The work, lept rod rav7és[Ilepi THs Too mavros airtas, or Ilept THs Tod mwavros ovclas], ascribed by Photius (Bib/., Cod. 48) to Josephus, is of Christian origin, and its author is almost cer- tainly Hippolytus. On the alleged work of Jose- phus on the Seleucid dynasty, see above, p. 465».
iii, THE BIBLE OF JOSEPHUS AND HIS TREAT- MENT OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE.—1. Text.— In the Preface to the Antiquities, Josephus professes that his account is based directly on the Hebrew writings, implying that he has translated them himself for his Greek readers (Ané. I. 5, é« Trav ‘EBpatkOv meOnpunverpervyy ypaupdrwv; cf. X. 218, where his task is declared to be not to explain the difficulties of Scripture, but merely werappafew Tas ‘“HBpaiwy BiBdous els Thy “ENAdda yAGrrav). In reality this is not the case. The Bible of which he has made use throughout his work is, beyond a doubt, the collection of Greek translations com- monly known as the Septuagint. The language of that version is constantly to be traced beneath the historian’s paraphrase: passages occur which are peculiar to the Greek version, and probably never found a place in the Hebrew (e.g. the vapid answer of David to Goliath’s question, ‘Am I a dog?’ Odxl, dd’ 4 xelpw Kuvds, 1S 17% [Ané. vi. 186]; cf. also Ant. VI. 173 with 2S 137, And. vi. 190 with 28 1477, Ant. vir. 17 with 1 K 2% xai dpkicev x.T..). The writer’s dependence on the Septuagint is most clearly seen in the use which he makes of 1 Esdras (including the story of the three pages, for which there is no Hebrew equiva- lent) and of the LXX additions to Esther. There can be no doubt that he has also used the Greek version of the First Book of Maccabees, not the lost Hebrew original.
As to the type of Greek text which he has fol- lowed, Mez (Dre Bibel des Josephus, 1895) has made a special study of the subject for the historical books from Joshua to the end of the Books of Kings. He has examined the proper names of Josephus and the positive statements which deviate either from the MT or from the LXX. The con- clusions to which he comes are as follows: (1) The text of Cod. B is never followed by Josephus where there is a diversity of reading. This statement is essentially, but not absolutely, correct: for instance, the answer of David to Goliath, men- tioned above (18 17%), occurs in B but is absent from A, the Lucianic text, and the Hebrew.
468 JOSEPHUS
(2) In Joshua, Josephus follows the Hebrew closely. (3) In the Books of Samuel he diverges from the MT and Codd. A and B, and agrees with the Lucianic text, whose errors he follows and whose language he sometimes misunderstands. (4) In Judges, Mez does not arrive at any definite deci- sion.* Speaking generally, we may say that the LXX text of Josephus agrees most closely with the Lucianic text or that contained in Cod. A. The present writer tested the text of the Greek Bible of Josephus for 1 Esdras, and found that it almost invariably sides with the A text as against the B text (see vol. i. p. 762f.). In 1 Maccabees, where B is wanting, Josephus sides with & as against A.t