| <head>I.<hi rend="italic">The Source Problem</hi></head><p>That Josephus used sources for his presentations of the Pharisees is undeniable. We must ask, however, whether it would be legitimate, on the basis of some assured results of scholarship, to begin this study by designating certain passages as the work of Josephus's sources alone and therefore as non-Josephan. The question arises with particular poignancy in relation to<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>17:41-45, which we shall consider in Part III. Our concern here is with general principles that obtain for Josephus's writings as a whole.</p><p>The source-critical movement, it will be recalled, proposed various evidences that Josephus was a rather dull copyist who failed to impart any independent judgement or outlook to his material. These evidences can be grouped under three rubrics:</p><p>A. Material inconsistencies, such as unfulfilled cross-references, doublets, dissonant chronological systems, and conflicting high-priest lists.</p><p>B. Stylistic variations, such as Hölscher observed between<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:312:116 and 2:117ff.</p><p>C. Circumstances that suggest Josephus's use of large, secondary or intermediate sources. Hölscher, for example, doubted that Josephus used either the LXX or the Hebrew Bible directly, in<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>1-11, since he departs from both.<note id="p1_excur_n1" place="foot">Hölscher, "Josephus", 1952-1955.</note>Hölscher also supposed that Josephus's Pharisaic<pb n="46" />education would have prevented him knowing first-hand the many pagan authors that he cites.<note id="p1_excur_n2" place="foot">Ibid., 1957.</note></p><p>With respect to the Pharisee passages in particular: a major criterion of the source critics was that Josephus, being a Pharisee, could not have consistently disparaged his own party. We have seen the importance of this criterion for Hölscher and Schwartz. One of the more enduring proposals of source criticism, it turns up in G. F. Moore, W. Bousset, M. Waxman, and even M. Smith.<note id="p1_excur_n3" place="foot">Moore,<hi rend="italic">Judaism</hi>, I, 62 n. 4, 65 n. 3 (on<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:110ff.), 66 n. 1 (on<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:114 and<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>13:411-417); Bousset,<hi rend="italic">Religion des Judentums</hi>, 187 (on<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>17:41ff.); M. Waxman,<hi rend="italic">A History of Jewish Literature from the Close of the Bible to our own Days</hi>(1932), cited in Feldman,<hi rend="italic">Modern Scholarship</hi>, 554; Smith, "Palestinian Judaism", 75 (on<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>1:110-114).</note>Although the source critics differed considerably on the actual sources behind the Pharisee passages, they agreed that many of them could not have been written by Josephus; he must have absent-mindedly copied them.</p><p>Contemporary scholarship, however, has progressed far beyond the heyday of source criticism. We may note the following insights that would seem to justify the<hi rend="italic">a priori</hi>assumption of Josephus's authorship of the Pharisee passages.</p><p>A. Laqueur demonstrated that Josephus could present his own activities in various, not entirely harmonious, ways. Since there is no question of sources accounting for these differences, one has to reckon with Josephus's own initiative and purposes.</p><p>B. Many assumptions of the older source criticism are no longer considered valid. Such an assumption was Hölscher's belief that Josephus's Palestinian education would have precluded a serious knowledge of Greek language and literature on his part.<note id="p1_excur_n4" place="foot">Cf. n. 49 of chapter 2 above.</note>Further, Josephus's supposed allegiance to Pharisaism has been reduced by some scholars (Smith, Neusner, Cohen) to a spurious claim.</p><p>C. Hölscher's theory that Josephus used intermediate sources has not worn well.<note id="p1_excur_n5" place="foot">Cf. Thackeray, Josephus , 63, and Momigliano, "Josephus as a Source for the History of Judea",<hi rend="italic">Cambridge Ancient History</hi>, X:<hi rend="italic">The Augustan Empire</hi>44<hi rend="italic">BC - AD</hi>70, edd. S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, and M. P. Charlesworth (Cambridge: University Press, 1966), 885f.</note>But if intermediate sources are done away with, then Josephus himself was the one who artfully combined, and sometimes criticized,<note id="p1_excur_n6" place="foot">E.g.,<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>16:183-187.</note>his sources.</p><pb n="47" /><p>D. Many recent studies have discovered consistent motifs and redactional concerns in Josephus's writings. H. Lindner's study of<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish War">War</span></hi>, for example, reveals a clear view of history and of Israel in that work.<note id="p1_excur_n7" place="foot">H. Lindner,<hi rend="italic">Die Geschichtsauffassung des Flavius Josephus im Bellum Judaicum</hi>(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 40-45, 141-14.</note>Analyses of Josephus's biblical paraphrase (<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="The Jewish Antiquities">Ant.</span></hi>1-11) have demonstrated marked editorial themes.<note id="p1_excur_n8" place="foot">Cf. M. Braun,<hi rend="italic">Griechischer Roman und hellenistische Geschichtsschreibung</hi>(Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1934); B. Heller, "Grundzüge der Aggada des Flavius Josephus",<hi rend="italic"><span class="abbr" title="Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums">MGWJ</span></hi>80 (1936), 237-246; T. W. Franxman,<hi rend="italic">Genesis and the "Jewish Antiquities" of Flavius Josephus</hi>(Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1979), 288f.</note>Thus H. W. Attridge discovers "an important theological dimension in the work of Josephus. . . in its interpretative presentation of scriptural narratives".<note id="p1_excur_n9" place="foot">H. W. Attridge,<hi rend="italic">The Interpretation of Biblical History in the Antiquitates Judaicae of Flavius Josephus</hi>(Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976), 17.</note>In Josephus's use of<hi rend="italic">Aristeas</hi>, A. Pelletier likewise points out several discernable tendencies.<note id="p1_excur_n10" place="foot">A. Pelletier,<hi rend="italic">Flavius Josephe: adapteur de la lettre d'Aristße</hi>(Paris: Klincksieck, 1962), 252ff.</note>H. R. Moehring's conclusion, with respect to the "novelistic elements" in Josephus's narrative, anticipated the results of these recent studies: "Josephus can justly be called the author, in the true sense of this term, of the works attributed to him: even when he borrows . . . he impresses his own personality upon his work."<note id="p1_excur_n10" place="foot">A. Pelletier,<hi rend="italic">Flavius Josephe: adapteur de la lettre d'Aristße</hi>(Paris: Klincksieck, 1962), 252ff.</note></p><p>E. H. Schreckenberg's analysis of Josephus's style, for text-critical purposes, has also shed light on the fundamental integrity of Josephus's works. As Schreckenberg notes: "Nicht das unwichtigste Ergebnis der hier vorgelegten textkritischen Arbeit ist eine neue Einsicht in die sprachlich-stilistische Einheit der Werke des Josephus, die verschiedentlich bezweifelt wurde."<note id="p1_excur_n12" place="foot">H. Schreckenberg,<hi rend="italic">Rezeptionsgeschichtliche und textkritische Untersuchungen zu Flavius</hi>Josephus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 173.</note></p><p>The reaction, then, to a source criticism that denied Josephus the true function of an author has been broadly based and forceful.</p><p>For Josephus's Pharisee passages, the following question suggests itself: if Josephus was so obviously capable of shaping his work to reflect his own agenda, interests, and style, is it reasonable to suppose that, when he came to describe the Pharisees—a group of which he had personal knowledge (<hi rend="italic">Life</hi>191-198), he simply parroted some remarks from his pagan sources, without regard for his own sentiments? L. H. Feldman makes the point well. Noting that Josephus's sources for the Pharisee passages are, in any case, unknown, he continues:</p><pb n="48" /><p><q>But when we definitely know Josephus' source, as in his restatement of the 'Letter of Aristeas', we see that he can rework his source with considerable thoroughness. It is hard to believe that in an issue as important as the Pharisees, where he had personal knowledge and experience, he chose slavishly to reproduce his sources.<note id="p1_excur_n13" place="foot">Feldman,<hi rend="italic">Modern Scholarship</hi>, 554.</note></q></p><p>To summarize: it is clear that Josephus used sources, especially for events beyond his own experience. That he used them as an anthologist and not as an author, however, is a proposition made untenable by several major studies. One cannot deny that a few clear material inconsistencies remain in Josephus's works, but these tensions cannot overturn the overwhelming evidence of Josephus's control over his literary productions.<note id="p1_excur_n14" place="foot">Such problems are common to all writers, especially those of long works—even when remarkable technological resources are available for assistance!</note></p> |
