Josephus Reconsidered

By William den Hollander

In the early summer of the year AD 67, during the early stages of the Jewish revolt against Rome, the city of Jotapata (Yodfat) in lower Galilee fell to the besieging Roman army. In the ensuing chaos, the general in charge of the fortified city, a priest from Jerusalem named Yosef ben Mattityahu, managed to evade capture, taking cover in a cave underneath the city with some forty other individuals. He himself reports how he attempted unsuccessfully to convince his companions to surrender to the Romans. In the end they all agreed to assist each other in choosing death rather than capture.

By some stroke of good fortune or clever planning, Yosef and one other were the last to remain standing. The Jewish general managed to persuade his companion that life was worthwhile even without liberty and so they gave themselves up to the Romans. While the Roman general Vespasian intended to execute his prisoner anyway, his son Titus managed to convince him to spare Yosef’s life, although he was still to be sent to the emperor Nero. Upon hearing these plans, the prisoner-of-war requested a private interview with the Roman general, at which time he claims he predicted that both Vespasian and Titus would become emperors in due course.

While Yosef remained a prisoner in the Roman camp thereafter, when his prediction was revealed to have been accurate in July of AD 69 he was released from his chains.

For the remainder of the revolt he stayed in the Roman army camp, a free man, and assisted Titus as interpreter, interrogator, and guide. He was, therefore, present at the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, which ended with the destruction of the temple in which he had served as priest. Rather than remaining in his native place, Yosef elected to accompany Titus back to Rome, where he received citizenship—and with it a new name, (Titus) Flavius Josephus—(temporary) accommodations, and some financial support to set him on his feet.

It was from the capital of the empire, then, that the former priest and general wrote his seven-volume account of the Jewish revolt (the Jewish War), along with another twenty-volume history of his people from the creation of the world up until the outbreak of the revolt (the Jewish Antiquities), to which he appended an autobiography of sorts (Life), and a two-volume apologetic work (Against Apion). As far as we know, he never again left Rome but continued to live there throughout the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and the last of the Flavian emperors, Domitian.

From that moment in the cave when he decided to live rather than die, Josephus’s life has been subjected to intense scrutiny. Many of his countrymen judged his actions to have been traitorous and condemned him accordingly. Little has changed. The first attorney general of the British Mandate for Palestine, Norman Bentwich, wrote in a 1914 biography of the Jewish historian, “Hard circumstances compelled him to choose between a noble and an ignoble part, between heroic action and weak submission. He was a mediocre man, and chose the way that was not heroic and glorious. Posterity gained something by his choice; his own reputation was fatally marred by it” (Josephus, 57). More recently it has been something of a sport to conduct mock trials of Josephus, which, although often ending in acquittal for lack of evidence, speak to the blow his character suffered.

One of the key contributors to the negative assessment of Josephus’s character, which has also affected the manner in which his narratives have been read, has been the scholarly and popular misunderstanding of his relationship with the Roman generals/emperors. The traditional view has been that Josephus served as an imperial lackey and that his writings, in particular the Jewish War, were nothing more than works of propaganda advancing the interests of the imperial throne. Since the early 1980s, however, this view has been increasingly questioned by experts in Josephus studies. By close examination of his narratives and careful contextualization of Josephus and his writings within ancient society, scholars have begun to recognize that his relationship with the emperors was not quite as close as had been assumed (or, perhaps, as close as Josephus wished to have us believe) and that, furthermore, his narratives do not quite fit the characteristic of propaganda. In fact, they are at times quite the opposite. Nevertheless, despite these advances in scholarship, the negative portrayal of Josephus as traitor and as Roman flunky persists in the popular imagination and also in works of scholarship uninformed by the latest trends in Josephan research.

My own recent book, Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome: From Hostage to Historian(Brill, 2014), builds on these recent trends in Josephus scholarship by undertaking a comprehensive examination of the relationships between Josephus and the three emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, beginning with the first moment of contact between the Jewish historian and the Flavian family, the siege of Jotapata. I consider carefully, therefore, the place of Josephus within the Roman army camp, both as a prisoner of war before Vespasian’s accession to the throne, and as an aide to Titus thereafter. Rather than simply rehearsing the claims that Josephus himself makes in his narratives regarding his situation in the Roman camp and, subsequently, in the city of Rome, my approach is to evaluate these claims in the light of what we know of the ancient world more generally. Josephus’s unique situation is, therefore, placed against a matrix of relevant evidence that has been gleaned from other ancient sources. By making full use of the rich evidence that has been preserved from the ancient world outside of the writings of Josephus and applying the insights of modern scholars working in relevant areas, such as the Roman army or imperial patronage, my study creates “a web of imaginative construction” (as the historian R.G. Collingwood put it) that enables us to go beyond simple acceptance of what Josephus himself tells us.

The overall argument of the book is that, as recent Josephan scholarship has emphasized, Josephus’s relationship with the imperial house was much more circumscribed than has been traditionally believed. When his narratives are read more carefully and the benefactions he claims he received from the emperors are evaluated within the broader context of imperial patronage, it becomes clear that Josephus’s social circumstances in the city of Rome should not be determined solely or even primarily by his ties to Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. This ‘negative’ outcome of my research is complemented by the more ‘positive’ aim to establish as clearly as possible Josephus’s social location away from the corridors of power. This part of the book begins already in the second chapter with an extensive analysis of Josephus’s first trip to Rome as an ambassador to Nero seeking the freedom of some priests, which took place sometime in the years 63-66. At this point, I suggest, Josephus established his first contacts, perhaps even with the large Jewish community there.

The possible composition of his social circle for the years of his permanent residency is filled out in the penultimate chapter by careful consideration of all those individuals with whom we know or might suspect Josephus had a relationship. While some recent Josephan scholars have depicted the Jewish historian as ‘lonely’ or ‘isolated’ in his new urban environment, my analysis of the evidence Josephus provides regarding his contacts and relationships in Rome, evaluated imaginatively against the backdrop of other evidence for life in the imperial capital, hints at a rich and full social network comprised of people of varied ethnicities and statuses. In the upper echelons of society there were figures such as the Herodians, who frequently made the imperial capital their home, and Epaphroditus, who was the patron of at least his later works. But there were others who make tantalizing appearances in the narratives as well: the literary assistants, members of the local Jewish community, and Roman veterans of the recent revolt, all of whom participated in some way, marginally or integrally, in Josephus’s active social life. It is my hope that this study presents not only a sharper picture of Josephus in Rome but also a clearer window through which to analyze his narratives.

William den Hollander is a Masters of Divinity student at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. in Roman history from York University.

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