¹ A. Berendts, Die Zeugnisse vom Christentum im slavischen de bello Judaico des Josephus (Texte und Untersuchungen 29).

² Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1906, 262 ff.

³ Der slavische Josephusbericht über die urchristliche Geschichte, Dorpat, 1909.Google Scholar

⁴ Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1911, 78 f.

⁵ The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist according to Flavius Josephus’ recently discovered “Capture of Jerusalem” and other Jewish and Christian Sources, 1931. It will be clear in the sequel that I hold a very different view of the Slavonic version from that adopted by Eisler. I am the more anxious to acknowledge obligations to his learned work: I am dependent on him for some important items of information, and I have learned much even where I have been totally unable to accept his arguments or his conclusions.

⁶ Flavius Josephus: Vom Jüdischen Kriege. Buch i-iv nach der slavischen Übersetzung deutsch hrsgeg. und mit dem griechischen Text verglichen von A. Berendts und K. Grass. Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis (Dorpatensis), 1924, 1926, 1927.

⁷ The interpretation of linguistic data in Old Slavonic documents is plainly a delicate matter. The Chronicle of Nestor, for instance, was written at Kiev at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century, as may be proved by internal evidence. But the earliest extant MS. dates from the 14th century, and “the language of the original,” says Léger, , “must have undergone more than one modification in passing from the Russia of Kiev to the Russia of the Volga” (Chronique dite de Nestor, tr. Léger, Louis, Paris, 1884. Introduction, p. xix). Similar possibilities must probably be allowed for in the case of the Slavonic version of the Jewish War.Google Scholar

⁸ See Berendts-Grass, pp. 10 f.

⁹ Eisler, p. 118.

¹⁰ Berendts-Grass, p. 22.

¹¹ Berendts-Grass, p. 10, referring to a description of the Codex Moscow Akad. 651 by J. Srenewski.

¹² Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, XXVI (October 1930).Google Scholar

¹³ It is worth recording that Grass (p. 29, n. 1) dissents from Berendts’ view that the translator reproduced all that he found in his original text, and holds that there has been editorial abbreviation.

¹⁴ The device of the caltrops was known and practised in ancient times, but the references to it are not very frequent in ancient literature. See Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, s.v. ‘tribulus.’ The more extensive use of cavalry in the Middle Ages made the device a familiar feature in mediaeval warfare.

¹⁵ For other examples, cf. B. J. i. § 124, with Berendts-Grass, p. 68; B. J. i. § 242 … ἧκον καὶ Ἰουδαίων οἱ δυνατοὶ κατηγοροῦντες Φασαήλου καὶ Ἡρώδου, βίᾳ μὲν αὐτοὺς κρατεῖν τῶν πραγμάτων ὄνομα δὲ μόνον περιεῖναι ῾ϒρκανῷ τίμιον. Slavonic: “… then came the Jewish rulers and chief men, accusing Herod and Phasael, saying: ‘Hyrcanus, having the mere name of ruler, has not the authority to decide, to bind or to loose, to do good or evil. For those brothers have violently taken everything to themselves’” (Berendts-Grass, pp. 98 f.). In this case we do not hesitate to regard the Slavonic as secondary.

¹⁶ That is, as he explains in § 6, Parthians, Babylonians, the most remote tribes of the Arabians, the Jews beyond the Euphrates, and the inhabitants of Adiabene.

¹⁷ For instance, ii. § 169 σημαῖαι, ii. § 361 ἀδοξεῖτε.

¹⁸ Berendts, Zeugnisse, p. 72.

¹⁹ I may have missed some notes in Berendts-Grass, but the only instance which I have discovered where the influence of Aramaic syntax is suggested is Book i. § 494. The Greek text reads πολλοῖς γοῦν αὐτῶν ἀπεῖπεν τὀ βασιλεῖον. Berendts-Grass give, as a literal translation of the Slavonic, “und vielen verbot er von seinem Hofe,” and suggest that it reproduces a Semitic construction with Cf. also p. 130, n. 12 (“eine unbekannte, vielleicht aramäische Redeweise”); p. 307, n. 4 (but since in this case the difficulty, if it is a difficulty, is equally present in both Greek and Slavonic, it does not help to establish special Aramaic influence in the Slavonic); p. 495, n. 21 (a peculiarly unconvincing suggestion by Grass that an apparently unknown Slavonic word iskusit is a fusion of the Slavonic ‘is’ and the Aramaic [‘a garment’]. How did an Aramaic common noun come to survive in the Slavonic, if there was an intermediate Greek translation?).

²⁰ Eisler, pp. 132, 133.

²¹ Sophocles, Greek Lexicon, s.v., μαγκλάβιον, derives it from Latin ‘manus,’ ‘clavus.’

²² Berendts-Grass, p. 23.

²³ Berendts-Grass throw doubt on the historical trustworthiness of the Greek text of Josephus on the ground that Gaius Caesar did not hold public office until a.u.c. 751 (b.c. 2), whereas Tiberius had received the tribunicia potestas in a.u.c. 748 (b.c. 5). They argue that in either case there is error, but that the error in the Slavonic is less serious than that in the Greek. But there is no need to suspect error in the Greek. Public office is not in question. There is nothing improbable in the statement that Augustus at this date first made the young Gaius an assessor at a judicial inquiry. Tiberius was already 38 years of age in a.d. 4. Moreover at that time he was living at Rhodes. All is explained if we suppose that the Slavonic translator read the note which appears in codd. VC, and on the strength of it substituted the familiar ‘Tiberius’ for the less familiar ‘Gaius.’ Codices VC are assigned to the 11th century.

²⁴ Archiv für slavische Philologie, XVI (1894), pp. 578 ff.Google Scholar

²⁵ S. Runciman, A History of the First Bulgarian Empire, pp. 138 ff.

²⁶ Archiv für slavische Philologie, II (1877), pp. 6 ff.Google Scholar; cf. Geschichte der slavischen Literaturen, by Pypin, A. N. and Spasovič, V. D., translated from the Russian by Pech, 1880, vol. I, pp. 78 f.Google Scholar

²⁷ Berendts, Zeugnisse, p. 17.

²⁸ It will be noticed that this abbreviation blurs the distinction — accurately drawn in the true text of Josephus — between the peoples within and the peoples beyond the frontier of the first century.

²⁹ Art. ‘Alani,’ Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie.

³⁰ Ammianus, xxxi. 2 f.

³¹ On the identity of Alani and Ossetes see Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 37, and the literature there referred to.

³² Eisler (p. 216) gives ‘Tauros.’ That this is a misprint for ‘Tanais’ appears from Berendts, Zeugnisse, p. 24, n. 2.

³³ Cap. xxvii; ed. Niebuhr (Corp. Hist. Scr. Byz.), vol. III, p. 164.

³⁴ Cambridge Medieval History, vol. IV, p. 198. I am greatly indebted in this section to the suggestions of Dr. Previté-Orton.

³⁵ Ibid. p. 330.

³⁶ The words “Italians who are called,” bracketed in Thackeray, have the same textual attestation as the rest of the passage. See above, p. 279.

³⁷ That they were Antipater's own countrymen appears from § 612.

³⁸ An allusion, as Thackeray points out, to Proverbs 30, 15 f. in the LXX version.

³⁹ ‘Die Kleidung’ (Berendts). But this can hardly be right. In Byzantine Greek χλαμύς, properly ‘a soldier's cloak,’ can be used for ‘a soldier,’ and Du Cange (note on Alexiad xiii. 9, p. 401 c, referred to by Mrs. Buckler, Anna Comnena, p. 494) notes a similar use of ‘une cotte’ in mediaeval French for the man inside the coat of mail. ‘Soldiers’ would give excellent sense here, if the Slavonic word would bear that meaning.

⁴⁰ Here again I must acknowledge my obligations to Dr. Previté-Orton, who has helped me with valuable suggestions. For the political history see Norden, W., Das Papsttum und Byzanz (Berlin, 1903), pp. 59–74; and for the commercial relations of Italy with Lesser Armenia see Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant, I, p. 369.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Translation of Dr. Elizabeth Dawes, London, 1928.Google Scholar

⁴² Prince Mirsky, History of Russian Literature, p. 11.

⁴³ See M^e. B. de Itinéraires russes en Orient, ed. Khitrovo, (Geneva, 1889; Société de l'Orient latin), Vie et Pélerinage de Daniel.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Cambridge Medieval History, VII, pp. 599, 621; Mouravieff, A. N., History of the Church of Russia (tr. Blackmore, R. W., Oxford, 1842), pp. 29, 84 f.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ With the kind permission of the publishers (William Heinemann Ltd.) and the editors of the Loeb Classical Library, I have made use of Dr. H. St. J. Thackeray's translation in the Appendix to vol. III of his translation of Josephus. Thackeray himself translates from Berendts-Grass for all the passages contained in Books i-iv, and for the three additions in Books v and vi he translates from Berendts, Zeugnisse, 1906. In the first passage I have followed Thackeray ad litteram. In the remaining passages I have modified his version — sometimes considerably — in the light of Draguet's valuable Latin version from the Slavonic in the Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, XXVI (October 1930), pp. 839 ffGoogle Scholar. A critical text for these passages, as for the rest of the Slavonic version, is still lacking, but thanks to photostatic reproductions of Codex Kyrillo-Bjelos 63/1302 Leningrad Public Library in Eisler's work, Draguet has been able to work independently from the Slavonic text.

Draguet also gives a Latin translation of a Rumanian text from Gaster, Codex no. 89 (17th-18th century). This is misnamed ‘the Rumanian Josephus.’ It is in reality a compilation including the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Acts of Pilate, and other Christian apocrypha, together with the additional passages on John, Jesus Christ, etc. from the Slavonic Josephus (cf. Eisler, Appendix VIII, pp. 597 ff.). Eisler lays great stress on variant readings attested by this ms., but Draguet gives strong reasons for supposing that the Rumanian text is dependent upon the Russian and is textually unimportant.

⁴⁶ Zech. 9, 9.

⁴⁷ Is. 35, 5 f.; 61, 1, and Matt. 11, 5.

⁴⁸ Gen. 49, 10.

⁴⁹ Cf. B.J. i. §§ 343 ff.

⁵⁰ Dan. 9, 24 ff.

⁵¹ The colloquy is supposed to take place at the time of Herod's Arabian war, i.e. 32 b.c. The text “seems to mean that they reckoned that there were 34 more years still to run of the 490, within which, according to Daniel ix. 24, the Messiah was to appear” (Thackeray).

⁵² Cf. Mark 1, 5, καὶ ἐξεπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτὸν πᾶσα ὴ Ἰουδαία χώρα, καὶ οἱ Ἰεροσολυ μεῖται πάντες: Matt. 3, 5, τότε ἐξεπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἰεροσόλυμα καὶ πᾶσα ἡ Ἰουδαία καὶ πᾶσα ὴ περίχωρος τοῦ Ἰορδάνου. The Rumanian text omits the words “and there went … Jerusalem.”

⁵³ ‘A man’: the text is uncertain. Several mss. read člk, “the ordinary abbreviation of člověk = homo” (Draguet), but Mosc. Acad. 651/227 reads čist “pure.”

⁵⁴ ‘And hither’: the text is again uncertain. Two mss. are said to read i zde ‘and hither,’ while other mss. give jimže ‘because.’

⁵⁵ Draguet refers to a very interesting article by Grégoire, M. H., ‘Les sauterelles de S. Jean-Baptiste,’ in Byzantion, 1929–1930, V, pp. 109 ff., where Grégoire traces the history of the ‘vegetarian’ exegesis of the Baptist's diet. He refers to this passage and argues that the Slavonic words used (drevjannyja sčepky) may correspond to the Greek ἀκρόδρυα or ἀκρίσματα δένδρων. He adds however that it is by no means necessary to assume a Greek source: the passage may have been fabricated by a Russian on the basis of some Slavonic apocryphon.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Σίμων τις Ἐσσαῖος τὸ γένος appears in the Greek Josephus as an interpreter of the dream of Archelaus in the next paragraph (§§ 111–113). In § 113 the Slavonic gives ‘a Sadducee, Sumos,’ but as Berendts-Grass show ad loc., this may represent Sym(e)on, and it need not be assumed that the translator intended a different person.

⁵⁷ “Togo, masculine or neuter, does not agree with tainu (mysterium), which is feminine; it refers either to the revelation of the mystery or else to him who is the object of, or who constitutes, the mystery” (Draguet ad. loc.). Perhaps there is an echo here of the Baptist's words in John 1,26: “There standeth one among you, whom ye know not.”

⁵⁸ “Which are … wife.” These words are absent in the Rumanian text. But Draguet (p. 842, n. 1) corrects Eisler's statement (cf. Thackeray, p. 647, note a) that the Rumanian text contains no stricture on Philip's venality. The two texts are in substantial agreement at this point.

⁵⁹ According to Josephus (Ant. xviii. 5, 1; Ibid. 7, 1) the first husband of Herodias was not Philip the tetrarch, but another son of Herod the Great who lived at Rome. Matt. 14, 3 and the parallel Mark 6, 17, give the name Philip to the first husband of Herodias — perhaps wrongly; the name is not found in Luke 3, 19. The Slavonic translator is thus in conflict with Josephus, but in agreement with a possible and natural inference from the gospels. The historical difficulty would not be lessened if we accepted Eisler's unnecessary conjecture that the name Herodias (omitted in the Rumanian text) is here a Christian interpolation into an earlier text. In any case it is Herodias who is intended.

⁶⁰ This is again in conflict with Josephus, who tells us (Ant. xviii. 5, 4) that Salome was the only child of Herodias by her first husband, and that Philip the tetrarch died childless. Josephus also tells us that Herodias divorced her first husband in his lifetime to marry Antipas. According to the Slavonic translator, on the other hand, the sin of Antipas lay in his marrying a deceased brother's wife without the legitimate ground of a levirate marriage.

Berendts refers to a late Greek apocryphon on John the Baptist (supposed to be the work of a disciple of the Baptist, Eurippus), printed in Vassiliev, , Anecdota-Graeco-Byzantina, I (Moscow, 1893)Google Scholar, from Cod. Monte Cassinensi 277 fol. 58–60, 11th century, in which Herod, when rebuked by John, is made to plead the levirate law in his defence, and John retorts, first that Herod has himself poisoned his brother in order to possess his wife, and secondly that his brother's wife committed adultery with him while her husband lived. Some such apocryphal text as this may well have been known to the Slavonic translator, and have provided him with the curious motif of the levirate law.

It is possible that this motif was also known to Pseudo-Hegesippus or his source, for in an interpolation dealing with John the Baptist and Antipas (De excid. Hieros. urbis ii. 5, Migne P. L. XV, 2042 C) he refers to the circumstance that Herodias had borne offspring to her first husband as enhancing the guilt of Antipas: “non solum enim quasi praedicator evangelii fraterni cubilis incestum reprehendebat, verum etiam quasi legis exsecutor praevaricatorem legis condemnavit qui fratris uxorem viventis eripuerat, praesertim habentem semen de germano ipsius.” It will be observed that the actual text of Pseudo-Hegesippus agrees with Josephus against the Slavonic version and the Eurippus apocryphon in making Antipas marry the wife of his living brother, so that the words “praesertim habentem semen de germano ipsius” seem pointless. It is plausible to conjecture with Berendts that in the source of Hegesippus Antipas married his deceased brother's wife as in the Slavonic Josephus. But this is weak evidence for supposing that Hegesippus knew the original of the Slavonic text.

⁶¹ “That he should be slain”; Rumanian: “that they should cast him into prison.” Obviously a correction to assimilate the narrative to the gospels.

⁶² For ‘wood-shavings’ the Rumanian gives ‘buds of trees.’

⁶³ Closely parallel to the opening words of the disputed passage on Christ in Ant. xviii. § 63: γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἰησοῦς σοϕὸς ἀνήρ, εἴγε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή.

⁶⁴ Lit. ‘nor hand-acts.’

⁶⁵ Thackeray quotes the apocryphal epistle of Tiberius to Pilate (Texts and Studies, V, p. 79) λόγῳ μόνῳ τὰς ἰάσεις ἐπετέλει.

⁶⁶ Cf. John 6, 15.

⁶⁷ The Rumanian omits ‘servants’ and adds ‘that is, disciples,’ presumably because ‘servants’ was felt to be difficult. There is however one passage in the gospels where the followers of Christ are spoken of as his ‘servants,’ John 18, 36, and the context in this present passage (Jesus rejects the violence which his ‘servants’ propose) renders it probable that this Johannine text was in the writer's mind.

⁶⁸ The reading is uncertain. The mss. waver between No s'nebreže ‘sed ille neglexit’; N'se nebreže, ‘sed illud neglexit’; No sii nebreže, ‘sed ille neglexit’; Nas ne nebreža ‘nos non neglexit.’ The last reading, which is preferred by Eisler, is rejected by Draguet on the following grounds:

(1) It is attested by one ms. only (Syn. 182), and is opposed in sense to all the other mss.

(2) The little phrase ‘nos non neglexit’ without anything to mark its adversative character, stands out of connection with the context. Eisler's attempt to make the whole of the preceding sentence, ‘When they saw … reign over them,’ protasis, and nos non neglexit apodosis, does violence to the Russian text. The only admissible version is that given in the earlier translation of Berendts (p. 9), ‘Aber jener verschmäthe es.’

(3) The reading preferred by Eisler would make the writer place himself among the Jews, which he does nowhere else either in this or in other passages.

(4) Although the reading favored by Eisler is not itself in any high degree compromising for ‘the wonder-worker,’ it is yet out of harmony with the context which represents Jesus as a man of peace.

The third argument does not perhaps weigh heavily, for the writer speaks above of ‘our lawgiver,’ i.e. Moses, but the other considerations seem to tell strongly in favor of either ‘sed ille neglexit’ or ‘sed illud neglexit.’

⁶⁹ The meaning is not clear. Berendts, Berendts-Grass, and Eisler join the clause with the following sentence. Draguet translates ‘quasi arcus tensus,’ and punctuates as above.

⁷⁰ There is some similarity to John 11, 47 ff.

⁷¹ No close parallel to this story seems to be known. The Vita B.V.M. et Salvatoris rhythmica (dated first half of the 13th century) relates that the wife of Pilate was visited on the eve of Christ's trial by ‘the angel of Jesus’ and through him cured of her malady:

Hac nocte sum per angelum eius visitata,

Ab infirmitate mea per ipsum sum curata

(lines 4762 f., ed. A. Vögtlin, Stuttgart, 1888).

This seems to be embroidery upon Matt. 27, 19. There is no ground for supposing with Eisler that the author of the Vita depended upon the text of this passage.

⁷² The bribery of Pilate is referred to in the apocryphal Greek letter of Tiberius to Pilate, ed. M. R. James, Texts and Studies, V, pp. 78, 79. δῶρα ὑπὲρ τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ ἔλαβες … τοὺς συμβούλους σου καὶ συμμύστας, ἀϕ᾽ ὦν καἰ τὰ δῶρα τοῦ θανάτου εἴληϕας..

⁷³ B.J. ii, § 220 καταλείπει δὲ τρεῖς μὲν θυγατέρας ἐκ Κύπρου γεγεννημένας … υὶὸν δὲ ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς Ἀγρίππαν. “This son, Agrippa II, was the close friend of Josephus, and the ignorance shown in the words ‘Since he had no son’ is indeed surprising, if Josephus can be held to have written them” (Thackeray).

⁷⁴ Draguet ingeniously conjectures that the reading of the Slavonic mss. ot čistych is a corruption of an original ot (ot)českych (the abbreviated form českych is, according to Draguet, frequent in mss.). This gives the meaning ‘from the ancestral laws’ instead of ‘from the pure laws.’ In the corresponding Greek text LVRC read πατρίων, where Niese gives ἐπιχωρίων.

⁷⁵ The corresponding passage in the Greek (B.J. ii. § 220) simply relates that Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Alexander kept the people in peace because they made no disturbance of their ancestral customs: μηδὲν παρακινοῦντες τῶν ἐπιχωρίων ἐθῶν ἐν εἰρήνη τὸ ἔθνος διεϕύλαξαν.

⁷⁶ Apparently ‘in the time of Claudius.’ So Draguet.

⁷⁷ A close parallel to the words of Gamaliel, Acts 5, 38 f.

⁷⁸ The text appears to be corrupt. Grass (p. 280) suggests an emendation which would give the meaning, ‘because of the deeds wrought by them.’

⁷⁹ The Greek text says only that the inscriptions were in Latin and Greek.

⁸⁰ Matt. 27, 64; 28, 13–15.

⁸¹ As for instance in the case of the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. There is a certain resemblance here to a passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus (Pt. II. 4 (20), 3, Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 396), where Hell complains to Satan that whereas many righteous men have been able to raise the dead by prayer to God, Jesus without prayer has rescued dead men from his clutches by his own power: Respondens Inferus ait: Tu mihi dixisti quia ipse est qui mortuos a me abstraxit. multi enim sunt qui a me hic detenti sunt, qui dum vixerunt in terris a me mortuos tulerunt, non suis potentiis sed divinis precibus, et omnipotens deus eorum abstraxit eos a me. quis est iste Jesus qui per verbum suum mortuos a me traxit sine precibus?

⁸² v. 1. ‘a thousand.’

⁸³ v. 1. ‘a thousand.’

⁸⁴ Eisler's photographic reproduction of the ms., on which Draguet relies, does not extend beyond the end of the last sentence, and the exact manuscript text is uncertain. Draguet thinks the phrase incomplete.

⁸⁵ The MS. used by Berendts adds the name ‘Jesus.’

⁸⁶ In the Greek text Josephus states that the Jews wrongly understood the oracle in question to refer to one of their own race, whereas in reality it pointed to Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor on Jewish soil.

⁸⁷ P. 141.

⁸⁸ Named only in No. 6 and at B. J. v. § 567; doubtfully in No. 8.

⁸⁹ Chron. lib. II (Migne P.G. XIX, col. 521 ff.).

⁹⁰ The Slavonic version need not offend the most sensitive Christian. The political coloring of the preaching of John Baptist is the one possible stone of stumbling. It is only after drastic interpolation in No. 4 has been assumed, that the Slavonic version becomes a witness for Eisler's romantic reconstruction of the ministry of Jesus Christ — and even then the evidence halts.