Page 561 - josephus volume one

Abstract

This book creates a complete corpus, hitherto not compiled, of the parallel anecdotal traditions
concerning Second Temple period figures and events found in the writings of the historian Flavius
Josephus and in rabbinic literature. These are short tales relating to the period from the conquest
of the Land of Israel by Alexander the Great (332 BCE) to the destruction of the Temple (70 CE).
Organized chronologically according to the order in which they appear in the books of Josephus,
35 traditions are discussed in the current two volumes.

The main research question posed in this study concerns the very existence of literary parallels
between these two corpora, so diverse in terms of date, nature, author, audience, and reception
history. There are two possible explanations for this phenomenon: 1. The rabbis knew/had read
the writings of Josephus; 2. Both corpora drew on a shared repository, either oral or written, of
earlier Jewish traditions. Our research has repeatedly shown that the parallels in both corpora are
in fact the vestiges of a shared infrastructure, an ancient – most probably oral – repository of Jewish
legends that served the historian and reached the redactors of rabbinic literature centuries later as
well.

This conclusion sets the stage for a characterization of a “lost Atlantis,” as it were, of Jewish
legends that preceded both Josephus and the rabbis. The classification of this collection detected
several defined genres, each with its own distinctive content, style, and thrust. It also enabled us
to distinguish the early traditions from their deliberate adaptation in each of the two corpora and
thus decipher the biases and political-theological concerns of Josephus, on the one hand, and of the
authors and editors of rabbinic literature, on the other.

The legends under discussion are small self-contained literary units, whose deletion from the
general Josephan historical narrative can be done without causing damage to the whole. Several
topics are central in these traditions. Most of them are above all Temple-related episodes in which
the priests are the heroes. Some of the traditions view the priests positively and some are hostile to
them, which may suggest that they were not all composed in the same circles, but they all derive
from a Temple-centered, i.e. pre-rabbinic, society. Some of the anti-priestly traditions are clearly
Pharisaic, hinting perhaps at the source of most of them. Josephus professes to have been a Pharisee.
The rabbis are often viewed as the heirs of the Pharisees.

Josephus in fact wrote the history of the Second Temple up to the outbreak of the Great Revolt
twice – once in Book 1 and the first half of Book 2 in the Jewish War, and then again, twenty years
later, in the last ten books of Jewish Antiquities (Books 11-20). This second retelling is heavily based
on the first one, with numerous additions Josephus inserted into his first version. All the Josephan
parallels to the tales found also in rabbinic literature derive from among these additions in Jewish

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