Scholarship on the first-century Judaean historian Flavius Josephus has certainly come a long way. Even well into the second half of the twentieth century the prevailing view of Josephus as a person was that he was a deeply flawed traitor to his people and lackey to the Romans, and the judgment of him as historian was that he was a “stumpfer Abschreiber,”[1] and any literary excellence in his work was to be attributed to the Greek assistants (συνεργοί) he claims to have used (Against Apion 1.50). These verdicts linger in popular literature and in scholarship unacquainted with developments in the field of Josephus studies over the last few decades.
The volume under review is, therefore, a welcome contribution that addresses both aspects of Josephus’ legacy by carefully examining his self-characterisation in his first work, the Judaean War. Eelco Glas rightly treats the Judaean War as a sophisticated work of literature that has been carefully crafted to communicate to a concrete historical audience in a unique cultural context, first-century Rome. His careful historiographical analysis of Josephus’ autobiographical discourse makes it abundantly clear that Josephus’ writings need to be understood as complex rhetorical texts with their own structure, themes, and purposes, and that, consequently, they cannot simply be looked or sifted through to discover the ‘historical Josephus,’ an approach that has usually resulted in condemnation of his character. This monograph, published within Brill’s Historiography of Rome and Its Empire series, has its origins in a doctoral dissertation completed in 2020 at the University of Groningen under the supervision of Steve Mason, whose scholarly influence is evident throughout.
The introduction effectively presents the aim of the book and sets it helpfully within the trends of past and present scholarship. Glas makes it clear that his own purpose is above all historiographical and urges extreme caution in using the autobiographical sections of Josephus’ writings to reconstruct historical details of Josephus’ life. His detailed investigation over the following chapters demonstrates the complexity of Josephus’ narratives and provides ample proof of this need for caution, while also establishing a better foundation for pursuing these historical questions. In Chapter One, Glas establishes the importance of reading Josephus’ works within their historical context, as communicating to an audience of Romans, Greeks, and Judaeans in the city of Rome who were well-educated in Greek and Roman historiographical traditions. While the influence of Greek historians such as Thucydides and Polybius on Josephus has long been recognized, Josephus has not always been seen as a Roman historian, that is, as one influenced also by Roman historiographical traditions. And so, one of the unique contributions of Glas’ work throughout is his attention to a broader spectrum of ancient writers (e.g., Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch), creating a more complex backdrop against which to evaluate Josephus’ rhetoric. In the opening chapter, for example, Glas demonstrates that Josephus’ characterization of various figures through their speech, actions, and emotions is best understood within preexisting Graeco-Roman literary conventions for the development of characters and contributes intentionally to his moralising and didactic aims.
Chapters Two through Five then apply this approach specifically to Josephus’ self-characterization within the War. In Chapter Two, Glas addresses Josephus’ autobiographical practice by placing it within his immediate historical context, Flavian Rome. Glas traces developments in autobiographical discourse from the classical Greek writers to the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period, without flattening the differences between the various time periods. He suggests that Josephus’ self-presentation fits within the socially competitive environment of the late Republic and early Empire, and that his relative boldness in his self-promotion can be explained by his distance from the imperial court and, thus, his lack of threat to the gloria of the emperor. Glas also argues convincingly that in seeking to understand Josephus’ autobiographical narrative, we need to go beyond Thucydides and Polybius and consider such writings as Xenophon’s Anabasis and Caesar’s Gallic War, which provide fruitful comparative material. In Chapter Three, Glas moves on to consider the ways in which Josephus specifically sought to bolster his authority as historian by crafting his character within the Judaean War in ways that aligned with contemporary expectations for the ideal virtues and morals of political and military leaders in the imperial Roman world. In this way, Glas suggests, Josephus created for himself a public persona in the city of Rome that would have appealed to his cultured audience and bolstered his position as an authority on the conflict that had advanced the Flavians to imperial power.
The following two chapters address the challenge Josephus faced in being both a character in the narrative and the writer of the narrative, that is, how to promote himself as actor without compromising his reputation for impartiality as author. Glas calls this the “decorum of self-praise” and suggests that existing Graeco-Roman conventions of self-praise help us understand better the ways in which Josephus has shaped the autobiographical elements of the Judaean War. Across various genres, languages, and time periods, Greek and Roman authors demonstrate relatively similar attitudes towards the problems inherent with self-praise, and present similar ways to go about it anyway. Glas places Josephus securely within this context, but does so carefully, noting that when it comes to his role as historian, his self-praise follows closely the examples explored, but when it comes to his role as actor in the events in Galilee, he is much more muted in his praise. This emerges even more clearly in Chapter Five where Glas investigates those passages in which Josephus most explicitly defends himself and offers up his apologia for his involvement in the war. Here, Glas points out, “the close relationship between rhetoric and moralising in Josephus’ narrative art is most conspicuous” (185). He seeks to understand this more clearly by comparing Josephus’ narrative to Xenophon’s Anabasis and Caesar’s Civil War, which similarly display apologetic features that serve rhetorical ends. For example, Josephus’ frequent mention of accusations leveled at him (2.598–599; 3.358–359, 384, 438–442) can be seen to suit his own purposes, as opportunities through self-defence to craft his character in keeping with Greek and Roman values. According to Glas, even Josephus’ description of the dreams he had while hiding from the Romans after the siege of Jotapata (3.351–354), which led him to surrender not as a traitor (προδότης) but as a servant of God (διάκονος), is best understood not in light of biblical prophecy, but against the backdrop of dreams in Xenophon (An. 3.11–15) and early Imperial literature. While this Graeco-Roman literary context does provide greater clarity to our understanding of this part of Josephus’ narrative, it is unclear to me why this needs to be a matter of either/or and not both/and. When Glas describes the Judaean War as a work “that primarily targets Greek and Roman audiences, as opposed to Judaeans” (216), I wonder why the lines need to be drawn so sharply, especially in the city of Rome.[2] Shortly thereafter Glas rightly observes that “Josephus’ views align with the biblical and Judaean schema of sin and divine punishment” (217). While this does not necessitate the presence of Judaeans in the audience of the Judaean War, it certainly keeps the possibility open and suggests their potential interest in his account.
Finally, Glas provides a brief concluding chapter that draws together the arguments of the various chapters and makes clear what his investigation has sought to accomplish. He reiterates what he has demonstrated abundantly throughout this monograph, namely that Josephus’ narratives must be recognized as sophisticated literary works that can only be understood by attending to existing Graeco-Roman historiographical principles. In doing so, he has contributed valuably to ongoing efforts to place Josephus firmly within the historical and cultural context of first-century Rome. But he also reminds us helpfully of what he has not set out to do, namely, pursue the historical questions that his analysis prompts. He admits, for example, that while the writings of Plutarch provide an effective point of comparison, he does not think it likely that Josephus was familiar with the works of this younger contemporary. By underlining the limitations of his historiographical approach, Glas does not detract from the value of this book but rather provides a stimulus for fruitful ways forward based on his own work, which could begin with his list of questions in the penultimate paragraph about where and when Josephus may have acquired knowledge of these Graeco-Roman writings. An up-to-date bibliography and an index of subjects rounds out the book. It’s regrettable that an index of ancient sources was not included.
While this volume is relatively restricted in its scope, examining one particular writing (the Judaean War) and one particular discourse feature (autobiography), its contribution is not therefore limited. Glas’ methodology is exemplary in that he places his careful analysis of Josephus’ own writings within an extensive contextual framework of potential rhetorical influences from other Greek and Roman authors, and so he provides both an impetus and a pattern for further investigations. Moreover, Glas judiciously avoids overplaying his arguments. Rather than suggesting that he has proven that Josephus was consciously drawing on this or that text, Glas is generally careful to leave his conclusions in the realm of possibilities, as for example at the close of Chapter Five: “Xenophon’s symbolic dream in the Anabasis may suggest Josephus’ possible motivation for using this motif (in the War and the Life) to persuade an audience steeped in Graeco-Roman literary conventions” (228; emphasis added). While the argumentation is careful, however, the manuscript is marked by rather frequent proofreading errors, including simple spelling mistakes, duplication or omission of words, and occasional awkward turns of phrase (e.g., “virtuous and vicious leaders,” 39 n. 116; “nefarious meal,” 43; “John’s undifferentiated background,” 94).[3]
This “historiographical analysis of autobiographical discourse in the Judaean War” is welcome, not only as a valuable contribution to our deeper understanding of the fascinating narratives of Josephus themselves, but also as a clear reminder that Josephus’ writings belong within the corpus of Greek and Roman literature. The inclusion already in 2003 of two chapters on Josephus in a volume entitled Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text marked a shift forward in scholarly recognition of Josephus as a Graeco-Roman author in his own right.[4] It is to be hoped that the publication of this monograph in the series Historiography of Rome and Its Empire will advance this further, for the benefit of scholarship in both Josephus studies and the field of ancient historiography.
Notes
[1] So, Richard Laqueur, Der jüdische Historiker Flavius Josephus: Ein biographischer Versuch auf neuer quellenkritischer Grundlage (Gießen: Münchow’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1920), viii, assessing the state of scholarship in his day.
[2] For the possibility that Josephus had Judaeans in his audience in the city of Rome, see William den Hollander, Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome: From Hostage to Historian (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 263–279 (Herodians), 293–304 (Judaean community in Rome).
[3] Typographical errors: 10, 13, 14 n. 8, 20, 28, 29, 36 n. 103, 39, 40, 54, 56 n. 1, 57, 76, 88 n. 11, 95, 97 n. 26, 98, 100, 101, 104, 105, 120, 122 n. 100, 123, 126, 128 n. 110, 129, 130, 131 n. 113, 132 n. 114, 133 n. 117, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 144 n. 5, 144 n. 6, 145, 145 n. 11, 146 n. 13, 147, 152 n. 26, 156, 163, 166, 169, 173, 185, 188, 191 n. 16, 193, 201, 206, 207 n. 49, 207 n. 50, 220, 233.
[4] See Mary Beard, “The Triumph of Flavius Josephus,” in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, eds. Anthony Boyle and William J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 543–558; Steve Mason, “Flavius Josephus in Flavian Rome: Reading on and Between the Lines,” in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, eds. Anthony Boyle and William J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 559–589.