although his work can in no way be classified as a translation and even to designate it a paraphrase is misleading.
Secondly, in 7 BCE, Dionysius of Halicarnassus had published in twenty books a work on Roman archaeologies (Antiquitates Romanae), written in Greek, in which he utilized various types of source material in order to demonstrate the great antiquity of Rome in line with the general interest in antiquity reflected in Hellenistic writers who, however, stressed Babylonian, Greek, Egyptian, or Jewish antiquity rather than Roman. Josephus seems to have adopted consciously the pattern and interest of Dionysius in the general structure of his work in order to demonstrate that Jewish history was able to stand on an equal footing with that of any other culture in terms of both antiquity and intrinsic interest.
In the present discussions, only a few general characteristics of Josephus’s history can be noted:
1. Although Josephus declares that his aim is to set forth “the precise details of our Scripture records neither adding nor omitting anything” (Ant. 1.17), he did deliberately omit some traditions as well as supplement the biblical materials. Some of his conscious omissions were clearly calculated to avoid providing anti-Jewish protagonists with any material that might be used to support the scurrilous claims that the Jews worshipped God in animal form, specifically the ass. One of the prominent concerns in his Contra Apionem is the refutation of this accusation. Noteworthy in this regard is his omission of any reference to the story of the Israelite worship of the golden calf (Exodus 32) in his history. Numerous non-biblical legends, many with parallels in rabbinic and Hellenistic haggadah, were added to his presentation. Among these are the stories of Moses’s command of the Egyptian army in expelling the Ethiopians (Ant. 2.238–53; a similar but not identical version appears in the second-century BCE writings of the Alexandrian Artapanus), the worship of Alexander the Great in the Jerusalem temple and his special favors to the Jews (Ant. 11.329–45; a very popular theme in later rabbinic tradition), and numerous less significant stories. Josephus does not explicitly differentiate between the biblical and the haggadic non-biblical traditions; the two seem to stand on an equal footing in his work.
2. In his discussion of Abraham and Moses, Josephus glorifies both characters, but at the same time he stops short of portraying them as immortals. Abraham is depicted as the first monotheist whose monotheism was derived from his speculation on the irregularity of natural and astronomical phenomena and was responsible for his persecution in Mesopotamia and subsequent settlement in Canaan (Ant. 1.154–57). In Egypt, Abraham taught astronomy (already discovered by the antediluvian ancients; Ant. 1.69–71) and arithmetic to the ignorant Egyptians, who subsequently passed along this learning to the Greeks (Ant. 1.166–68; somewhat similarly Artapanus, see Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.18). Josephus presents Moses, whose birth and significance were revealed to Pharaoh and Amram (Ant. 2.205–16), as a philosopher, lawgiver, statesman, and military hero (see especially Ant. 1.18–26; 2.238–53; 3.179–87; 4.176–95). Josephus stresses not only Moses’s death but Moses’s authorship of the account of his death so that none could claim that, like Enoch (Ant. 1.84), “by reason of his surpassing virtue he had gone back to the Deity” (Ant. 4.326; see 396; and compare Philo, De Vita Mosis 2.288–91) and thus been granted special immortality, as seems to have been claimed in certain circles (see Origen, Contra Celsum 1.21).
3. Although Josephus declares that “some things the lawgiver Moses shrewdly veils in enigmas, others he sets forth in solemn allegory” (Ant. 1.24), his work is surprisingly free of allegorical interpretation, in strong contrast to the work of Philo (see, for example, Philo’s De Migratione Abrahami). Josephus, however, sought to show the correlation between Moses’s writing and natural philosophy, for example, in the depiction of the tabernacle and priestly garments as “an imitation of universal nature” (Ant. 3.123, 179–87).
4. A further noteworthy characteristic in Josephus’s history is his recognition of many of the critical problems and difficulties in the biblical text, a characteristic shared by many of his Jewish contemporary and later rabbinic interpreters of the Scriptures. His work demonstrates that the ancients perceived many of the issues that were to occupy scholarly investigations centuries later. Working within a framework that accepted the inspiration and veracity of the Scriptures and gave no thought to the possibility of diversity and development in the literary text, Josephus handled these problems through supplementation and harmonization. A few examples will suffice as illustrations. In discussing Cain, for example, Josephus is careful to point out that Adam and Eve had not only sons but daughters as well (Ant. 1.52; cf. Jubilees 4.1–8) and that Cain feared that he would be a prey to wild beasts in his wanderings and thus needed a protective marking (Ant. 1.59). In the discussion of the tribal allotments in the book of Joshua, one should logically conclude that since the distribution was an ad hoc operation by lot, then equality in tribal territories should be expected. Josephus knew that this had not been the case and this he explained in terms of land valuation and tribal population (Ant. 5.76–80). In discussing the capture of Jerusalem, Josephus was aware of the contradictions in Josh 15:63; Judg 1:8, 21; and 2 Sam 5:1–10 and the need to harmonize such contradictions. Josephus accomplished this task by having two Jerusalems—a lower city captured as noted in Judg 1:8 and an upper city not taken until the time of David (Ant. 5.124; 7.61–64). In the stories of David’s first association with Saul, the biblical text has David entering Saul’s service as a musician and armor-bearer (1 Samuel 16) whereas the subsequent story of David’s combat with Goliath depicts Saul as unaware of David’s identity. Josephus harmonizes the traditions by playing down the identity problem, omitting any reference to 1 Sam 17:55–58 (perhaps due to his dependence upon the Greek text where these verses do not appear), and by suggesting that David had previously been placed on furlough by Saul (Ant. 6.175). Second Samuel 21:19, where Elhanan is said to have killed Goliath, is harmonized with 1 Samuel 17 by Josephus’s omission of the name of Goliath in the former.
5. Another notable feature of Josephus’s historical treatment is his rationalization of miraculous and extraordinary events. Josephus was somewhat troubled by Old Testament miracles (as was apparently the author of Wisdom of Solomon 19:6–21), or at least wondered about the incredulity of Gentile readers. Josephus dealt with the miraculous by carefully guarding himself and his own opinion and/or by explaining the miraculous through rationalization. When speaking of accounts in which miracle played a significant role, Josephus frequently pointed out that he was merely recounting the story as he “found it in the sacred books” (see Ant. 2.347). At other times, he used a rather set formula suggesting that on these matters “everyone should decide according to his fancy” or “everyone is welcome to his own opinion” (see Ant. 1.108; 2.348 and frequently elsewhere). This tendency to point the reader to his own opinion was already used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 1.48), from whom Josephus may have borrowed it, and was later stated as a rule for historians by Lucian in his third-century CE work, How to Write History: “Should any myth come into question, it should be related but not wholly credited: rather it should be left open for readers to conjecture about it as they will, but do you take no risks and incline neither to one opinion nor to the other” (60).
On several occasions, Josephus offers a rationalistic or naturalistic explanation for the unusual. The great longevity of the antediluvians was due not only to their being “beloved of God” but also to their use of astronomy and geometry and a diet “conducive to longevity” (Ant. 1.104–8). The Hebrew passage through the sea is paralleled by the retirement of the Pamphylian Sea before Alexander (Ant. 2.347–48).The purification of the bitter waters of Marah was due to the draining off of the contaminated part (Ant. 3.8). Josephus pointed out that quail were abundant around the Arabian Gulf and that manna was still a phenomenon in that region (Ant. 3.25, 31). Even natural causes are offered as one solution to the plagues that beset the Philistines after their capture of the ark (Ant. 6.9). In explaining the rescue of Jerusalem and the slaughter of 185,000 Assyrians in a single night, Josephus drew upon the story of Herodotus, which told of an invasion by mice of the Assyrian military camps (Ant. 10.18–22). Josephus, however, was no thoroughgoing rationalist who shied away from references to the miraculous. In his description of the fall of Jerusalem (War 6.288–300), he refers to numerous miraculous portents that heralded the
