JOSEPHUS
Origen and Jerome there can be no doubt that the number 22 in Josephus was arrived at by treating Ruth and Lam. as parts of Judges and Jeremiah. There is no ground for Gritz’s inference, that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs had not been received into the Canon when Josephus wrote. See, further, Ryle, Canon of OT, 158-166, and the works of Buhl and Wildeboer on the OT Canon; also art. OT CANON in vol. iii. p. 607 f.
In a passage where allusion is made to the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ant. x. 79) there is an enigmatical statement that Ezekiel was the first to write two books concern- ing the destruction of Jerusalem and the Captivity. Two explanations have been suggested for the two books: (1) The prophecy of Ezekiel may have been divided into two parts, chs. 1-39 and 40-48, But the latter portion contains no refer- ence to the Exile. (2) The second book has been supposed to be an apocryphal work, from which are taken certain quota- tions made by Clem. Alex. and others which {are not to be traced in the canonical Ezekiel (Fabricius, Codea Pseudepig. i. 1117). Both explanations leave unexplained the statement that Ezekiel wrote first, 7.e. before Jeremiah. Eichhorn and Bertholdt have taken the words to refer to Jeremiah, and a division of an ated into two parts. See Jowrn. Theol. Stud. iv. p.
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3. Additions to the Biblical narrative, mainly derived from Rabbinic tradition.—Josephus has, with a view to rendering the Biblical narrative more attractive to his Greek readers, diversified and amplified it by a large number of additions. These additions may be divided into: (1) those derived from Rabbinic tradition, (2) those derived from Alexandrian and Hellenistic writers on Jew- ish history, (3) those which are the invention of the historian himself. It is not, however, always easy to distinguish between these three classes, and the attempt to do so has not been made in the present article. Additions for which Rabbinic parallels have been traced are indicated by an asterisk. For a fuller treatment of the relation of Josephus to Rabbinism, the reader is referred to the article of Edersheim in the Dict. of Christian Biography, and to the works of Bloch (Die Quedlen) and others.+ Edersheim, whose profound study of Rabbinic literature gives his opinion great weight, concludes that Josephus’ knowledge of tradition was, like his acquaintance with Hebrew, not more than superficial.
We may begin by grouping together those addi- tions and explanations which consist in the identi- fication of places or persons, or in inferences deduced from bringing different passages of the OT into connexion. Among these may be named *the identification of the rivers of Paradise, Pishon= Ganges, Hiddekel= Tigris (so LXX)=Avyhaé (Ant. I. 38f.); *it was Nimrod, the builder of cities (Gn 10"), who counselled the building of the Tower of Babel, to revenge himself upon God for the Flood (Ant. I. 113 ff.); Dan was the name of one of the springs of Jor-dan (Ané. 1. 177); Abraham’s de- scendants by Keturah occupied Troglodytis (Anz. I. 239, 11. 213, where Gn 25° merely names ‘the east country’); * the daughter of Pharaoh who adopted Moses was named Thermuthis (Ant. Il. 224 ; Book of Jubilees ‘Tharmuth’); the injunctions in Nu 19 about the red heifer and the cleansing of one who touched a dead body are brought into con- nexion with the death of Miriam in Nu 20 (Ant. Iv. 78 ff.); Mount Hor is identified with Petra (Ant. Iv. 82); the mother of Abimelech was named Drumah (Ant. v. 233; unnamed in Jg 8*!; the name is probably taken from that of her residence, Arumah, Jg 9*!); the name of Jephthah’s burying- place was Sebee in Gilead (Anté. V. 270; Jg 127‘ one of the cities of Gilead’; Josephus may have had another reading, see Mez, Die Bibel des Jos. 16) ; Saul’s uncle (1 S 10!4) was Abner (Ané. VI. 58; cf.
+The present writer has not had access to the works of Duschak (Josephus und die Tradition, Vienna, 1864), Tachauer (Das Verhdltniss des F. Jos. zur Bibel und zur Tradition, Erlangen, 1871), and others named by Schiirer.
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JOSEPHUS 469
18 14°);+ the mention of Joab cutting off the water-supply of the Ammonites (Ané. vil. 159) has apparently arisen out of the name, ‘the city of waters,’ by which Rabbah is called in 28 12%; the eee of Sheba appears as the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia (Ané. vill. 165); the prophet who prophesied against the altar of Jeroboam (1 K 13) is named “Iddwv (Ant. VIII. 231: has this arisen from /éov in the LXX, kal id0d dvOpwaros To Oe0d?) ; an anonymous prophet in 1 K 20 (21)*> who fore- told the death of Ahab is identified with Micaiah (Ant. vill. 389; cf. 403 and 1 K 228); and the ‘certain man who drew his bow at a venture’ and gave Ahab his death-wound is called ”“Apavos (Ant. vill. 414; ? =Naaman); *the ‘certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets,’ who was persecuted by her creditors (2 K 41), was the widow of Obadiah, who had borrowed money to support the prophets at the time of the famine (An¢é. Ix. 47); Tarshish, to which Jonah was sailing, is identified with Tarsus in Cilicia, and the prophet is said to have been cast up by the whale in the Euxine Sea (Ant. TX. 208, 213).