Joseph ben-Chija (in the Talmud simply styled Rabbi Joseph), one of the gTcatest of Israel's Rabbis, was born in Babylon about A.D. 270. Rabbi Joseph was a disciple of Jehudah ben-Jecheskel, the founder and pres- ident of the college at Pumbadita, and a fellow-student and intimate lifelong friend of the celebrated Rabba ben-Nachmani. commonly called Rabba, the reputed author of the Mlilrii.<h Rdhba, or the traditional com- mentary on Genesis, wlinm he succeeded in the presi- dency at Pumbadita aljimt A.D. 330. He died, however, only three years after (about A.D. 333). Joseph de- serves our notice not so much from his connection with the school at Pumbadita, which, though brief, was yet of marked benefit to the development of Biblical schol- arship at that centre of Jewish learning, as for his Chal- dee versions of the Hebrew Scriptures (i. e. the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), particularly of the Hagiographa, of which alone the authorship can be ascribed to him with any certainty (comp. the Rabbinic Bibles). Some Jewish critics credit him with a version of the whole O. Test. ; and, indeed, from passages quoted ui the Talmud (comp. Moed Katon, 26, a ; Pesachim, 68, a ; Memichoth, 110, a; Joma, 32, b; 77, b; Aboda Sara, 44, a; Kiddu- shin, 13, a; 72, b; Nedarim, 38, a; Baba Kama, 3, b; Bei-achoth, 28, a) from a paraphrase with which he is accredited, it would appear that he translated Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Zechariah, since these passages are from these bddks. and are distinctly cited with the declaration ro"^ 3~i D5ir?:n2, '• as R. Joseph has rendered it into Chaldee." These renderings are, however, almost exactly those given in the Targum of Jonathan ben-
Uzziel (a fact which has led some to suppose that this Targum ascribed to Jonathan is in reahty Joseph's); and he himself even declared on several occasions, when discussing the meaning of a difficult passage in the Scriptures, " If we had not the Targum on this passage we should not know what it means" (see Sanhedrim, 94, a ; Moid Katon, 28, b ; Megilla, 3, a). It is therefore un- reasonable to suppose him to have himself actually ren- dered into Chaldee more than the Hagiographa contain- ed (with a Latin version) in the Polyglots of AntT\-erp (1572), Paris (1645), London (1657), etc. In his day, Jo- seph b.-Chija must have enjoyed a very enviable reputa- tion for erudition. His knowledge of traditional lore is said to have been so extensive that he was simiamed, both in Palestine and Babylon, Joseph of Sinai, i. e. one acquainted with all the traditions in succession since the giving of the law on Sinai {Ilorajoth, 14, a; Sanhe~ drim,, 42, a). One of his favorite studies was the Cab- alistic Theosophy, the mysteries of which, being con- tained in the vision of Ezekiel respecting the throne of God (nSSl^ niijyQ), he endeavored to propound {Chufjiya, 18, a). See Bartolocci, Bihliotheca Magna Rabbinica, iii, 814; '\^'olf, Bihliotheca Ilehrcea, ii, 1171 sq. ; Zunz, Die G of tesdienst lichen Vortrdge der Juden, p. 65, etc. ; Flirst, Kidtur und IJteraturgesch. der Juden in Asien, p. 144-155; Griitz, Gesch. der Judev, iv, 408 sq., 553 sq. ; Ersch u. Grnber's -4 Ugemeine EnqjUopadie, sec. ii, vol. xxxi, p. 75 ; Etheridge, Introd. to Ileb. Lit. p. 165 sq. ; Kitto, Bibl. Cyclop, s. v. (J. H. W.)
Joseph beu-Gikatilla. See Moses (ha-Ko- hen) ben-Samuel.
Joseph ben -Gordon (also called Josippori), is the name of the reputed author of the celebrated He- brew chronicle 'IS^pi^ ^?^) '^'^ booh ofJosipjmn, or ■'"IS"?! '|l3'^Di"i, tlie Ilebreio Josippon, a work which, by the statement of the author, is placed in the .tra of Christ, for he says of himself that he is " the priest of Jerusalem'" (and this can refer only to the celebrated Jewish historian Flavins Josephus [q. v.]), and further- more that he was appointed governor of the whole Jew- ish nation by Titus ; and from the days of Saadia (A.D. 950) up to our own time it was quoted both by Jewish and Christian Avriters as a genuine work of Josephus, Of late, however, critical inquiry has determined the work to be a production of the Middle Ages. The con- jecture is that the author was a Jew, and that he flour- ished about the 9th or 10th century. Zunz, in the Zeit- schriftf. Wis.«u»h<ift d. Judenth. (i3erl. 1822, p. 300 sq.), asserted that Joscjih bcn-Gorion flourished in the 9th centurj', and that his Avork must since his day have un- dergone frequent emendations and alterations. Later Zunz (in his notes on Benjamin of Tudela, ed. Asher, 1841,ii,24G) changed his opinion somewhat, and regard- ed Josepli as " the [Hebrew] translator and editor q/" Jo- sephus," and assigns him to "the middle of the latter half of the 10th centiu-y," and says of him that his ac- counts of several nations of his time are as important as his orthography of Italian towns is remarkable." To the same period Steinschneider (Jen-ish Lite?:, London, 1857, p. 77) also assigns the work, but he believes the author to have been a native of Northern Italy, and con- siders the chronicle '• the Hebrew edition of the Latin Hegesippus," and •' an offshoot from the fully developed Midrash of Arabian and Latin literature." A stUl more modern critic, the celebrated Jewish historian Griitz (Gesch. d. Juden, y,281, and note 4 in the Appendix of the same volume), holds that the Jewish book, which he also assigns to the 10th century, is simply a translation of an Arabic book of Maccabees, entitled History of the Macca- bees of Joseph ben-Gorion (of which parts were published in the Polyglots. Paris. 1045; Loud. 1657) imder the title of the Arabic Vii"ik of ^laccabees, and which is extant in two MSS, in the liodlcian library (Uri Catalogue, Nos. 782, 829), made by a skilful Italian Jew, who enriched it with many original additions. His reason for assign-