Limited Analogies with Josephus
Limited Analogies with Josephus
As a Hellenistically educated monotheist steeped in Palestinian Judaism but writing history for a Diaspora audience,151 Josephus may invite comparison with the Gospels. The comparison is less complete than some scholars might make it; the Gospels address a much less sophisticated, much more popular audience than Josephus does. As we shall see, Josephus appeals to an elite audience that demanded more rhetorical elaboration than some other historians thought fitting, and more than the Gospel writers were probably rhetorically capable of providing. Nevertheless, Josephus provides one among several possible analogies, and an analogy potentially valuable enough to warrant exploration.
Clearly Josephus both preserves and adapts prior material. Josephus does not uncritically affirm all his sources; he can note that some make a particular claim,152 and can refuse to decide himself the cause of some events, diplomatically leaving final decisions to the reader’s discretion.153 He can also question a source’s bias.154 Yet we can best test Josephus’ reliability where he is reproducing accounts to which we have ready access, most often biblical accounts.155
Josephus, like some other Jewish writers,156 dramatizes, adds speeches, omits what appears counterproductive, and inserts his own apologetic slant.157 Sometimes Josephus apparently “corrects” or adjusts biblical accounts based on other biblical passages.158 This practice may not represent his method everywhere; he may strive for greater rhetorical sophistication in his magnum opus, the Antiquities (where we have most of his overlap with Scripture), than in his earlier War.159 But even here Josephus tends to adapt events in his sources, not create them.160 (Speeches are, as often noted, a different story.)161
Even when he adds extrabiblical events to biblical accounts (such as Moses’ exploits as an Egyptian prince), our extant sources (such as Artapanus) often confirm that he is following earlier extrabiblical traditions, not composing from his imagination. Josephus also clearly depends on sources, for postbiblical as well as biblical events,162 such as the work of the eyewitness Nicolas of Damascus, 163 although he critiques what he sees as Nicolas’ bias.164
Like other extant historians, Josephus affirms his intention to write truth, in contrast to those historians he thinks are unconcerned for it.165 This claim recalls the standard that historians demanded, but does not resolve the extent to which Josephus fulfills it.166 He condemns those who wrote about events without any firsthand knowledge, contrasting them with his own knowledge of the Judean-Roman war.167 Not only was he an eyewitness of much that he claims,168 he claims to have even taken notes,169 receiving reports also from deserters from the city.170
Yet whether due to conflicting sources,171 careless composition, or neglecting to explain information that would resolve some of the tensions, Josephus sometimes contradicts himself.172 Sometimes he does this even in some of his most rhetorically refined material, and in material closest to his own lifetime.173 Josephus also sometimes forgets to include information; although promising to recount more about Helena’s and Izates’ benefactions during Jerusalem’s famine, 174 he never returns to the subject (at least not in this extant volume).175
How does Josephus usually fare in his reports of the postbiblical period? Scholars on Josephus range from skepticism to appreciation, generally depending on the aspects of his historiography on which they focus their attention. I shall mention some of his weaknesses first. On a number of points he fails to impress,176 for example, in his speeches.177 Most historians today also argue that Josephus’ population estimates are unreliable and that he is sometimes mistaken on distances.178 Since it is unlikely that Josephus actually counted people or measured distances, such matters do not otherwise affect the substance of what he reports about events. Josephus occasionally makes mistakes on even his most public information,179 although this appears to be the exception rather than the rule.180
Josephus’ biases are, despite his claims of straightforwardness, difficult to miss. He is probably more accurate in many of his details than in his summaries; he does not fabricate events, but he puts his slant on them. Indeed, his overarching summaries181 and apologetic perspectives182 sometimes conflict with the information he himself reports. For example, he presents the Judean-Roman war as virtually an accident in which incompetent governors and a few Jewish “bandits” forced Judea into unwilling conflict with Rome.183 His perspective is that of an aristocrat, favoring Jewish aristocrats;184 some of his work may be biased toward Pharisees (a group to which he allegedly once belonged); 185 he may also exaggerate Jewish privileges in the Empire (albeit based on genuine precedents) to further his apologetic on their behalf; and he presented Jewish sects in terms of Greek philosophic ideals.186
Josephus’ biases do not, however, significantly hamper our use of his work for historical reconstruction; as one historian notes: “These biases are to be expected” and are usually easy enough to recognize; “With proper allowance made for his special interests and recognition that he was sometimes misinformed, the reader will find Josephus on the whole reliable.”187
If we leave aside examples of bias (including in summaries), speeches and difficult estimates, Josephus proves generally accurate on matters of historical detail. As noted above, whereas archaeology has challenged some of Josephus’ claims, it has vindicated him on many detailed points.188 Apart from distance estimates, Josephus proves otherwise generally reliable on geographic matters, 189 and archaeology confirms most of his observations about Jerusalem, which he knew well: here, despite some errors, he is often accurate in even quite minute details such as the measurements of columns.190 One of Herod’s three towers remains, 66 feet square and 66 feet high — just as Josephus claimed.191
Outside Jerusalem, the Caesarea Ancient Harbor Excavation Project has largely confirmed Josephus’ description of Caesarea’s harbor, despite some omissions in his description.192 Josephus appears to confuse the directions of the theater and amphitheater from Caesarea’s harbor, but supplies many correct details.193
As one Israeli archaeologist emphasized regarding the concrete physical data (where Josephus fares better than in his fairly blatant biases or rhetorical distortions):
Before archaeological excavations, it was the vogue among historians — very serious historians — to argue that Josephus in many places relates sheer nonsense, that he is not historical, that he exaggerates, and so forth. But the more we dig in Jerusalem and at Masada and at Herodium and in [Herodian] Jericho, the greater respect we — both archaeologists and historians — have for the accuracy of Josephus. He is one of the greatest historians. Of course he had his own prejudices. But show me any historian without them. Josephus is accurate not only for his own period but for previous periods as well, for example, the Hellenistic period.194
Despite reservations, scholars normally accept his main outline of events as accurate. 195 Josephus not only claims accuracy196 (itself no guarantee of it), but he presented copies to Vespasian, Titus, Herod of Chalchis, Agrippa — so he dared not have seriously misrepresented the events also known to them.197 (By the same principle, we may doubt that Luke could have easily gotten away with fabricating new events contradicting those Theophilus had already heard; Lk 1:4.)
How do Matthew and Luke compare with Josephus? Their adaptation of Mark generally sticks close to Mark’s stories and Luke (with very rare exceptions) 198 reproduces even his sequence. If this pattern is representative of their use of written sources, they may stay closer to their sources than Josephus stays to the Greek Bible in his Antiquities. Moreover, the Gospel writers are not “rhetorical” historians (Luke, the closest, is nowhere close to Josephus); by contrast, Josephus in his Antiquities (more than in his War) often is.199 Historians frequently depend on Josephus, despite his biases and literary freedom, for historical information where he is our primary source. Although the Gospels address less politically significant information, they reflect more rigorous transmission methods and far less rhetorical adaptation. Because they remain our best source, we ought to give significant heed to them.