Interpreting Ancient Israelite History, Prophecy, and Law. John H. Hayes
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(Ant. 2.205–16), as a philosopher, lawgiver, statesman, and military hero (see especially Ant. 1.18–26; 2.238–53; 3.179–87; 4.176–95). Josephus stresses not only Moses’s death but Moses’s authorship of the account of his death so that none could claim that, like Enoch (Ant. 1.84), “by reason of his surpassing virtue he had gone back to the Deity” (Ant. 4.326; see 396; and compare Philo, De Vita Mosis 2.288–91) and thus been granted special immortality, as seems to have been claimed in certain circles (see Origen, Contra Celsum 1.21).
3. Although Josephus declares that “some things the lawgiver Moses shrewdly veils in enigmas, others he sets forth in solemn allegory” (Ant. 1.24), his work is surprisingly free of allegorical interpretation, in strong contrast to the work of Philo (see, for example, Philo’s De Migratione Abrahami). Josephus, however, sought to show the correlation between Moses’s writing and natural philosophy, for example, in the depiction of the tabernacle and priestly garments as “an imitation of universal nature” (Ant. 3.123, 179–87).
4. A further noteworthy characteristic in Josephus’s history is his recognition of many of the critical problems and difficulties in the biblical text, a characteristic shared by many of his Jewish contemporary and later rabbinic interpreters of the Scriptures. His work demonstrates that the ancients perceived many of the issues that were to occupy scholarly investigations centuries later. Working within a framework that accepted the inspiration and veracity of the Scriptures and gave no thought to the possibility of diversity and development in the literary text, Josephus handled these problems through supplementation and harmonization. A few examples will suffice as illustrations. In discussing Cain, for example, Josephus is careful to point out that Adam and Eve had not only sons but daughters as well (Ant. 1.52; cf. Jubilees 4.1–8) and that Cain feared that he would be a prey to wild beasts in his wanderings and thus needed a protective marking (Ant. 1.59). In the discussion of the tribal allotments in the book of Joshua, one should logically conclude that since the distribution was an ad hoc operation by lot, then equality in tribal territories should be expected. Josephus knew that this had not been the case and this he explained in terms of land valuation and tribal population (Ant. 5.76–80). In discussing the capture of Jerusalem, Josephus was aware of the contradictions in Josh 15:63; Judg 1:8, 21; and 2 Sam 5:1–10 and the need to harmonize such contradictions. Josephus accomplished this task by having two Jerusalems—a lower city captured as noted in Judg 1:8 and an upper city not taken until the time of David (Ant. 5.124; 7.61–64). In the stories of David’s first association with Saul, the biblical text has David entering Saul’s service as a musician and armor-bearer (1 Samuel 16) whereas the subsequent story of David’s combat with Goliath depicts Saul as unaware of David’s identity. Josephus harmonizes the traditions by playing down the identity problem, omitting any reference to 1 Sam 17:55–58 (perhaps due to his dependence upon the Greek text where these verses do not appear), and by suggesting that David had previously been placed on furlough by Saul (Ant. 6.175). Second Samuel 21:19, where Elhanan is said to have killed Goliath, is harmonized with 1 Samuel 17 by Josephus’s omission of the name of Goliath in the former.
5. Another notable feature of Josephus’s historical treatment is his rationalization of miraculous and extraordinary events. Josephus was somewhat troubled by Old Testament miracles (as was apparently the author of Wisdom of Solomon 19:6–21), or at least wondered about the incredulity of Gentile readers. Josephus dealt with the miraculous by carefully guarding himself and his own opinion and/or by explaining the miraculous through rationalization. When speaking of accounts in which miracle played a significant role, Josephus frequently pointed out that he was merely recounting the story as he “found it in the sacred books” (see Ant. 2.347). At other times, he used a rather set formula suggesting that on these matters “everyone should decide according to his fancy” or “everyone is welcome to his own opinion” (see Ant. 1.108; 2.348 and frequently elsewhere). This tendency to point the reader to his own opinion was already used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 1.48), from whom Josephus may have borrowed it, and was later stated as a rule for historians by Lucian in his third-century CE work, How to Write History: “Should any myth come into question, it should be related but not wholly credited: rather it should be left open for readers to conjecture about it as they will, but do you take no risks and incline neither to one opinion nor to the other” (60).
On several occasions, Josephus offers a rationalistic or naturalistic explanation for the unusual. The great longevity of the antediluvians was due not only to their being “beloved of God” but also to their use of astronomy and geometry and a diet “conducive to longevity” (Ant. 1.104–8). The Hebrew passage through the sea is paralleled by the retirement of the Pamphylian Sea before Alexander (Ant. 2.347–48).The purification of the bitter waters of Marah was due to the draining off of the contaminated part (Ant. 3.8). Josephus pointed out that quail were abundant around the Arabian Gulf and that manna was still a phenomenon in that region (Ant. 3.25, 31). Even natural causes are offered as one solution to the plagues that beset the Philistines after their capture of the ark (Ant. 6.9). In explaining the rescue of Jerusalem and the slaughter of 185,000 Assyrians in a single night, Josephus drew upon the story of Herodotus, which told of an invasion by mice of the Assyrian military camps (Ant. 10.18–22). Josephus, however, was no thoroughgoing rationalist who shied away from references to the miraculous. In his description of the fall of Jerusalem (War 6.288–300), he refers to numerous miraculous portents that heralded the fall of the holy city. Whether he believed these to be actual occurrences or was merely seeking to emphasize for his audience the gravity of the occasion with rhetorical exaggeration is, of course, beyond the realm of solution.
6. A final characteristic of Josephus’s account of Israelite and Judean history is his lack of any sense of development in the people’s institutions and religion. The orthodox practices, beliefs, and institutions of his day were assumed to have existed from the time of Moses (see the book of Jubilees where the patriarchs are depicted as exemplary practitioners of the Mosaic law). That the whole of Jewish law and the institutional structure of Judaism had been given on Mount Sinai was a firmly anchored concept in later rabbinic Judaism. Josephus certainly operated with a very similar assumption.
After Josephus, ancient Judaism produced no historian in any way comparable. Very few Jewish writings from the rabbinic and Talmudic periods can be called historical works. Three perhaps should be noted. The Megillat Taanit (“The Scroll of Fasts”) is an Aramaic document probably written near the beginning of the second century CE. Containing a list of thirty-six days on which Jews were not to fast because of the joyous events that occurred on those days, the work provides some narrative material on events during the period of the second temple. However, in no way can it really be designated a real history. The Seder Olam Rabbah (“The Order of the World”), probably from the second century CE, is a chronological work generally ascribed to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta.27 The work established a chronology based on the calculation of dates from the creation of the world (libriath ha‘olam or anno mundi). While it is primarily concerned with the dating of biblical events, a final chapter surveys the period from Alexander the Great to the revolt of Bar Kokhba in 132–135 CE. Meyer has summarized the value of this work in the following terms: The author’s
endeavour to establish a single consistent chronology, reconciling apparent variations in the biblical text, would place his work very much in the rabbinic tradition of seeking to resolve scriptural contradictions which might otherwise create some doubt about the accuracy of the text. Though he confined himself almost entirely to biblical history, mixed chronicle with midrash, and sometimes departed from chronological sequence, the author of Seder Olam did evince a desire to establish a sequential framework for Jewish history. His concern was unusual for that time.28
Pseudo-Philo’s Liber antiquitatum biblicarum was apparently produced in the first century CE as a Jewish handbook on biblical history.29 The work is primarily a midrashic chronicle of biblical history from Adam to David characterized by extensive omissions, modifications, and additions to the biblical texts. Its exact purpose is unknown. Many of its additions have parallels in other Jewish haggadah. The work was translated into Greek and subsequently into Latin, perhaps in the process being turned into a Christian handbook.
The sudden cessation of the writing of historical works by the Jews has been explained in various ways. The causes of this phenomenon were probably multiple; among them were the