Josephus Part 11

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 6_ff_.]

The reckoning of the Canon is interesting:[1] there are five books of Moses, thirteen books of the prophets, recording the history from the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, and the remaining four books, the Ketubim, contain hymns to G.o.d and precepts for the conduct of human life. The books written since the time of Artaxerxes have not the same trustworthiness, because the exact succession of prophets has not been maintained. The intense sentiment which the Jews feel for their Scriptures is proved by their willingness to die for them.

[Footnote 1: The accepted number of books in the Jewish Canon is twenty-four, and this number is found in the Book of II Esdras, xiv. 41, which is probably contemporaneous with Josephus. The number 22 is to be explained by the fact that Josephus must have linked Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah. See J.E., s.v. Canon.]

Again a contrast is pointed between the seriousness of the Hebraic and the levity of the Greek att.i.tude towards literature. Josephus egotistically draws an example from the record of the recent war. The Greeklings who wrote about it

"put a few things together by hearsay, and, abusing the word, call their writings by the name of histories. But I have composed a true history of the whole war and of all the events that occurred, having been concerned in all its transactions; for I acted as general of those among us that are named Galileans, as long as it was possible for us to make any resistance. I was then seized by the Romans, and became a captive.

Vespasian and t.i.tus kept me under guard, and forced me to attend on them continually. At the first I was put into bonds, but later was set at liberty and sent to accompany t.i.tus when he came from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem, during which time nothing was done that escaped my knowledge. For what happened in the Roman camp I saw, and wrote down carefully; and what information the deserters brought out of the city, I was the only man to understand. Afterwards, when I had gotten leisure at Rome, and when all my material was prepared for the work, I obtained some persons to a.s.sist me in learning the Greek tongue, and by these means I composed the history of the events, and I was so well a.s.sured of the truth of what I related, that I first of all appealed to those that had the supreme command in that war, Vespasian and t.i.tus, as witnesses for me. For to them first of all I presented my books, and after them to many of the Romans that had been engaged in the war. I also recited them to many of my own race that understood Greek philosophy, among whom were Julius Archelaus, Herod, king of Chalcis, a person of great authority, and King Agrippa himself, a person that deserved the greatest respect.

Now all these bore their testimony to me that I had the strictest regard to truth; who yet would not have dissembled the matter, nor been silent, if I, out of ignorance, or out of favor to any side, either had given a false color to the events, or omitted any of them."

Josephus here indignantly replies to his Roman detractors, who accused him of having composed a mere partisan thesis. As a priest he had a special knowledge of the Scriptures, which were the basis of his _Antiquities_, and as an important actor in the drama of the Roman war, he wrote of its events with the knowledge of an eye-witness. He excuses his digression as being made in self-defense, and claims to have proved that historical writing is indigenous rather to those called Barbarians than to the Greeks. He then returns to the task of refuting those who say that the Jewish polity is of late origin because the Greek authors are silent about it. One main cause of the silence was the isolation of Judea and the character of the Jewish people, who did not delight in merchandise and commerce, but devoted themselves to the cultivation of the soil. This, of course, is a picture of the Bible times, because in the writer's days they were beginning their mercantile development.

Hence the Jews were in quite a different condition from the Phoenicians, the Thracians, the Persians, and the Medes, with all of whom the h.e.l.lenes came into contact. They are rather to be compared with the Romans, who only entered into the Greek sphere of interest later in their history.

Josephus makes the point that it would be as reasonable for the Jews to deny the antiquity of the Greeks because there is no mention of them in Hebrew records, as for the Greeks to deny the antiquity of the Jews for the converse reason. And if the Greeks are ignorant of the Hebrews, he argues that there is abundant testimony in the histories of other peoples. He starts with the Egyptian evidence, and quotes from Manetho, the anti-Jewish historian, giving extracts about the Hyksos tribes and Hyksos kings, whom he identifies with Joseph and his brethren. The identification was popular till recent times, but modern historical criticism has rejected it. Josephus dates the invasion of the Hyksos at three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaus came to Argos, which in turn was five hundred and twenty years before the Trojan war. Thus he puts the Bible story far ahead in age of Greek myth. Pa.s.sing on to the testimony in the Phoenician records, he derives from the public archives of Tyre, to which reference was made also in the _Antiquities_,[1]

evidence of the relations between Solomon and Hiram, and further quotes the account given by the h.e.l.lenistic historian Alexander of Ephesus, who mentions the same incident. This Alexander had written a world-history, and had collected the chronicles of the various peoples that formed part of Alexander's empire. Josephus, who probably knew of his work through Nicholas or some other chronicler, cites him to confirm the Bible.

Collections of extracts about the Jewish people and references to the Bible in Greek literature were already in vogue, for it was an age similar to our own in its love of encyclopedias. Josephus uses with not a little skill these foreign sources, and supplements the comparative material which he had introduced in the _Antiquities_. Confirmation of the account of the flood, as also of the rebuilding of the Temple after the return of the Jews from Babylon, is found in the Chaldean history of Berosus; and other long extracts from Babylonian history are inserted that furnish a casual mention of Judea or Jerusalem. Josephus attempts, too, with doubtful success, to combine the Phoenician and Babylonian records in order to prove that they agree about the date of the rebuilding of the Temple. The only justifiable inference from the pa.s.sages, however, appears to be that both sources agreed on the existence of Cyrus, king of Persia.

[Footnote 1: Comp. above, p. 159.]

Finally he adduces pa.s.sages from various Greek writers, to show that the Jews were not entirely unknown to the h.e.l.lenes before Alexander's conquests. Josephus had no doubt predecessors among the h.e.l.lenistic Jewish litterateurs in the search for testimony, as well as successors among the Christian apologists; but his collection has alone survived, and has become invaluable to modern scholars, who have ploughed the same field for a different purpose. Authority is brought forward to show that Pythagoras had connection with the Hebrews, and Herodotus, it is argued, referred to the Jews as circ.u.mcised Syrians.[1] More apposite is a pa.s.sage quoted from Clearchus, a pupil of Aristotle, about a discussion which his master had with a Jew of Soli, "who was Greek not only in language but in thought." The genuineness of this excerpt has been questioned, but without good reason. Aristotle's school had a scientific interest in the Jews as in other peoples that had come under Greek sway through Alexander's conquests.

[Footnote 1: Comp. Ant. VIII. x. 3.]

Josephus then sets out some very eulogistic pa.s.sages about his people, purporting to be from Hecataeus of Abdera, which are very much to his taste and his purpose. Unfortunately, however, they are too good to be true, and modern criticism has established that, while the genuine Hecataeus, an historian who wrote at the end of the fourth century B.C.E., did insert in his work an account of Jerusalem and the Jews, the glowing testimonials which Josephus adduces are from forged books devised by Jews to their own glory. A pa.s.sage of a less favorable tone, and of which the genuineness is therefore not open to suspicion, is quoted from Agatharchides, a Seleucid historian. Finally, with an incidental mention of a half-dozen h.e.l.lenistic writers that have made distinct reference to the Jewish people, and of three Jewish writers, Demetrius, the elder Philo, and Eupolemus, "who have not greatly missed the truth about our affairs," Josephus closes his evidence as to the antiquity of his nation.[1] Possibly he did not realize that his last three witnesses were of his own race, and it is not improbable that this string of names was to him also a string of names culled from Alexander Polyhistor or a similar authority.

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 23.]

The latter part of the first book is devoted to the refutation of the anti-Jewish diatribes of several Greeks, and starts off with a few commonplaces upon the topic, to the effect that every great nation incurs the jealousy and ill-will of others. "The Egyptians," says Josephus, "were the first to cast reproaches upon us, and in order to please them, some others undertook to pervert the truth. The causes of their enmity are their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the difference of their religious ideas."[1] Josephus deals with Manetho's description of the going-out from Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate that "he trifles and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, and insists upon its absurdity and the lack of consistency in the details. He offers ingenuously as a proof of the falsity of the allegation that Moses was a leper the Mosaic legislation about lepers. "How could it be supposed,"

he asks, "that Moses should ordain such laws against himself, to his own reproach and damage?" Chaeremon is unworthy of reply, because his account, though equally scurrilous, is inconsistent with that of Manetho. But the story of Lysimachus, a writer of the same genus, is more critically examined and found wanting, because it gives no explanation of the origin of the Hebrews. Lysimachus derived the name Jerusalem from the Greek Hierosylen--to commit sacrilege--the Hebrews, according to his story, owing their settlement to the plunder of temples; and Josephus points out triumphantly that that idea is not expressed by the same word and name among the Jews and Greeks. But, to vary a saying of Doctor Johnson, this section of Josephus must be read for the quotations, for if one reads it for the argument of either a.s.sailant or apologist, one would shoot oneself.

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. 24.]

The second book of the apology, which is a continuation of the first, opens with an elaborate refutation of Apion. Josephus questions whether he should take the trouble to confute the scurrilous stories of the Alexandrian grammarian, "which are all abuse and vulgarity"; but because many are pleased to pick up mendacious fictions, he thinks it better not to leave the charges without an answer. He disposes first of Apion's tales about Moses and the Exodus, which are of the same character as those of Manetho and Chaeremon. Loaded abuse and unmeasured invective color the refutation, but Apion apparently deserved it. We may take, as a fair specimen of his veracity, the statement that the Hebrews reached Palestine six days after they left Egypt and rested on the seventh day, which they called Sabbath, because of some disease from which they suffered, and of which the Egyptian name was Sabbaton. Apion had in particular attacked the Alexandrian Jews, and Josephus takes the opportunity of enlarging on the privileged position of his people, not only in the Egyptian capital, but in the other h.e.l.lenistic cities where they had been settled.[1] He elaborates and amplifies what he had stated on this subject in the _Antiquities_, and adds a short account of the miraculous delivery of the Egyptian Jews during the short-lived persecution of Ptolemy Physcon, which is recorded more fully and with some variation of detail in the so-called Third Book of the Maccabees.

In reply to Apion's charge, that the Jews show a lack of civic spirit because they do not worship the same G.o.ds as the Alexandrians, Josephus launches out into an explanation of their conception of G.o.d, describes their abhorrence of idolatry, and deals also with their refusal to set up in their temples the image of the Emperor. "But at the same time they are willing," he says, "to pay honors to great men and to offer sacrifices in their name." He deals also, in a digression, with calumnies derived from Posidonius and Melon about the worship of an a.s.s in the sanctuary at Jerusalem.

[Footnote 1: This part of the book, it may be noted, has only been preserved in the Latin version; the Greek original has been lost.]

Apion had invented a detailed story of ritual murder to justify Antiochus Epiphanes for his spoliation of the Temple. The origin of this charge is instructive of the methods of a cla.s.sical anti-Semite. There was, in the innermost sanctuary, a stone[1] on which the blood of the burnt offering was sprinkled by the high priest on the Day of Atonement.

It was known as the [Hebrew: Even Shtiah] and tradition said that the ark of the covenant had rested on it. Mystery centered around it, and the Greek scribes imagined that it was the object of worship. Now, the Greek word for a stone was Onos, which likewise meant an a.s.s, and it was probably on the strength of this blunder that prejudice for centuries accused Jews and Christians of worshiping an a.s.s' head. Josephus brings proof of the emptiness of the charge, and retorts that Apion had himself the heart of an a.s.s; and then, describing the ritual of the Temple, insists that there was no secret mystery about it. It gives a touch of pathos that he speaks as if the Temple services were still being carried out, whether because he was copying a source written before the destruction, or because he deliberately disregarded that event. Apion, like Cicero, had taunted the Jews on account of their political subjection, which proved, he argued, that their laws were not just nor their religion true. Josephus meets the charge--which in the materialistic thinking of the Roman world was hard to answer--by the not very happy plea that the Egyptians and Greeks had suffered a like fortune. So, too, he meets the gibe that the Jews do not eat pork, by saying that the Egyptian priests abstain likewise. He omits in both cases the true religious answer, which would probably not have appealed to his public.

[Footnote 1: Yer. Yoma, v. 2.]

At this point the reply to the Alexandrian anti-Semite comes to an end, and the rest of the book comprises a defense of the Jewish legislation, "which is intended not as an eulogy but as an apology." The broad aim is to show that the Law inculcates humanity and piety; but Josephus, before setting himself to this, again labors to point out that it is pre-eminent in antiquity over any of the Greek codes. This done, he gives a summary of the principles of Judaism, which is unlike anything else he wrote in its masterly grasp of the spirit of the religion and in its philosophical att.i.tude. So great indeed is the contrast between this epilogue and the bald summary of the Mosaic laws in the _Antiquities_ that it is safe to say that Josephus had for his later work lighted on a fresh and more inspired source. His presentation has the regular characteristic of the Alexandrian school, an insistence on the universal and philanthropic elements of the Mosaic law; and it is likely that he had before him either Philo's work on the Life of Moses, or another work, which his predecessor had used. It matters little that there are differences of detail between his and Philo's interpretations: the manner and the general purport are the same, and the manner is not the usual manner of Josephus, and altogether different from the treatment in the _Antiquities_.

He lays down with great clearness the dominant features of the Mosaic const.i.tution. It is a theocracy, i.e. the state depends on G.o.d. The pa.s.sage in which he makes good this principle is a striking piece of reasoning in comparative religion, worthy to be quoted in full:

"Now there are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that hold among all mankind, which a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: Some legislators have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, and others under a republican form; but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained expression, may be termed a Theocracy, by ascribing the authority and the power to G.o.d, and by persuading all the people to have a regard to Him as the Author of all the good things enjoyed either in common by all mankind or by each one in particular, and of all that they themselves obtain by praying to Him in their greatest difficulties. He informed them that it was impossible to escape G.o.d's observation, either in any of our outward actions or in any of our inward thoughts. Moreover he represented G.o.d as un-begotten and immutable through all eternity, superior to all mortal conceptions in form, and though known to us by His power, yet unknown to us as to His essence. I do not now explain how these notions of G.o.d are in harmony with the sentiments of the wisest among the Greeks. However, their sages testify with great a.s.surance that these notions are just and agreeable to the divine nature; for Pythagoras and Anaxagoras and Plato and the Stoic philosophers that succeeded them, and almost all the rest profess the same sentiments, and had the same notions of the nature of G.o.d; yet durst not these men disclose those true notions to more than a few, because the body of the people were prejudiced beforehand with other opinions. But our legislator, whose actions harmonized with his laws, did not only prevail with those who were his contemporaries to accept these notions, but so firmly imprinted this faith in G.o.d upon all their posterity that it could never be removed. The reason why the const.i.tution of our legislation was ever better directed than other legislations to the utility of all is this: that Moses did not make religion a part of virtue, but he ordained other virtues to be a part of religion--I mean justice, and fort.i.tude, and temperance, and a universal agreement of the members of the community with one another. All our actions and studies have a reference to piety towards G.o.d, for he hath left none of these in suspense or undetermined. There are two ways of coming at any sort of learning and a moral conduct of life: the one is by instruction in words, the other by practical exercises. Now, other lawgivers have separated these two ways in their opinions, and, choosing the one which best pleased each of them, neglected the other. Thus did the Lacedemonians and the Cretans teach by practical exercises, but not by words; while the Athenians and almost all the other Greeks made laws about what was to be done, or left undone, but had no regard to exercising them thereto in practice.

"But our legislator very carefully joined these two methods of instruction together; for he neither left these practical exercises to be performed without verbal instruction, nor did he permit the learning of the law to proceed without the exercises for practice; but beginning immediately from the earliest infancy and the regulation of our diet, he left nothing of the very smallest consequence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the individual. Accordingly, he made a fixed rule of law, what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what sorts they should use; as also what communion they should have with others, what great diligence they should use in their occupations, and what times of rest should be interposed, in order that, by living under that law as under a father and a master, we might be guilty of no sin, neither voluntary nor out of ignorance. For he did not suffer the guilt of ignorance to go without punishment, but demonstrated the law to be the best and the most necessary instruction of all, directing the people to cease from their other employments and to a.s.semble together for the hearing and the exact learning of the law,--and this not once or twice or oftener, but every week; which all the other legislators seem to have neglected."

This pa.s.sage contains, in many ways, an admirable explanation of Judaism as a law of conduct, inculcating morality by good habit; it lacks, indeed, any deep spiritual note or mystical exaltation, but it was likely for that reason to appeal to the practical, material-minded Roman. Josephus corroborates what Seneca had grudgingly remarked, that the Jews understood their laws; and it is this, he says, which made such a wonderful accord among us, to which no other nation can show a parallel. The eloquent insistence on the harmony uniting the Jewish people is another proof that Josephus is here reproducing the ideas of others, for it is in complete and glaring contrast with what he had repeatedly written in his _Antiquities_ and his _Wars_ about the strife of different sects. His books would have supplied the best argument to any pagan criticising his apology. Josephus further ascribes to the singleness of the tradition the absence of original genius among the people. The excellence of the Law produces a conservative outlook, whereas the Greeks, lacking a fixed law, love a new thing. S.D.

Luzzatto, the Hebraist of the middle of the nineteenth century, emphasized the same contrast between h.e.l.lenism and Hebraism.

Turning in detail to the precepts of the Law, Josephus gives eloquent expression in the h.e.l.lenistic fashion to the idea of the divine unity.

"G.o.d," he says, "contains all: He is a being altogether perfect, happy, and self-sufficient, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things; G.o.d's aim is reflected in human inst.i.tutions. Rightly He has but one Temple, which should be common to all men, even as He is the common G.o.d of all men." He develops, too, the humanitarian aspect of Judaism in the manner of the h.e.l.lenistic school. "And for our duty at the sacrifices, we ought in the first place to pray for the common welfare of all and after that for ourselves, for we were made for fellowship, one with another, and he who prefers the common good before his own is above all dear to G.o.d." He points to the excellence of the Jewish conception of marriage, another commonplace of the h.e.l.lenistic apologist, as we know from the Sibylline oracles; to the respect for parents and to the friendliness for the stranger. He insists with Philo[1] that kinship is to be measured not by blood, but by the conduct of life. He dwells, likewise in company with the h.e.l.lenists, on a law that lacks Bible authority: that the Israelites should give, to all who needed it, fire and water, food and guidance.[2] The impulse to this interpretation of the Torah is found in the charge made by the Jews'

enemies, that they were to a.s.sist only members of their own race.[3]

Josephus appears to be original, and, as is quite pardonable, he may be writing with a view to Roman proclivities, when he praises the law for the number of offenses to which it attaches the capital penalty. Like many a later Jewish apologist living amid an alien and dominant culture, Josephus accepts foreign standards, and he is silent about the Pharisaic teaching which softened the literal prescripts of the Bible.[4]

[Footnote 1: Comp. De n.o.bilitate.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. Philo, II. 639.]

[Footnote 3: Comp. Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 102.]

[Footnote 4: It has been noticed above (note, p. 153) that Josephus appears to misunderstand or deliberately misinterpret the Hebrew [Hebrew: aror] (cursed be!), which precedes many prohibitions of the Mosaic law, to mean "he shall be put to death."]

In a peroration Josephus returns to a general eulogy of the Jewish Law, on account of the faithful allegiance which it commands, and denounces the pagan idolatry in the manner of the Greek rationalists, who had made play with the Olympian hierarchy. While the inherent excellence of the Jewish Law is dependent on the sublime conception of G.o.d, the inherent defect of the Greek religion is that the Greek legislators entertained a low conception of G.o.d, and did not make the religious creed a part of the state law, but left it to the poets to invent what they chose. The greatest of the Greek philosophers, indeed, agreed with the Jews as to the true notions about G.o.d: "Plato especially imitated our legislation in enjoining on all citizens that they should know the laws accurately."

A later generation made bold to declare that Plato had listened to Jeremiah in Egypt and learnt his wisdom from the Jewish prophet.

Josephus compares with the Jewish separateness the national exclusiveness of the Lacedemonians, and claims that the Jews show a greater humanity in that they admit converts from other peoples. They have, moreover, shown their bravery not in wars for the purpose of ama.s.sing wealth, but in observing their laws in spite of every attempt to wean them away. The Mosaic law is being spread over the civilized world:

"For there is not any city of the Greeks, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever whither our custom of resting on the seventh day has not come, and by which our fasts and lighting up of lamps and divers regulations as to food are not observed. They also endeavor to imitate our mutual accord with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods, and our diligence in our trades, and our fort.i.tude in bearing the distresses that befall us; and what is here matter of the greatest admiration, our Law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and as G.o.d Himself pervades all the world, so hath our Law pa.s.sed through all the world also."

The task of the apologist is completed; "for whereas our accusers have pretended that our nation are a people of late origin, I have demonstrated that they are exceedingly ancient, and whereas they have reproached our lawgiver as a vile man, G.o.d of old bare witness to his virtues, and time itself hath been proved to bear witness to the same thing."[1] In a final appreciation he concludes:

"As to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, for they are visible in their own nature, and are seen to teach not impiety, but the truest piety in the world. They do not make men hate one another, but encourage people to communicate what they have to one another freely.

They are enemies to injustice, they foster righteousness, they banish idleness and expensive living, and instruct men to be content with what they have and to be diligent in their callings. They forbid men to make war from a desire of gain, but make them courageous in defending the laws. They are inexorable in punishing malefactors. They admit no sophistry of words, but are always established by actions, which we ever propose as surer demonstrations than what is contained in writing only; on which account I am so bold as to say that we are become the teachers of other men in the greatest number of things, and those of the most excellent nature only. For what is more excellent than inviolable piety?

What is more just than submission to laws? And what is more advantageous than mutual love and concord? And this prevails so far that we are to be neither divided by calamities nor to become oppressive and factious in prosperity, but to contemn death when we are in war, and in peace to apply ourselves to our handicrafts or to the tilling of the ground; while in all things and in all ways we are satisfied that G.o.d is the Judge and Governor of our actions."

[Footnote 1: C. Ap. ii. 41.]

As we read this final outburst of the Jewish apologist and think of what he had himself written to gainsay it, and what he was yet to write in his autobiography, we are fain to exclaim, _o si sic omnia_! One would like to believe that in the defense of the Jewish Law we have the true Josephus, driven in his old age by the goading of enemies to throw off the mask of Greco-Roman culture, and standing out boldly as a lover of his people and his people's law. Such latter-day repentance has been known among the Flavii of other generations. And the two books _Against Apion_ show that when Josephus had not to qualify his own weakness nor to flatter his patrons, he could rise to an appreciation and even to an eloquent exposition of Jewish ideals. Yet it was not the Greek-writing historian, but the Palestinian Rabbis, that were to prove to the world the undying vigor, the unquenchable power of resistance of the Jewish Law. The Vineyard of Jabneh founded by Johanan ben Zakkai was the sufficient refutation of Roman scoffers, while the apology of Josephus became the guide of the early Church fathers in their replies to heathen calumniators who repeated against them the charges that had been invented against the Jews. It is significant that Tacitus, who wrote his history some few years after the defense of Josephus was published, repeated with added virulence the fables which the Jewish writer had refuted. The charges of anti-Semites have in every age borne a charmed life: they are hydra-headed, and can be refuted, not by literature, but by life.

Nevertheless literary libels, if unanswered in literature, tend to become fixed popular beliefs, and in the Dark and Middle Ages the Jewish people were to suffer bitterly from the lack of apologists who could obtain a hearing before the peoples of Europe. In the early centuries of the Christian era, before the Christian Church was allied with the Roman Empire, tolerance ruled in the Greco-Roman world, and the narrow Roman hatred of Judaism was in large part broken down. Celsus, Numenius, and Dion Ca.s.sius, three of the most notable authors of the second century, speak of the Jewish people and Jewish Scriptures in a very different tone from that of a Tacitus and an Apion. And as it has been said, "Who shall know how many cultured pagans were led by the books of Josephus to read the Bible and to look on Judaism with other eyes?"[1] If the apologies of Philo and Josephus could not pierce the armor of prejudice and hatred which enwrapped a Tacitus or a Christian ecclesiastic, they at least found their way through the lighter coating of ignorance and misunderstanding which had been fabricated by h.e.l.lenistic Egyptians, but which had not fatally warped the minds of the general Greco-Roman society.

[Footnote 1: Comp. Joel, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, ii. 118.]

IX

CONCLUSION

The works of Josephus early pa.s.sed into the category of standard literature. It is recorded that they were placed by order of the Flavian Emperors in the public library of Rome; and though Suetonius, the biographer of the Caesars, who wrote in the second century, and Diogenes, the biographer of the philosophers, who wrote a century later, do not apparently hold them of any account, it is certain that they were carefully preserved till the triumph of the Christian Church gave them a new importance. For centuries henceforth they were the prime authority for Jewish history of post-Biblical times, and were treasured as a kind of introduction to the Gospels, illuminating the period in which Christianity had its birth. The traitor-historian was soon forgotten by his own people, if they ever had regard for him, and with the rest of the h.e.l.lenistic writers he dropped out of the Rabbinical tradition.

Possibly the Aramaic version of the _Wars_ survived for a time in the Eastern schools, but while the Jews were struggling to preserve their religious existence, they had little thought for such a history of their past.