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JOSEPHUS

Flavius Josephus, born Yoseph bar Mattatyahu in 37 c.e., when Gaius Caligula became emperor of Rome. The year of his death is uncertain. He is significant for the Bible reader because his four surviving works, in 30 volumes, provide our main avenue for information about the environment in which Christianity was born. He is the only contemporary author outside the NT to write in any detail about the Jerusalem temple and priesthood, the Roman governors (including Pontius Pilate), the countryside of Judea and Galilee, the various groups and factions in Jewish society, and even such figures as John the Baptist and Jesus’ brother James. Josephus also has a passage on Jesus, but the version that survives is inauthentic. His extensive biblical paraphrase (Ant. 1-11) is an extremely valuable example of Jewish biblical interpretation at the time of the NT.

Although Josephus provides considerable detail about his life, his accounts are highly rhetorical and cannot be taken at face value. In particular, the stories that readers often use to impugn his character are told in order to make him look good, according to the “wily trickster” model popular in Greek literature since Homer’s Odysseus. Nevertheless, it seems clear that he was a priest who fought briefly against the Romans in the Judean revolt (66-74 c.e.), defending part of Galilee. He surrendered at Jotapata in the spring of 67. After a period in chains, and providing intelligence to the Romans, he was released and given a prominent role in the Flavian family’s circle of clients. He accompanied the victorious Titus to Alexandria and then back to Rome for the triumph. Once settled in Rome with an imperial pension and many privileges, he began to write his four volumes on Jewish history and culture.

Open questions surrounding Josephus’ life include his precise ancestry and relation to the ancient Hasmoneans, the way in which he came to prominence in the Galilean revolt, the degree of official Jerusalem support for him, his early beliefs about the advisability of the revolt, the circumstances of his surrender to the Romans, the nature of the services he provided for the conquerors, and his relation to the Jewish community in Rome after his arrival there.

His first known work, largely completed before the death of Emperor Vespasian in 79 c.e., is an account of the Jewish War in seven volumes. Its main point is to show that most Judeans did not support the revolt. Even though local Roman government was atrocious, Jewish tradition recognized that God chooses various powers to rule from time to time. The revolt was foisted upon the populace by some youthful and intemperate men who saw opportunities for various kinds of gain. Josephus also emphasizes that the defeat of the Jews was not the defeat of their God, who simply used the Romans to punish the impious rebels.

In 93/94 Josephus completed his 20-volume Jewish Antiquities and the appendix on his Life. The longer work is essentially a primer in Jewish history and culture. Roughly the first half is a paraphrase of the Bible from creation to the return from exile (Ant. 1-11). The rest covers the Persian and Greek periods, the Hasmonean revolt and dynasty, the arrival of the Romans in Judea, Herod the Great and his family, and local Roman administration to the eve of the great revolt. The precise purpose and audience of this, Josephus’ magnum opus, are not clear in the scholarship. He wrote for Gentiles, but who would have had the motivation to sit through extensive readings of such material? Perhaps Josephus wrote for those Gentiles interested in Jewish culture, about whom we hear in Roman authors (e.g., Tacitus Hist. 5.1-13). The short appendix, Life, is calculated to rebut charges made by Justus of Tiberias in an account of the war that apparently portrayed Josephus as a reckless warlord.

Josephus’ advocacy and defense of Jewish culture reaches its apogee in the two-volume Against Apion. This work defends Judaism against its numerous literary detractors from the preceding three centuries, arguing for its great antiquity and supreme nobility. The final quarter of the work is a rousing celebration of Judaism’s contributions to the world. This book served as a model for Christian apologists.

Bibliography. P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus Between Jerusalem and Rome. JSPSup 2 (Sheffield, 1988); S. Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, 1992).

Steve Mason

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JOSEPHUS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)