This week, I will discuss some controversial passages in Josephus (1st century CE):

1. Persecution of Antiochus: Scholars have debated what motivated Antiochus to issue his decrees against the Jews. One view is that he had a grand plan to unify his empire through Hellenism and the Jews resisted his plan. This view has some support in Maccabees I 1:41-42. Another view is that the decrees were merely a response by Antiochus to what he erroneously perceived as a revolt by the Jews of Judea. This view has support in Maccabees II 5:11 (“when the king received the news of the events, he concluded that Judea was in revolt”). But at Antiquities 12, 384-85, Josephus writes that it was the Jewish high priest, Menelaus, who persuaded Antiochus “to compel the Jews to abandon their fathers’ religion.”

Everyone agrees that there were many Hellenistic Jews at the time. But it is a further step to say that one of these Hellenistic Jews—the high priest, Menelaus—was the one who persuaded Antiochus to compel the Jews to abandon their fathers’ religion. Even though the author of Maccabees II hated Menelaus, he never blames the anti-Jewish decrees on him. No one knows where Josephus got this idea. It may be his own speculation. (See my “Esther Unmasked,” pages 104-06.)

2. Destruction of the Temple: In “The Jewish War (III, 237),” Josephus writes that Titus called a meeting of his officers to determine the Temple’s fate. After hearing divided opinions, he decided that the Temple should be preserved, as it would serve as an ornament to the Roman Empire. The actual setting alight of the Temple began with an unauthorized act of a Roman soldier who (“moved by some supernatural impulse”) flung a burning torch at the Temple. Titus’s subsequent efforts amidst the noise and confusion to persuade his soldiers to extinguish the flames were in vain.

In contrast, a Christian historian (writing around 400 CE) maintains that the destruction of the Temple was the premeditated act of Titus—based on his conviction that its fall would be accompanied by that of the rebellious people—whose source of strength it was. Probably this writer more closely approximates the truth, as Josephus likely wrote his account to attempt to clear Titus of blame.

As to the causes of the Jewish defeat by the Romans, Josephus emphasizes divine punishment for the sins of the rebel leaders among the Jews and the wickedness of their fratricidal struggles. But Christians saw the divine punishment as a punishment to the Jews for rejecting Jesus. (Josephus would have been appalled that Christians read his works in this manner!) It was Christianity—not Judaism—that preserved his works for centuries.

(One scholar also has observed that Josephus’ insistence that the Romans won their victory only through the aid of the God of the Jews did not accord well with the self-representation of a regime that gloried in the destruction of the Temple.)

3. Masada: The Roman campaign at Masada took place in the winter-spring of the year 72-73 (or 73-74). If everyone at Masada killed themselves, how do we know about the two speeches of Elazar ben Yair and the mass suicide story? Josephus is our only source. He writes: “They had died in the belief that they had left not a soul of them alive to fall into Roman hands; but an old woman and another—a relative of Elazar—superior in sagacity and training to most of her sex, with five children, escaped by concealing themselves in the subterranean aqueducts, while the rest were absorbed in the slaughter.” In the morning, when the Romans advanced and saw nothing but solitude and flames, these women and their children emerged and “informed the Romans … one of the two lucidly reporting both the speech and how the deed was done.” (Presumably, he means the sagacious woman was the reporter.) But, one can ask the following questions:

The whole idea of anyone remembering and recounting two long speeches is hard to believe. Moreover, it seems from Josephus that Elazar was speaking only to the men (“The Jewish War,” volume VII, page 322). How could that woman—despite her sagacity—have even heard these speeches? Even if she was eavesdropping, she could not have known about the actions of the last 10 men. Josephus wrote (399) that these women and children had “escaped by concealing themselves in the subterranean aqueducts, while the rest were absorbed in the slaughter.”

Josephus was writing “The Jewish War” in Rome. He does not claim to have spoken to that sagacious woman. (Was she even brought to Rome?) His only source about the final events would have been what Romans told him about what the woman said to them. This is hardly reliable.

An important article on this topic was written by the scholar, Shaye Cohen (“Journal of Jewish Studies,” 1982, volume 33). He makes many of the above arguments. Nevertheless, he is not willing to conclude that the story was entirely an invention of Josephus. He thinks that some of the Jews at Masada did kill themselves and their families, but Josephus turned it into a suicide of all. This helped provide a dramatic ending for “The Jewish War.”

4. The Jesus Passage: In book 18 of Antiquities, we have the following: “About this time, there lived Jesus—a wise man—if, indeed, one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as to accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate—upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us—had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day, he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians—so called after him—has still to this day not disappeared.”

Here the issue is not the credibility of Josephus, but whether this passage was a later interpolation. The church father, Eusebius—writing in the early fourth century—quotes the passage. But it seems that the earlier church fathers did not have this passage or at least, this version of it. A widespread view is that Josephus did write something about Jesus here, but it was expanded upon by Eusebius or some earlier Christian interpolator. The literature on this topic is voluminous. See the article on Wikipedia, “Josephus on Jesus.” (Josephus also refers to Jesus briefly in book 20. This reference is considered to be more authentic.)

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Because Josephus wrote a lot, he ends up contradicting himself, damaging his own credibility.

One scholar has written that Josephus “with all his boasted zeal for truth, shows on occasions, when his statements are subject to control, a lax sense of the meaning of that word.”

A recent study which includes a discussion of Josephus’ credibility is Martin Goodman, Josephus’s “The Jewish War (2019).”

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. He is a personal injury attorney and a Jewish history scholar. Due to the former, he has credibility problems as a historian as well!