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IV History in Microcosm: The Life of Josephus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2025
Extract
In many ways, the Life of Josephus is not an edifying or enjoyable read. It has been accused by some of extreme sloppiness, both of literary composition and of factual accuracy and consistency, and at times even of outright mendacity. It raises questions of taste, too. In the modern world, extremes of self-praise are often seen as crass, at least by those of us who are not real estate moguls who become presidents. While it is true that standards differed in Graeco-Roman antiquity, a cultural context in which trumpeting one's own virtues was not taboo, the Life seems to go beyond contemporary standards, containing tendencies of autopanegyric which would make even Cicero blush. These grounds for distaste, together with the Life's brevity and conventional status as a decidedly minor work, have meant that it has received rather less scholarly attention than the other works of Josephus. Nonetheless, much of the scholarship which it has inspired has been interesting. That research has certainly made it clear that this text, for all its faults and lapses, speaks to far more than just the inflated self-image of one rather conceited man.
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References
1 For accusations of sloppiness, see, for example, Mason 2001: xiii, xxix, xlvii–xlviii; Rappaport 2007. For the question of mendacity, see Rappaport 1994.
2 On Josephus’ engagement with Greek and Roman notions of decorum in self-praise, see Glas 2024: 142–83.
3 This conclusion is complicated by the fact that Photius, at Bibl. 33, claims that the rival history of the Jewish Revolt written by Justus of Tiberius, which Josephus mentions in the Life, was written in 100 ce. In the past, this has generated ingenious hypotheses of multiple editions (e.g. Laqueur 1920: 1–127). However, the modern consensus is that Photius simply got the date wrong: see Barish 1978; Cohen 1979: 170–80; Mason 2001: xiv–xxi. For dissent from the consensus, see Kokkinos 1998: 396–400; Kokkinos 2003.
4 See above, p. 5.
5 For Graeco-Roman biography in general, see above all Hägg 2012.
6 On the importance of conventions of Graeco-Roman biography and encomium to the Life, see Barish 1978; Cohen 1979: 101–3; Mason 1998a; Gnuse 2002; P. Stern 2010: 77–84; P. Stern 2011: 394–6.
7 For a different view of the Life's relationship to ancient autobiography, see Grojnowski 2023.
8 Misch 1998: 231–71.
9 Cohen 1979: 103–4; Mason 2016b: 65–6.
10 Tac. Agr. 10–17; V 30–61.
11 See, for example, Thackeray 1929: 16–17; Rajak 1973; Rappaport 1994; Vogel 1999: 72.
12 Rajak 1973: 357. See also Cohen 1979: 121, which assumes that the apologia in chapters 80–4 is a response to Justus’ attacks.
13 Rajak 1987; Rajak 2002: 152–3. See also Mason 1998a; P. Stern 2011: 387–8.
14 Mason 1998a; Mason 2016b: 63–4, 72.
15 Rajak 1987: 85; Rodgers 2006: 177–8.
16 This reconstruction of Justus as a ‘revolutionary’ is based on Josephus’ presentation, but we ought to note that it is suspicious: as Rodgers 2006: 178 puts it, ‘Josephus’ assertion that Justus was a supporter of the rebellion is unsubstantiated by the narrative’.
17 On Josephus as a master of stratagems and deception in this work, see P. Stern 2010: 84–5. Particularly nice examples involve his obtaining the surrender of Tiberian rebels by creating a phantom fleet on the Sea of Galilee (163–8), and his entrapment and arrest of Simon, one of the delegates from the Jerusalem κοινόν (324–36). On Justus being criticized for rhetorical manipulation, see V 36–42.
18 Quint. Inst. 3.7.24–5.
19 E.g. Gelzer 1964: 299–325; Rappaport 1994. Cohen 1979: 3–8 presents a synoptic overview of both accounts and a discussion of some of the major discrepancies.
20 Rajak 2002: 144–74.
21 Some discrepancies which (in my view) cannot be explained in this way include the different identities of the Jerusalem delegates (V 197–8; BJ 2.628); the fact that Josephus consistently claims to have been in command of significantly larger forces in the War than in the Life; and the claim in the War that John was impoverished and of mean origins versus the claim in the Life that he was politically influential in Gischala (BJ 2.585, 590; V 43–5). Moreover, the Life at times appears to contain internal discrepancies, too: Josephus claims at one point, for instant, that Justus was absent from Galilee in Berytus after his flight to Agrippa II (V 357), yet elsewhere he depicts him as actively inciting trouble in the region during the time when Josephus was in Jotapata (V 350–4).
22 On good moral conduct in general, see, for example, V 80–3; for concerns for Torah observance, see 113 (opposition to forced conversion of Gentiles), 159 (dismissing his soldiers on the sabbath so as not to risk impairing the observance of the inhabitants of Tarichaeae), and 161 (not wanting his soldiers to bear arms on the sabbath). On the importance of Torah observance in the Life, see Stanislawski 2004: 18–31.
23 Mason 2001: xlvii–l.
24 Mason 2001: xxiii–xxv; Mason 2016b: 68–70. Even if many ancient readers could arguably not have been expected to pick up on all of the specificities of Mason's elaborate structure, the centrality of the dream-vision, which is the key point, is clear.
25 Plut. Sull. 9.4.
26 On biostructuring in classical historiography, see Pelling 2006; Pelling 2011: 157–9.
27 Mason 2001: xlvii–l.