28 - Josephus

Summary

The place of political thought in Josephus’ writings

The historian Josephus succeeds Philo as the exponent of a political theory centred on Judaism and expressed in Greek. The two writers are intellectually far apart, and Josephus had little penchant for philosophical speculation. Nonetheless, their backgrounds and experience are comparable. From a base within the small Jewish social elite of the Roman east, each acted for a period as political leader, defender of the Jews and delegate to the emperor; in Josephus’ case, the mission marked the beginning of his career. Josephus’ literary output, almost as much as Philo’s, belongs to the diaspora: transferring from Jerusalem to Rome, he addressed readers in the Greek world. Admittedly, unlike Philo, who probably knew no Hebrew, Josephus, of priestly and royal stock and brought up in an Aramaic/Hebrew milieu, had to labour, he informs us, to perfect his grasp of the language in which he wrote. But this he successfully did, and, for all his Roman patronage, the framework and the intellectual agenda of his writings are primarily Greek.

It is commonly thought that Josephus knew and exploited Philo. Thus, part of the discussion of Jewish practices in the Against Apion reveals a close dependence on Philo’s now fragmentary Hypothetical. At the same time, the bulk of Josephus’ extensive output is historical; there theory emerges, as we would expect, as analysis in the context of the narration of events – whether distant, recent or contemporary.