five men (character studies from the roman empire) || iii the adventurer (josephus)

III

THE ADVENTURER

( J O S E P H U S )

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And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man. Genesis xxxix, i .

IN T H E year A.D. 69 any man whose business took him to Egypt or Syria would have found strange

and stirring events taking place. The Roman Em-pire, after nearly a hundred years of tranquillity, had fallen upon troublous times: civil war had broken out, different armies each supported their own candidate for the palace of the Caesars, the Batavians and the Jews were in revolt, and to many provincials it looked as though the end of Roman rule might be at hand. One of the strangest events of that strange year must have been the proclamation of Vespasian, whom Nero had sent out as general to suppress the rising in Ju-daea, as princeps and imperator. For he was not a noble, not a man of high birth or education, but a plain country farmer (what some history books in-correctly term a peasant), with a record of good serv-ice in Britain and Africa, but with nothing else to forward his claim. Y e t this was the man who was greeted as Emperor by the legions stationed at Alex-andria on July ι , and acknowledged two days later by the army in Syria. It was the strangest, the most un-predictable of chances that this slow and stolid farmer should be raised to occupy the throne of an Augustus, to become ruler of the Roman world. Even so, strange as it was, his biographer Suetonius is care-ful to note that many omens and signs had already shown clearly what was destined to come, and he in-


66 FIVE M E N stances twelve of them. They are a miscellaneous lot, and not very convincing.

For instance, when Vespasian was an aedile, the Emperor Gaius, enraged one day at the fijthy state of the roads, ordered his soldiers to fill Vespasian's gown with mud; we are assured that the sages (by a process hidden from us) interpreted this to mean that one day the State would come under Vespasian's protection. Others are similar and a little grotesque: an ox once burst into Vespasian's dining-room and then knelt humbly before him; a stray dog brought in a human hand and dropped it under his table; Vespasian dreamt that good luck would begin for him when one of Nero's teeth had been extracted, and the next day the dentist showed him a tooth of Nero's freshly drawn.

So far, this is merely the kind of stuff which was told about any emperor, and believed by the credu-lous. But there is another omen related by Suetonius which is far more noteworthy. " In Judaea," he says, "one of the noble prisoners of war, Josephus, when he was being put in irons, asserted in the most positive terms that he would soon be released by Vespasian, but that Vespasian would then be Emperor." This is the only mention, as far as I know, in a classical author of a remarkable man, Josephus, the Jewish soldier and historian, and of a remarkable feat •— the prophesying of something extremely improbable that yet came true. The career of Josephus is a striking example of what can be done in stirring times by self-confidence and small belief in scruple, and it throws


T H E ADVENTURER 67 an interesting light upon a corner of the Roman Em-pire at that period.

Apart from the notice in Suetonius, just quoted, and a few later scraps, Josephus is the only authority for his own life, and it is well to bear this in mind from the start. There is something rather engaging about his frankness; of many of the incidents in his career he can scarcely have been proud, yet he gives them with complete candor and rarely attempts con-cealment. Let me first outline briefly when he lived and what he wrote, so as to get our framework right. He was born in A.D. 37 and died (probably) during the reign of Trajan, that is, before A.D. I 17. He took a prominent part in the great Jewish revolt of A.D. 6 6 - 7 3 , and was captured and ultimately taken to Rome, where he was held in high esteem by Ves-pasian and his family. Here he wrote several works. The first is The Jewish War, which, as its name im-plies, gives an account of the revolt of the Jews and of the siege and capture of Jerusalem, of which Josephus was an eyewitness. The second is a more ambitious project, The Jewish Antiquities, a work in twenty books, giving a combined history and defence of the Jewish nation from the Creation down to A.D. 66. The third is usually called Against Apion, and is an attack upon those who could not believe his history, or who had abused him — there were many of both. Finally there is the Life, a curious apologia pro vita sua, di-rected against another Jew, Justus from Tiberias, who had thrown doubts upon his patriotism, and jeered at his imperfect Greek. Thus most of his writ-


68 F I V E M E N ings are defensive in their object, and it must be ad-mitted that some of the defence is needed.

The very year of his birth, 37, the first year of the reign of the Emperor Gaius, was an ominous date for Jewry, for it was Gaius' insane desire to have his image set up for worship in the Temple at Jerusalem that embittered Jewish feeling (p. 13), and caused a rapid increase in the desperate sect of the Zealots, with whom Josephus was to have dealings later. He came of a noble and priestly family, and on his moth-er's side was connected with the royal house of the Hasmoneans. Thus he received a good education and thorough training in Jewish literature, history, and lore, but not (be it noted) in Greek: unlike the Jews of Alexandria, such as the philosopher Philo, who could speak and write Greek with ease and fluency, the Palestinian Jews rather prided themselves upon not knowing the Gentile tongues too well. He soon showed himself a quick and apt pupil, especially in the Law, so that at the tender age of fourteen he be-gan to be consulted by the chief priests upon knotty points (I must remind you from time to time that Josephus is our only authority for Josephus). As he grew older he had to decide to which of the great sects of Judaism he would ally himself; at sixteen he had determined to be an ascetic and so spent three years under the leadership of one Β annus, who wore no other clothing than what grew upon trees, ate nothing which did not grow of itself, and bathed frequently in cold water, night and day, in order to attain purity. A cynic might suggest that it gradually dawned upon


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 69 Josephus that even purity could be purchased at too high a price, for after three years of this cheerless existence he returned to civilization and attached himself to the sect of the Pharisees. But the cynic is not always justified: granted that Josephus was ill fitted for the life of a hermit, and that his masterful, energetic, and intriguing brain must have demanded some wider field, yet no man can spend three years in the desert without learning certain lessons. We can-not question his bravery, or his powers of endurance, and both these qualities would have been confirmed by his stay there.

On his return to Jerusalem he was soon able to prove himself. The procurator of Judaea, Felix, had sent a party of priests, arraigned upon some trivial charge, in chains to Rome. Josephus heard of this, and struck with admiration for their piety and con-stancy in their misfortunes, decided he must work to save them. He was socially influential, and easily secured a mission to Rome. But he had an exciting voyage: the ship carrying him sank " in mid Adria" ; through the night some six hundred of the passengers managed to keep afloat upon spars or planks, until at daybreak, " b y God's providence" (a phrase we shall encounter again), a vessel from Cyrene hove in sight: Josephus and some eighty others managed to out-strip the rest (there seems a grim tale lurking in that casual phrase) and got themselves taken safely on board. Arrived in Rome, he was able to gain an in-terview with the wife of Nero, the Empress Poppaea, who was interested in Judaism; he secured the speedy


70 FIVE M E N release of his friends and returned home laden with gifts and glowing with the gratification of duty done.

But he returned to find his native land in a disturb-ing condition. The administration of Judaea under the procurators was not one of the bright spots in Roman rule; the last two procurators sent out were a disgrace, and succeeded only in bringing to a head the suspicion and indignation that Gaius had first aroused. There had grown up a band of men who termed themselves Zealots (defenders of the old faith); Josephus calls them frankly "bandits," and the Roman title for them was "men of the knife" — and these three names probably represent the position accurately enough. They were a motley lot, com-posed of the poor and needy, the debt-ridden and desperate, and the fanatical believers in a Messiah, filled with an explosive mixture of national and re-ligious fervor, and with hatred for most things, hating the Romans as Gentiles and masters, hating their own priests for their worldly subservience to the Romans, hating the rich for their riches. They were working principally in the hilly region round about the Sea of Galilee, robbing, killing, and converting,

Fightin' like divils for conciliation, An' hatin' each other for the love of God.

But they were a serious problem for the Sanhédrin : what should it do with them? Put them down like brigands? In that event it would be accused of lack of national spirit. Support them? That meant in-evitably collision with Rome. Surely here was an


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 71 opportunity of using the tact and diplomacy of the young Josephus, who had been so successful in Italy. So he, with two other priests, was sent into Galilee to persuade the Zealots to lay down their arms. What actually happened was rather different.

On arrival, Josephus and his companions found the country around Galilee in complete confusion. The Zealots had chosen their ground well: hills and ravines provided admirable spots both for concealment and for ambushes, and from here they could easily sally out to raid the scattered cities and take their toll. In the cities opinion was not unanimous against the brigands: some were for armed opposition to them and keeping allegiance to Rome, others felt that it was only patriotic to throw in their lot with the Zeal-ots, others counseled sitting on the fence. Josephus says he did what he could (and that means a good deal), but his two colleagues despaired and went back to Jerusalem and safety, and Josephus discovered that sweet reason and diplomacy and all his speeches (he was inordinately fond of making speeches) would not avail with fanatics. Eventually he reached a compromise: what he says is that he persuaded the cities to hire the fanatics as mercenaries by represent-ing to the citizens that it was better to give a little voluntarily than to lose a lot involuntarily; what that apparently means is that Josephus promised the Zealots a monthly tribute from the cities, and to the cities a respite from attack; he acted as intermediary, and from what the cities reluctantly gave him, a fair percentage found its way into the pockets of the


72 FIVE M E N Zealots •— but not all. In fact, he had become a sort of "boss" in Galilee, and indispensable to both par-ties; well indeed might he feel, as he himself notes, that God never neglects "those who do the right thing"!

Naturally he made many enemies, who envied him his simple and easy solution of the problem; the worst of these was John of Gischala, a bandit-leader who found his monopoly threatened, and to whom Jo-sephus paid the truest tribute that one rogue can to another, that of blackening his character. Between John of Gischala, the cities, and various bandits, Josephus steered a tortuous course with amazing skill; his own life was continually in peril, but he de-clares that the providence of God constantly put into his mind certain "s t ra tagems" which brought him through safely. He certainly had need of them all, for the dangers that beset him were many. His head-quarters were at Taricheia, at the south end of the Sea of Galil'ee. On one occasion some young robbers from the town of Tiberias (the deadly rival of Tari-cheia) had successfully looted a caravan belonging to the royal house and brought the spoil to Josephus. Josephus did not distribute it; he intended, probably, to return it to King Agrippa as a sort of insurance. But the young robbers, disappointed in not getting any share of the loot, went about stirring up suspicion and strife, calling Josephus a traitor, spreading ru-mors, until the combined population of the two towns rushed upon his house with the intent to set it on fire. With his garments rent, and with ashes upon his head,


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 73 Josephus came out and addressed them: " I have no intention of keeping the money," he declared. " N o ; rather what I am reserving it for is this. I have no-ticed how poorly defended our own city of Taricheia is, and how aggressive the men of Tiberias; I mean to present my fellow-citizens with a wall to guard them against all possible attack, and will spend every penny on that wall." Thus he went on, skilfully fanning the rivalry and suspicion between the men of the two towns; they began to quarrel with one another, words came to blows, blows to bloodshed, and in the result-ing turmoil Josephus discreetly withdrew. The wall was not, apparently, built. But there remained mal-contents still, and some two thousand of them sur-rounded his house with shouts and threats; against them Josephus employed, as he records with obvious pleasure, "another form of deceit." He went up on the roof, and standing there he calmed the mob into silence with his gestures, and then spoke: " I am un-able to understand," he protested, "exactly what it is that you want, for the confusion and shouting make it hard for me to hear. I will do all you wish if you will only send some men to parley with me inside." This was agreed, the leaders and notables walked in, the great door was closed, and Josephus, sweeping them to the back of the house, had them flogged within an inch of their lives; then suddenly the door was thrown open and the bleeding and broken bodies staggered out upon their adherents, who were so panic-stricken that they dropped their arms and ran.

Indeed, he was master of every form of deceit,


74 F I V E M E N bluff, and cajolery, and these, coupled with his com-manding presence and dramatic gifts, always stood him in good stead. His Lije is full of examples, though space does not allow the recital of more than one or two. Take this: a riot had taken place at Tiberias, and the ringleader Cleitus had been caught; Josephus had no desire to execute a fellow-countryman, and determined he should be punished by having one of his hands cut off. The time came, but the execu-tioner faltered and shrank at the thought of carrying out this punishment before a sullen crowd, containing so many of Cleitus' followers. This would never do, and so Josephus called Cleitus before him and ex-claimed: "Since you have merited the loss of both your hands for your ungrateful conduct towards me, be your own executioner, lest a worse punishment befall you." Cleitus, overawed, begged hard to be allowed one of his hands, and at last Josephus yielded. (Doubtless he had realized a certain practical diffi-culty: that it is very hard for a man with only one hand left to cut that hand off.) Thereupon Cleitus, overjoyed at preserving one of his hands, seized the sword and cut off his left. " T h a t , " comments Jo-sephus drily, "stopped the sedition."

But by now his enemies were united in their effort to get rid of him, and began to take elaborate meas-ures. They despatched him a letter suggesting a friendly conference and meeting. The messenger strode in and interrupted Josephus at dinner; without appearing to do so, Josephus somehow managed to get a glimpse at the contents of the letter, and so had


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 75 time to think of an answer. Meanwhile, he bade the messenger wait until dinner was finished, and offered him 20 drachmae for his pains. The man thanked him effusively, and Josephus at once perceived a weakness he could turn to good account — greed. Assuming an air of camaraderie, he cried, "Well, if you will only drink with me, you shall have a drachma for every glass," to which the fellow indicated that he didn't mind if he did. The natural result followed: drinking glasses at a drachma a time, the man got very drunk; he could not conceal the truth any longer, and told Josephus that the friendly meeting was really to be an ambush. Josephus dismissed the man graciously and the suggested interview did not take place. Well, indeed, might Josephus say, as he does of another successful "stratagem," " I was filled with pleasant satisfaction on beholding the folly of my opponents." No one but a man of considerable bravery and sub-tlety could have emerged un,harmed from such a whirlpool of strife, and it was an admirable training for the serious warfare against the Romans which Josephus was now to undertake. For at last the pent-up fury and hatred of the Jews broke into open revolt against Rome in 66, and early in 67 Nero ap-pointed Vespasian to suppress it; he was put in com-mand of a force of three legions, a large number of auxiliary troops, and militia supplied by the client-kings; his headquarters at first were at Ptolemais (Acre). The appearance of this army dismayed some of the Jewish cities, who hastened to surrender; but hoping to stir up some resistance, Josephus, at the


76 F IVE M E N beginning of June 67, flung himself into the fortified town of Jotapata, lying in the hills roughly half-way between Ptolemais and the Sea of Galilee. At once Vespasian turned against Jotapata, for he judged Josephus to be of all the Jewish leaders the most in-telligent (this is again Josephus' own account), and hoped that his capture might bring over all Galilee.

Jotapata lay upon a precipitous rock; on most sides the descent (according to Josephus) was sheer into bottomless ravines, "so that those who try to peer down find their sight growing weak at the depth." Only on the northern side was it approachable. Here naturally Vespasian determined to attack it, and brought up a formidable array of siege-engines; these attacks had to be countered by Josephus some-how, and he displayed a resourcefulness in devices which he narrates with obvious satisfaction. Reading through the third book of The Jewish War, one feels how much Josephus' efforts would have been appre-ciated by Aeneas Tacticus, the Greek writer on tac-tics. Aeneas' resourcefulness, too, is great; he knows the proper use of wasps in warfare, the importance of inspecting gates and defences before dinner and not after, and the limitations of the usefulness of women in defence. "You may dress them up as soldiers and line them along the wall, but don't let them throw; for you can tell a woman, by her throwing, from a long way off."

The situation was desperate enough, but (as our hero notes) "there's nothing like desperation for making men fight," and he succeeded in inspiriting


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 77 the defenders to an amazing degree. The Romans soon built a mound as high as the city wall, and Jo-sephus saw the wall must be raised, but no masons could work upon it under the shower of arrows and other missiles that the Romans hurled at them; to protect the masons Josephus devised wicker frames on which he stretched freshly skinned ox-hides. These hides gave way to the stones, while arrows and javelins slipped off them, and their damp surface quenched fire-darts. So the wall was successfully heightened, and now Vespasian thought of turning the siege into a blockade, and so starving out the de-fenders. This would never do; the shortage of water in the city was serious, but the Romans must not sus-pect it. Josephus bade his men dip their clothes in water and hang them over the ramparts, so that the wall streamed with moisture. Convinced by this dis-play that the Jews had ample supplies of water, Ves-pasian again turned to assault. Meanwhile, in order to get messages in and out, and also to secure certain supplies, Josephus equipped his men with the skins of dogs : in these they used to sally out in the dark on all fours down one of the western ravines, until at last some brighter Roman sentry discovered the trick.

Still the assault continued relentlessly; a great ram was brought up to batter the walls, and they began to give way under its blows. Josephus promptly hung bags full of chaff against the parts attacked, which blunted the shock, and the wall suffered no hurt; and a heroic Jew, Eleazar, in a sally, hacked off the head of the ram and brought it back to the city, then, and


78 F I V E M E N not till then, collapsing under his wounds. When the Romans advanced to the assault in close order, shield locked to shield, Josephus replied by pouring burning olive oil down upon them, which penetrated under their armor and made them desist in agony; if they tried gangways and scaling-ladders, the Jews poured on to them melted fenugreek, which made them so slippery that the attackers could no longer keep their foothold.

Even so, after some forty-seven days, one dawn the end came. All the bravery and all the trickery in the world could not forever hold out against the combined pressure of starvation, exhaustion, and three legions, and at last the Romans broke into Jo tapata . But Josephus was not there: he had discovered, in the last moments, a deep cave, well hidden, where he and forty other notables hid themselves with a small stock of provisions. But the exhaustion of this small supply soon turned the thoughts of Josephus to surrender, though his decision was met with a howl of rage from his companions. They abused him as a coward and a knave, clamored tha t he was disgracing the God of Israel and His law, and threatened to set upon him. The situation was hazardous in the extreme, yet this extraordinary young man (remember he was only thirty) proved equal to it. His comrades insisted tha t all should commit suicide; for some ten minutes Jo-sephus harangued them on the evil of it, bu t without effect, until finally, " trusting in the favor of God," he conceived a brilliant plan. " Since you are determined on dea th ," he cried, " l e t us draw lots for who shall


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 79

kill whom, and thus Fortune shall deal with all im-partially." In their heroic frenzy they consented; lots were drawn and twenty fell; lots were drawn again, and — but I prefer to conclude the story in his own words: "F ina l ly Josephus was left with one other man, whether this should be ascribed to Fortune or to God's providence; and since neither had any wish to be doomed by the lot, nor if he should survive to have kindred blood upon his hands, Josephus persuaded the other to l ive."

So, now, he was a prisoner of the Romans, but he had a purpose and a mission to fulfil. God had revealed to him in dreams a message, and that message he must deliver soon, for though young Titus pitied him, Vespasian ordered the rebel leader to be manacled and sent to Nero. Thereupon Josephus demanded and obtained a private interview; Vespasian and Titus, with two friends, and the prisoner alone re-mained in the tent. And now Josephus spoke out: he prophesied not only Nero's death, but also the coming elevation of Vespasian, telling him in plainest terms that he would shortly be Emperor. I t was an aston-ishing prediction; it was in the highest degree un-likely — but Vespasian listened, and Josephus was removed in custody, but not sent to Nero — it would have been too dangerous. A few more months passed by, and one day in the summer of 68 there came the news of Nero's suicide — of civil war — and then, less than a year later, came the acknowledgment of Vespasian as Emperor.

Thus the prophecy of Josephus had come true, true


8o F I V E M E N in every detail. Vespasian now recollected with shame that the man who had made the prophecy was still in bonds; he sent for him and had the chains struck off. Henceforward he was to be in high esteem with the Emperor and his son Titus, for they planned to be-siege Jerusalem in the next year, and Josephus could be very useful from his knowledge both of the locality and of the language. He was taken onto the staff, and Vespasian gave him one of the captive Jewesses from Caesarea as his wife. Next year, 70, saw the siege and fall of Jerusalem, and Josephus had to witness from the Roman camp the death-agonies of his country-men. It was no enviable position: he was often in danger of death, for the Jews loathed him as a traitor, howled him down if he was sent to parley, and made every effort to capture him, while the Roman sol-diery, if ever they suffered a reverse, were convinced that it must be due to double-dealing on his part, and shouted for him to be punished. His own conscience too may have given him uneasy moments occasion-ally. But we, looking upon the siege from a distance of nineteen centuries, dispassionately, can be grateful to him for his account of the last days of Jerusalem; as he says himself, " I knew everything that was going on in the Roman camp, and I alone understood what deserters said," and the picture he paints is authori-tative and convincing.

After the fall of Jerusalem we hear little more of him, though it should be recorded to his credit that he saved the life of his brother and of over two hundred friends and did all he could to lighten the lot of the


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 8i captives. But Judaea could be no place for him in the future, and he probably deemed it more prudent in the end to accept Titus' offer and accompany him to Rome, rather than remain in Judaea and live on the estates which the Romans, with clumsy kindness, had bestowed on him. The Imperial house, the Flavians, showed great favor to him: he was made a Roman citizen, given supplies of money, and housed in Ves-pasian's family mansion. To these benefactions later on the Emperor Domitian added the exemption of his estate from taxation. In Rome too Josephus found a remarkable patron in one of the Flavian freedmen, Epaphroditus by name; according to Sui-das, Epaphroditus was " in form black and vast, re-sembling an elephant." À bon chat bon rat·, this was a fitting patron for an extraordinary man. Josephus worked hard at the writing of his books, all attacks made upon him he evaded " b y the providence of God," he was still alive in 93, and though there are some slight traces discernible of an uneasiness he felt then, we do not know how or when he died.

But his written works remain, and it is worth while spending some minutes on them and considering their purpose and effect. A hundred years ago in most households Whiston's translation of Josephus would have been found side by side with the family Bible: he was read and appreciated; his narrative style won for him the title " the Greek L i v y . " Now fewer read him and his works have fallen into an undeserved neglect. Probably the most interesting and impor-tant is 'Îhe Jewish War. In this Josephus himself had,


8α FIVE MEN as we have seen, played a large part, and it certainly does not suffer in the telling; indeed M. Croiset (in the voluminous History of Greek Literature which he shares with his brother) delivers himself of the verdict that Josephus was " a very worthy man, whose con-duct in the main seems to have been prudent and correct" — a verdict which makes me wonder if he had ever read the whole of The Jewish War. I t must be remembered that we do not possess the work in its original form, for it was composed first in Aramaic, and only later translated into Greek. This fact gives us a clue to its purpose: it was written,says Josephus, to tell the truth to the Parthians and Babylonians, to the Jews beyond the Euphrates, and to the people of Adiabene. But what truth? The truth, it would ap-pear, that Roman power was in the end invincible, invincible even by a patriotic and desperate nation, and the book in Aramaic served a very useful pur-pose, to warn peoples beyond the frontier to think twice before they challenged the might of Rome. In Book il, King Agrippa II is made to deliver a ha-rangue to his turbulent people, and the whole burden of his speech is the hopelessness of a struggle against Rome — Athens, Sparta, Macedón, and Syria have all, one by one, fallen before her, and even the wild western barbarians have been subdued: "Are you richer," he asks, " than the Gauls, stronger than the Germans, more subtle than the Greeks, or more in number than the whole world?" Such a rhetorical appeal obviously expects the answer "No , " and the moral Agrippa draws is that Judaea must keep the


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 83 peace and be content. The publication of such a thesis, convincingly demonstrated in the lingua franca of the East, would have been very acceptable to the emperors, and there is no lack of indication that The Jewish War embodied the official pro-Roman view. The war with all its miseries was the punishment of God upon the Jews for their sins; in the details of the siege we can recognize something from Titus' own note-books; moreover Josephus is careful to depict Titus as a generous conqueror, pitying the Jews and willing to spare the Temple (whereas there can be little doubt that its firing and destruction was a de-liberate act of policy). Indeed, we know that Titus gave the book his imprimatur; "he signed the work with his own hand," says Josephus, "and ordered it to be published." King Agrippa's enthusiasm went even further: he wrote no less than sixty-two letters of approval, testifying to the accuracy of the nar-rative, and Josephus gives copies of two of them. One is so perfect a model of how to reply to an author who has sent you his book, that I must give a translation. It is brief but gracious: "K ing Agrippa to his dear Josephus, greeting. I have gone through the book with great pleasure, and you appear to me to have at-tained far greater accuracy and precision than other writers on the subject. Please send me your other books. Best wishes." What could be better ?

The Jewish War was undoubtedly a success, and for some years Josephus lived on, secure from attack, thanks to his powerful patrons; he was now engaged on a great history of the Jewish nation (The Jewish


84 F I V E M E N

Antiquities, in twenty books), and this eventually appeared in the year A.D. 93, when its author was fifty-six years old. Y e t it is a disappointing perform-ance compared with The Jewish War, which was so full of his own resourceful and vigorous personality; for now Josephus was to some extent attempting to make Judaism acceptable to the Greek or Roman mind, and the results might be expected. The re-ligion of the Hebrews becomes a respectable law-abiding affair, with all enthusiasm and feeling drained out of it; Josephus emphasizes the role of Moses as a law-giver, and dilates upon the excellent institutions that Judaism has secured. Anything miraculous, anything approaching religious fervor, has to be omitted or treated with great circumspection, in order not to arouse the mockery or suspicion of sophisti-cated Gentiles; magnificent episodes, such as Elijah's visit to Horeb, or his translation, are related in the flattest of flat prose as the most ordinary occurrences.

Moreover, since it is difficult to gain a reader's goodwill and interest for an account of "excellent in-stitutions" spread over so many books, Josephus has to have recourse to other means of exciting attention. The famous tale of Joseph and Potiphar's wife is worked up with all the resources and color of a Hel-lenistic love->romance, and many familiar Old Testa-ment stories are spoilt in the telling by a puerile rhetoric. Let one example suffice: Abraham, before sacrificing Isaac, first inflicts upon him a long ha-rangue, more or less assuring his son that the sacrifice will hurt him far more than it will hurt Isaac, and


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 85 Isaac at once retorts with a few noble sentiments. At this point a horrid fear grips the reader that the ram caught in a thicket may be made to contribute " a few words," but fortunately Josephus controls him-self. True, once the narrative approaches Josephus' own time things become more lively, but in spite of a vivid sketch of the splendors and intrigues of the court of Herod the Great (it includes a delightful en-counter between Herod and Cleopatra, and it gives fully the tragic story of Mariamme), in spite of a very suggestive picture of Tiberius upon the island of Capri — suggestive precisely because it represents him as living and working in a normal manner instead of amid the debaucheries upon which Tacitus and Suetonius descant — in spite of some scandalous and much useful information, the work as a whole is dull and diffuse, and no one who possesses an Old Testa-ment need have recourse to the earlier books. No-body would ever guess, from the pages of Josephus, the spiritual heights to which the great prophets of Israel had risen; apart from his desire to represent Judaism as a code of "excellent institutions," his other thesis appears to be that God does reward ma-terially those who believe in Him, and punishes those who neglect Him ·— in fact, that it pays to be pious. Perhaps it is scarcely fair to blame him for this; it had been for long the orthodox way of writing Jewish his-tory. Even Philo, the Neo-Platonist philosopher of Alexandria, shows a like spirit; in telling of the end of Flaccus, a Roman governor who had persecuted the Jews, he dilates with evident relish not only upon the


86 FIVE M E N unpleasant sea-passage which his journey to Rome in-volved, but also upon his agonizing death, remarking finally, "such were the sufferings of Flaccus, which afforded the most incontrovertible proof that the Jewish nation is never deprived of help from God." Elsewhere he suggests that wealth stored up in heaven through piety and wisdom can produce a sort of overflow of wealth in the world below, a hint that at least one Christian bishop has developed into the comfortable guarantee:

Whatever, Lord., we lend to Thee Repaid a thousandfold will be; Then gladly will we give to Thee,

Who givest all.

If this was received doctrine (that God does reward and punish materially in this world), Josephus would surely find some confirmation in the amazing success-fulness of his own career, where his faith, never waver-ing, had brought him triumphantly through what might have seemed unsurmountable difficulties. For that his faith was real and fervent cannot for a mo-ment be doubted — whatever curious forms it occa-sionally took — and it would be the more confirmed by the fate that overtook his enemies or the way in which their attacks were foiled " b y God's provi-dence." Readers of George Fox's Journal will re-member how among the chroniclings of the manifesta-tions of God's power come occasional entries relating the judgments of God upon persecutors, as "Ye Lord soone cutt him off in his wickednesse," or "His name


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 87

became a stinke and ye Lord cutt him off ." Some-

times it is more particularized: of Judge Street, who

passes sentence upon him, he tells:

And betwixt ye time of this Streets causing mee to bee Indicted and ye Sessions where hee past sentence upon mee; this Streets onely daughter was brought doune deade from London to Broadway: where hee had boasted what hee would doe against mee and soe from thence to Wor-cester which struck a great dampe upon people.

In much the same way Josephus can relate the fate of

persecutors of the Jews as awful examples and warn-

ings. For there were plenty of scoffers. W e hear that

towards the end of the reign of Domitian (say about

A.D. 95) four of the greatest Jewish sages visited

Rome, perhaps to plead before the Emperor the cause

of their religion. One mocking Roman put to them

the question: " If your God finished making the world

in seven days, what is he doing n o w ? " Back came

the answer: " H e is making Hell hotter for the unbe-

lievers."

Against mockery and against incredulity Josephus,

supported by the knowledge of his own amazing

career, could at any rate reply: " Y o u may jeer, but

my religion does work, and m y God can deliver, yea

and with a mighty h a n d ! " This lengthy history of

his, on which he must have spent some ten or twelve

years, might vindicate the claim of Jewish religion

and of Jewish history to respect, and perhaps to some

sympathy, from the Gentile. Romans and Greeks

should learn that Judaism was a religion for a reason-

able man, that it was mainly a code, a code inculcat-


88 FIVE M E N ing "excellent institutions." If something of this nature was his object, then it must be acknowledged that he failed. Neither the fanatical patriotism of the Zealots nor the time-serving of Josephus did anything for the future of Judaism: the future of Judaism was not to lie with those who took the sword in hand, whether those who rebelled in 66 or those who re-belled again, heroically but in vain, under Hadrian. The task of re-creating Judaism fell to a sage and to his disciples, to the famous Johanan ben Zakkai. Escaping from Jerusalem before the encirclement was complete, he made his abode at Jamneia, and there in quiet and retirement he meditated and taught, and began the new development of an ancient faith.

This consideration, however, must not blind us to the very real merits of Josephus: every student of the Roman Empire owes a great debt to him. His writ-ings are a mine of information upon social, religious, and political conditions prevailing in the countries of the East during the century before Christ and the hundred years after. I t is not only about Judaea and Syria that he is so instructive; not only does he often quote edicts or rescripts of the Roman emperors con-cerning the Jews, but (curiously enough) he is one of our most valuable sources for the organization of the Roman legions. All this, and much more, we get in his books; in addition, there is the living picture of the man himself, unscrupulous maybe, playing sometimes a double game to further the cause which he has at heart, but resolute, never at a loss in the most urgent moment, prompt and clever, unshaken in his religious faith, and with a courage such as few men can have


T H E A D V E N T U R E R 89 possessed. An adventurous career indeed amid trou-blous times; but before closing our account of it there is one other matter that claims attention.

It might have been expected that Josephus, keenly alive to the controversies of the time in which he was living, would have found something to say about Christianity. He did not: twice only does he make any reference to the founder of this new sect. The first reference is a short but notorious passage, ob-scure in itself and complicated by variant readings. Josephus has mentioned the procuratorship of Pon-tius Pilate, and then proceeds:

About this time occurs the life of Jesus, a wise man [if one can call him a man]. For he was [a worker of extraor-dinary deeds], a teacher to men who received his truths [v.l., moral sayings], with pleasure, and he won over many Jews and many Greeks. [He was the Christ.] When Pilate, upon information laid against him by our chief men, had punished him with crucifixion, those who had at first loved him did not cease doing so. For he appeared to them on the third day alive again, as divine prophets had foretold this of him, and a hundred other marvels. And up to this date, the sect of Christians, called after him, has not failed.

In this celebrated passage, there is scarcely a word that has not been fought over, and in its present form it is a clumsy conglomeration of sentences. It has been attacked as a pious Christian interpolation; if so, it is a skilful one, for it has been shown by a Dutch scholar, L. van Liempt, that in words, phrasing, and structure it has a perfectly Josephan ring. Yet there has been some meddling somewhere. Origen, writing in the middle of the third century, says definitely that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ; on the


9 o F I V E M E N

other hand Eusebius, writing about a century later, is just as definite the other way, for he quotes the pas-sage practically as I have given it. It looks, therefore, as though some zealous Christian hand had manipu-lated the passage in the interim. I say "manipu-lated" and not "interpolated," because it appears to me probable that Josephus made some mention of Jesus Christ, though not necessarily a favorable one. And that brings us to the second reference. In an-other part of The Antiquities ( X X , 200) he refers to the apostle James as " t h e brother of the so-called Christ." The word he uses there, legomenou, might mean either "so-called" or "self-styled" or "alleged," but can hardly have been complimentary. Now sup-pose that Josephus had had in the first passage a fairly long paragraph, giving an account of Jesus but denying his Messiahship; for example, suppose that in it he had used phrases like " H e was the so-called Christ," or " F o r his followers actually claimed that he appeared to them on the third day alive again " — it would not be difficult for a later Christian writer, by omitting a few inconvenient phrases or an occa-sional awkward adjective, to produce the shortened and mutilated version which we now have, which could be accepted as the testimony of a Jew to the Founder of Christianity. It is a procedure even now-adays adopted by some publishers in dealing with a slightly adverse review of a book that they want to push: the omission of a few words can do so much. We can well imagine a pious Christian to whom the temptation would prove irresistible.


THE ADVENTURER 91 But this is the mere suggestion of an amateur; a

more ingenious explanation was offered about fifteen years ago by a German scholar, R. Laqueur (based to some extent upon a previous article by Professor Burkitt of Cambridge), which is worth reproducing. He imagines that Josephus in his old age was impov-erished (there is no evidence for this) ; perhaps The Jewish Antiquities has not been selling as well as he wished (there is no evidence for this, either) ; so, cast-ing around for a means of increasing sales, he recol-lects that there is a growing body of these people called Christians, and so summons some poor Chris-tian to him and asks: "What is all this that you say about a Christ? Tell me what you claim," notes down the answer, inserts a few hasty sentences in the body of the narrative, and so gains a renewed popu-larity for the book. I give this suggestion here, not because I believe in it (rather the reverse), but be-cause, though it is merely a pleasant fancy, it would be a final ruse, in fact a "stratagem," not unworthy of this Jewish Ulysses, whose adventurous career we have been considering.


92 F I V E M E N

N O T E S

The main authority for Josephus' life is Josephus him-self: two works, The Jewish War and the Lije, contain abundant and lively notices about his adventurous career. All the incidents narrated in this section are taken from one or the other of these two works.

The omens for Vespasian, including Josephus' predic-tion, are in Suetonius, Vesp., 5.

The references for some episodes are: the riot at Ta-richeia, War, II , 595; the flogging of the magistrates, ib., 610; the punishment of Cleitus, Life, 169; the bibulous messenger, ib., 216; the site of Jotapata, War, III , 158; the heightening of the walls, ib., 171 ; the hanging out of the wet clothes, ib.t, 186; use of boiling oil and fenugreek, ib., ιηι·, the drawing of the suicide lots, ib., 387.

The purpose for which Josephus wrote, War, I, 1 -6; King Agrippa's warning not to challenge Rome, ib., II , 345-402; officially approved by Titus, Lije, 363; and blessed by King Agrippa, ib., 364.

Josephus' rendering of various passages in "The Jewish Antiquities·. Elijah's visit to Horeb, V I I I , 350; the trans-lation of Elijah, I X , 28; the sacrifice of Isaac, I, 222.

That Josephus worked up many of the episodes with all the conventional Hellenistic romantic color has been well shown by M. Braun in his dissertation, Griechischer Roman und Hellenistischer Geschichtschreibung, Frankfurt a/M., 1934 (Frankfurter Studien zur Relig. u. Kultur der Antike, vol. 6).¡ Philo's remarks about Flaccus' end, in Flaccum, 185-191; on heavenly wealth, de Praemiis, 17.

The citations from George Fox are from The Journal, as edited by Ν . Penney, Cambridge, 1911, II, pp. 104-105, 162, 184.

The passage about Christ is in The Jewish Antiquities, X V I I I , 63-64. The article on it by L. van Liempt will be found in Mnemosyne, L V , 1927, p. 109.


THE ADVENTURER 93 My introduction to Josephus came through Dr F. J .

Foakes-Jackson, whose book Josephus and the Jews, Lon-don (S. P. C. K.), 1930, will be found helpful. For fur-ther study consult R. Laqueur, Der Jüdische Historiker Flavius Josephus, Glessen, 1920; H. St J . Thackeray, Jo-sephus the Man and Historian, New York, 1929; and W. Weber, Josephus and Vespasian, Stuttgart, 1921. I have taken several hints and suggestions from a delightful article by Dr Edwyn Bevan that appeared in the Quarterly Re-view for 1920, p. 85.


five men (character studies from the roman empire) || iii the adventurer (josephus)

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