· He was a serious Jew who tried the 3 “philosophies” – Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees – of the Judaism of his time. He was well educated in both Jewish and Greek learning. “One should not interpret Josephus’ pro-Roman point of view as an abandonment of Judaism. For it was the God of the Jews who had gone over to the Romans, and the world events which Josephus had foreseen were understood by him as fulfillment of Jewish prophecy…. Thus, he thought the Jewish revolt … (was) a result of the inability and unwillingness of the Jews to perceive and submit to the divine plan, God broke his work with the Jewish state, withdrew from the holy city and temple, and allowed ‘fortune’ to pass wholly to the Romans….”.(Rhoads pp. 11-12);

· Josephus saw himself as a Jewish seer i.e. quasi-prophet - “Josephus saw himself as part of a complex pattern of world history in which he himself was chosen herald of some crucial historical events…. Josephus … claims to have foreseen by revelation the impending fate of the Jewish nation as well as the rise to power of the Roman sovereigns of the Flavian house in the person of Vespasian…. Josephus (in his view) did not give a new prophecy, but was apparently “inspired” to apply to his contemporary situation sayings which had been spoken long before by the canonical prophets (War 3:353)[2]. ‘The historical content of his prophecy reveals his conviction that God acts in history. The fact that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans on the very day that the first temple was destroyed by Babylonians in the sixth century BCE served in retrospect as a sign to Josephus that he had properly discerned God’s plan in history (War 6:267-7 cf. 457). He saw himself to be, at the right historical moment, a significant part of that plan.” (Rhoads pp. 9-10)

According to Bilde (pp. 191) “…Josephus sees himself as a continuer of the prophetic Jewish ‘writing of history’, and sees his writings as a parallel to and continuation of the sacred Jewish scriptures, divinely inspired as they are…. Josephus’ ranks himself as a priestly prophet in line with Ezekiel. He identifies himself … with Joseph, Elijah, Jeremiah, Daniel and ever Esther …. He perceives his own time as a kind of repetition of the period around the time of the destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE. During his own time of crisis… Josephus acts as a prophetic interpreter of the scriptures and the time. Towards Rome he uses his words as an attempt to alleviate the circumstances of his people, whereas towards his own countrymen he prophesized an interpretation of the crisis and thus a way out of it.”

2.3 Josephus the Jewish Aristocrat

· He was from a privileged, upper class, Jerusalem priestly family and was probably well off all his life. His very strong upper class prejudices are frequently evident. Possibly because he was from a Jerusalem priestly family, Josephus considered the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple as equivalent to the destruction of Judaea. However, we know that the devastation outside Jerusalem was limited (see Buchler).

· Throughout the Empire, the Romans tried to co-opt privileged, upper class natives as local collaborators in government – in fact, the Roman system depended on such collaboration. “…along with most other Jewish aristocrats, Josephus at first opposed the Revolt against Rome. He belonged to the moderate party and … tried to avoid war. When this was unsuccessful … Josephus and his party made the best of it and pretended to be in agreement with the rebels in order to obtain at least a certain amount of influence on what developed. Thereby, the aristocratic party succeeded in placing Josephus and other moderate leaders in important roles in the first rebellious government. In this capacity and from his command in Galilee, Josephus’ constantly pursued the primary aim, to avoid total war and to obtain a peaceful settlement with Rome. After his surrender at Jotapata, and after his release as a prisoner of war two years later, Josephus’ continued to work toward this goal. Likewise, after the disaster in the year 70, his main purpose was to save what he could, i.e. to work towards reestablishing and/or preserving the Jewish privileges and the traditional Roman policy of tolerance towards Judaism.” (Bilde pp. 175-176);

2.4 Josephus at Jerusalem – A Second Jeremiah?

· When seeking to convince the defenders of Jerusalem to surrender to the Romans Josephus made the following points:

o The Romans are willing to spare the temple and the city – it’s the resistance of the rebels that threatens Jerusalem and the shrine;

o On no occasions did the ancestors succeed by force or fail for the lack of it when they committed their case to God;

o The Romans gained control of Judaea through strife among the Jewish parties

o The sins of present day Jews have alienated God and a just God will punish them for this

o God has given Rome the imperium and is now fighting on the Roman side against the Jews. It is an immutable law that mastery belonged to those supreme in arms. That is why their ancestors, far superior to themselves in soul and body and in resources to boot, had yielded to the Romans – a thing they would not have tolerated if they had not known that God was on the Roman side

· These points are very close to those made by Jeremiah just before the destruction of the first temple (see Annex 1 - What Did Jeremiah Say and What Did Josephus Say?)

2.5 Josephus the Traitor

· It is hard to determine the validity of charges made against Josephus during his lifetime and repeated ever since i.e. Josephus has been accused of:

o engaging in internecine strife when he should have been preparing to resist the immanent Roman invasion of the Galilee - it is hard to know whether he had much choice in this matter;

o betraying the rebellion and his people to the Romans when he urged the rebels to surrender at the siege of Jerusalem; and,

o of a cowardly unwillingness to follow through on the mass suicide pact made by the survivors of the siege of Jotapata. Schalit describes it this way-

”When the city fell on Tammuz 1, 67, Josephus fled with 40 men to a cave. There each man resolved to slay his neighbor rather than to be taken captive by the enemy. Josephus artfully cast the lots, deceitfully managing to be one of the last two men left alive and then persuaded his companion to go out with him and surrender to the Romans.”

Of course, if he had killed himself, we would know almost nothing of the Jewish War, as indeed is the case with the later Bar Kochba Rebellion, or about the Second Temple period except for the period of the Maccabean Uprising;

· “Despite the hostile criticism of Josephus and his works, we need not see him as a mere opportunist. His writings reveal to us a man struggling between personal survival and a commitment to Judaism; he did not wish to relinquish either…. The resolution to that struggle came when Josephus was able to give himself up to Vespasian as God’s servant (War 3:354). He could continue his commitment to Judaism, but he would do it from the safety of the roman side. Undoubtedly, Josephus’ works contain much that is a rationale of self-justification for his action. Yet to see him as a rank opportunist is too harsh. And to depict his writings as an exercise of justification does not begin to do justice to the breadth of Josephus’ self-understanding.” (Rhoads pp. 8-9)

· Bilde writes (p. 207-208)

“The classical Jewish conception of Josephus with its contempt for the ‘traitor’ and the ‘apostate’ has influenced the attitude not only towards the detested person, but also to his writings. Throughout these works, those who adopt this attitude detect self-righteousness, alibis, flattery, distortions and deceit. In so doing, the road to a rewarding use of Josephus’ vast material has been effectively blocked. Hatred and condemnation are not true guides to knowledge.

“We find… (an) ideological use of Josephus in modern Zionism…. In official Israeli publications, such as school books and travel guides, we find an uncritical acceptance, for example, of Josephus’ rhetorical rendering of the defense of Jotapata, Gamala, Jerusalem and Massada made by the rebels, combined with … (a) condemnation of the treacherous author of the very same texts….

“…the majority of modern archaeologists and historians… neglect(s) to take all of the problems in the writings into consideration, and simply avails himself freely of them without the slightest regard to the style, content and aim of the author. In particular, many modern archaeologists are guilty of using Josephus as a treasury which anyone can draw upon as he or she pleases.”

2.6 What Josephus Was Not

· A 19^th-20^th century European or American liberal;

· A 19^th-20^th century political Zionist;

· A modern secularist.

2.7 Josephus the Jewish or is it Greek Historian?

· Bilde writes (pp. 200-206)

“Now it is evident that Josephus belongs both in a Jewish and a Greco-Roman tradition. He sees himself as a priestly-prophetic continuer of the traditional Jewish writing of history in the canonical scriptures. Nor is there any doubt that, to a large extent, he maintains a genuine Old Testament and Jewish religious understanding and interpretation of the history he renders. But at the same time, it is all presented in Greek, and Josephus primarily addresses a non-Jewish audience in the Greco-Roman world. Therefore … the Jewish tradition, its contents, form and language are subjected to a certain transformation[3]…. The Hellenization which Josephus makes in these areas must be determined as being somewhat superficial and should rather be interpreted as a pedagogical means of enlightening his Greco-Roman readers who must be presumed to have no knowledge of Jewish affairs….

“The writings of Josephus are, of course, ideological and moralizing, exactly as is the case with the works of Thucydides, Polybius, Livy and Tacitus, although the methods differ…. He is an apologist for his people, an agitator for his religion. He is engaged both in a political struggle on behalf of the Jewish people and in a vast cultural conflict between Judaism and the Hellenistic world including parts of Greco-Roman history writing to which, at the same time, he wishes to belong…. He is to be related closer to Old Testament and Jewish tradition than to Hellenistic literature and historiography….

· He generally was fairly accurate though he was not a particularly careful checker of facts (see). For main trends in modern Josephus research, see the chapter of that name in Bilde pp. 123-171;

· “Josephus possesses a genuine interest in and a sincere will to write impartially and, surprisingly, he often does so in his works. In a unique way, Josephus has managed to combine his highly engaged religious Jewish historiographical tradition with the Hellenistic literary culture and historiography in such a way that decisive elements in both traditions are retained.”

2.8 The Extant works of Josephus (see Table 1)

2.8.1 The Jewish War 67-72 CE

· He wrote the Jewish War as a Roman imperial client and this accounts for some of the differences between it and Antiquities which he wrote later as a free Roman citizen unattached to the government

· During the Jewish War he observed key deliberations in Jerusalem at the start of the war, was a rebel general in Galilee, a prisoner of the Romans and, finally, a collaborator with the Romans urging the rebels in Jerusalem to surrender. He was very knowledgeable about the Jewish War and had access to his memoranda made during the war, the memoirs of Vespasian, the letters of king Agrippa and the Roman military archives (see Bilde pp. 61-63). However:

o he could not be everywhere and have seen everything, so some of his reports are second hand;

o he was intimately involved in the war and had made many enemies so some of his statements are likely to be deliberate, self-serving, distortions; and,

o as a Roman client, writing War he had to please his Roman patrons who were the two top generals fighting against the Jews – the Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus. This required that Vespasian and Titus and the Roman Army come out looking good and that the book serve a key imperial purpose, namely, warning the Jews in Judaea not to rebel again and the Jews in Parthia not to encourage a Parthian invasion of the Roman Empire (see (Rhoads p. 11).

2.8.2 Antiquities 94 CE – In my view one of the most important books ever written about Jewish history.

· Josephus drew very heavily, and not very critically, on existing Greek histories. I.e. in many parts it is Josephus cutting and pasting the work of earlier Greek language writers. It is important to remember that, except for the last few decades covered, he had not lived through the periods covered by Antiquities and that the supporting documentation for most of the periods covered by Antiquities would have been inadequate, unreliable and rather random – i.e. almost point-by-point the opposite of the case for War;

· The objective of Antiquities and Against Apion was to defend, justify and glorify the Jewish people i.e. quite different from the objectives of War (see above);

2.8.3 Life (93-100 CE) and Against Apion (93/4 CE)

· The objective of Life was to defend himself against the accusations of Justin of Tiberius about Josephus’s conduct during the War. Unfortunately, we do not have Justin’s book but it is possible to reconstruct his accusations by Josephus’ responses in Life;

· He obviously felt defensive-ambivalent-guilty about his behavior during the war. So one must always watch out for self-justification

· Against Apion refutes anti-Semitic slanders.

3. The Roman Empire in the First Century – its Nature and Problems

3.1 Extent of the Empire

· The Empire included the territories of about 35 modern European, Levantine and north African countries.

· The population is estimated to have been 50-60 million.

· The population of Palestine (Cisjordan and Transjordan) was about 2.5 million of which more than half were Jews (see Avi-Yonah p 19 for this estimate from a slightly later period).

3.2 Insufficiency of Finances

Like all pre-modern societies, about 90 percent of the Roman population were farmers who grew the food for themselves plus the remaining 10 percent. The great bulk of the wealth produced was in the form of food
Total taxes[4] amounted to about 10 percent of the empire's gross national product. That percentage of tax may seem low by modern standards, but the imperial government provided minimal services. For provincials who could barely make a living, paying 10 percent of their income to the government was a considerable burden. As the troops demand for supplies increased the tax collector made harsh demands for funds. Farmers who were hardly surviving could no longer pay taxes and some of them left their lands and joined large landowners while others turned to robbery.
Roman roads are often praised. However, it cost the Empire dear. Even though soldiers often did the work, it is estimated that the cost of road maintenance was equal to 25% of military budget or 1/5-1/6 state revenues;
Vespasian became emperor in what the Romans called “the year of the 4 emperors”. The Empire was in chaos and the treasury empty. Through brilliant and effective action, including drastic taxation, Vespasian was able to save the Empire finances, military, territory and all. Unfortunately, when the Jews rebelled they were faced, not only by a huge concentration of Roman force, but by, in the persons of Vespasian and his son Titus, two extraordinarily competent and down to earth generals and administrators.

3.3 Insufficiency of Administrative Capacity

As a result of constrained finances, the Roman state and army had to be run on a shoestring[5]. In Judaea, “the procurator (governor) was provided by the state with only a small staff to help in the administration of the country, for there was no developed civil service at this period. His aides were chosen by him from among his friends and from his own household. Since Judaea was a small province and not strategically vital to the eastern frontier, being protected by the Syrian province to the north, the procurator was not even allowed more than a few troops, though he could rely on military intervention from Syria if he found himself in serious difficulties.
Stable government was thus possible only with the cooperation of the leaders of the local population. Roman policy was to allow powerful people to petition and lobby to get things done - laws voided, prisoners released etc. Such delegations and interventions are frequently mentioned in Josephus’ works. This can be seen as analogous to the Roman patron-client system.[6]

3.4 Insufficiency of Military Power (See Table 2)

Once Augustus had defeated Mark Antony, he began to reduce the empire's remaining military forces from 60 legions to 28 which was later reduced to 25.. In the early empire, the number of auxiliaries equaled the 125,000 - 175,000 legionaries. However, the empire's 250,000 - 350,000 soldiers were not an enormous force to secure 6,000 miles of frontier and to ensure internal security (there was no police force) for an empire of 50 million people.
To make the situation workable it was essential that force be used as economically as possible. This has two implications:

o The Roman authorities must give as few orders as possible but these must be carried out; and,

o Any revolt must be suppressed brutally. Potential rebels must be intimidated by example. Slender resources meant that the Romans could not afford to be forgiving.

3.5 Some Roman Policies of Importance to Judaea

The Egyptian grain supply which feeds Rome must be protected. This implies:

o Judaea, between the Syrian-Parthian[7] frontier and Egypt, must not be allowed to fall into hostile hands; and,

o Piracy must not be allowed to return to threaten the sea[8] route from Alexandria to Italy there fore, the whole shore of the Mediterranean must be under Roman control.

The implications for Judaea are that the Roman Empire would not allow any rebellion there to succeed.

4. Judaea – Social and Political Instability

4.1 Crisis of Legitimacy

4.1.1 Political Legitimacy[9] in the First Temple Period

As far as we know, the supremacy and legitimacy of leadership of the House of David went virtually unchallenged in the Kingdom of Judah during First Temple period (950-586 BCE). This lent Judah, in sharp contrast to the northern Kingdom of Israel, great political stability. Outside forces, notably the Mesopotamian powers and Egypt, were able to cause party strife relating to foreign policy and there were repeated conflict between religious factions as part of the process of the emerging Israelite monotheism. However, civil war was always avoided and the unity of the state preserved.

With the exile and the return to Zion several factors come together to turn the Jews from a nation with a national religion into more of a religious community with a history as a nation. Among these factors were:

The fact that most of the Jews lived in foreign lands;
The loss of independence, army, bureaucracy etc;
The tiny size of the new province of Yehud
The fact that Jewish monotheism was now totally distinct from the surrounding polytheisms.

4.1.2 Trajectory of Priestly Power in Judah/Yahud/Judaea

Jerusalem temple priests were civil servants at a royal chapel (mid-10^th to late 7^th centuries BCE);
Deuteronomic Reform left them still under the kings’ authority but being now the priests of the only “legitimate” shrine in Judah;
Establishment of the small Persian province of Yahud (late 6^th-early 5^th centuries BCE) and the rebuilding of the temple leave the hereditary Zadokite high priests as head of the Jewish Nation in Palestine under the political control of Persia. At some point the High Priest took over the secular power within the province. This situation continued under Hellenistic rule until the persecutions that led to the Maccabean uprising (175 BCE). Priestly power was enhanced its prestige peaked in this period;
Hasmoneans depose the Zadokites taking over the high priesthood in 152 BCE which they usually combined with the secular title of king. During this period lie the origins of the main Jewish sects of the late Second Temple period. This was also the time when non-priestly scholars became prominent in interpreting the Torah;
Under Roman rule, inclu