Читать книгу Selections From Josephus - Flavius Josephus - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Josephus, son of Matthias the priest, and on his mother’s side claiming descent from the royal Hasmonæan house—or Flavius Josephus, to give him the name which he adopted out of gratitude to his Imperial patrons—was born in the first year of the Emperor Caligula, A.D. 37-38. St. Paul’s conversion had probably taken place a few years earlier.^[1] His life of upwards of sixty years falls into two nearly equal parts, spent respectively in Palestine and in Rome. The Palestinian portion, again, is sharply divided into the pre-war period (to A.D. 65), of which we know comparatively little, and the great four years’ war (A.D. 66-70), of which we know a great deal.

Of his precocious youth, when, if we may believe him, Rabbis flocked to hear the wisdom of the boy of fourteen; how he himself two years later “did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint,” making trial successively of the three sects of his nation, and ending his education by three years passed as an ascetic with a hermit in the wilderness; how on his return to Jerusalem at the age of nineteen he joined the popular and influential party of the Pharisees; of the one outstanding incident of his early manhood, his visit to Rome at the age of twenty-six—of all these things we may read in his own words.^[2] Although he finally threw in his lot with the Pharisees, we may judge from the three years’ stay with Ban(n)us, the specially full account which he gives of the Essenes,^[3] and other indications, that the tenets and communistic life of that order left a lasting impression. If we may again attempt a synchronism with events in the life of St. Paul, we may say that the Rabbis were listening to the boy about the time of the first Council of the Church at Jerusalem, he was receiving his schooling during the third missionary journey, and his return to Jerusalem nearly coincided with the arrest of the Apostle in that city.

The journey to Rome (A.D. 63-4), like St. Paul’s a few years earlier, began with a shipwreck. Its nominal purpose was to plead the cause of certain priests who had been sent by Felix to Italy for trial. Chronology^[4] will hardly permit us to accept the suggestion of Edersheim^[5] to connect St. Paul’s liberation with the mission of Josephus; but he cannot have failed, during his stay in the city on the eve of the Neronian persecution, to become acquainted, if not with the work of the Apostle, at least with the existence of the Christian community. Through the influence of Poppæa, the mistress and afterwards wife of Nero, who coquetted with Judaism (Josephus’s words imply that she was a proselyte), he was successful in obtaining the release of the priests and returned to Judæa laden with presents. Besides the expressed object, was there any ulterior motive in this visit to the capital? Edersheim suggests that, foreseeing the trend of events, Josephus was already fired with the ambition of becoming the intermediary between Rome and his nation.

At any rate, his visit had impressed him with a sense of Rome’s invincible power; and on his return to Judæa, where he found the Jews drifting towards revolt and everything pointing to the immediate outbreak of war, he at first tried to pacify the war-party, but in vain. The turbulent state of the country at length induced Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, to advance against Jerusalem. With the disastrous rout of his army in the defiles of Beth-Horon towards the end of A.D. 66, following upon his unexpected withdrawal from the gates of the metropolis,^[6] it was realized that the irrevocable step had been taken, and all preparations were made for the impending war.

Josephus, then but twenty-nine years of age, was entrusted with the command of Galilee. The reason for the selection of the young priest for so important a post, for which, notwithstanding his frequent assertions of his skill and strategy, he seems to have been ill-qualified, is obscure. The history of the sequel fills the greater part of the Life, but it is not very easy to follow the course of events and to read the motives of the leaders at Jerusalem and the conflicting aims of the various cities of Galilee, which Josephus found in a divided state. His first steps were to fortify the principal places, to reform the army on the Roman model by appointing subordinate officers, and to set up a council of seventy of the principal Galilæans to try cases and to act as hostages for the loyalty of the district. But his efforts to enforce discipline and to secure the allegiance of the Galilæans were unavailing. He had many opponents, in particular John of Gischala, who afterwards played an important part in the siege of Jerusalem. The spring of A.D. 67 was chiefly spent by Josephus in civil strife and in avoiding plots against his life. He was suspected, perhaps justly, of harbouring designs of betraying the country to Rome; he may have hoped to stave off war by some form of compromise. At length John succeeded in inducing the Jerusalem leaders to supersede Josephus, and an embassy was sent to relieve him of his command. He, however, refused to accept the order, and obtained letters from the capital reinstating him. Meanwhile, Vespasian was advancing upon Galilee from Antioch. On the fall of Gadara Josephus was at first inclined to surrender and wrote to Jerusalem for instructions, but finally resolved to stand a siege in the fortified town of Jotapata.

Of the forty-seven days’ siege of Jotapata and the various machinations and counter-machinations of the belligerents Josephus has given us a graphic account in the third book of the Jewish War. The story of its fall (July, A.D. 67) and of the sequel—the capture of the general, after a narrow escape, through a ruse, from death at the hands of his compatriots, and his prophecy of Vespasian’s rise to power—will be found in the text.^[7]

“By the end of A.D. 67,” I quote from what I have written elsewhere, “the whole of northern Palestine was in the hands of the Romans. Only Jerusalem, where a bloody civil war was raging, remained to be taken. But its capture was delayed by the events of A.D. 68, which drew the attention of the generals to the west. News came first of the death of Nero, which took place in June, and then, in rapid succession, of the accession of Galba, Otho and Vitellius. In July, A.D. 69, Vespasian’s legions took the law into their own hands, and proclaimed him emperor. One of his first acts as emperor was to liberate Josephus, whose prophecy had now come true.^[8]... [Josephus] now accompanied the emperor to Alexandria, and from there was sent back with Titus to take part in the siege of Jerusalem.... [His] services as interpreter and intercessor were more than once requisitioned by Titus;^[9] on one occasion he was hit by a stone, and barely escaped capture and death at the hands of his countrymen. He was, he tells us, at this time between two fires; for, while bitterly hated by the Jews, he was suspected by the Romans of treachery whenever they met with a reverse.”^[10]

For his life in Rome, where he witnessed (with what feelings we are left to imagine) the triumphal procession of the two emperors,^[11] and for the various privileges bestowed on him by Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, we may refer to his own narrative.^[12] Awarded the rights of Roman citizenship, he was also among the first to be placed on the “civil list” newly instituted by Vespasian.^[13] He was still pursued by Jewish hatred; among his opponents he names in particular Justus, a rival historian of the war, and Jonathan, the leader of a revolt in Cyrene, who accused him of complicity in his designs; but with his unfailing tact he succeeded in retaining the favour of the Flavian emperors and defeating his enemies. He appears to have survived into the second century, since he outlived Agrippa II,^[14] whose death is placed by Photius in A.D. 100. Eusebius (H. E. III. 9) tells us that our author was honoured by the erection of his statue in Rome, and that his works were placed in the public library. He was married at least four times;^[15] one wife deserted him, another he divorced.