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ISRAEL's TREATY with GIBEON ACCORDING to JOSEPHUS Introduction Jos 9:3-27, the Story of the Making of a Treaty Between Israel An

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ISRAEL's TREATY with GIBEON ACCORDING to JOSEPHUS Introduction Jos 9:3-27, the Story of the Making of a Treaty Between Israel An ISRAEL'S TREATY WITH GIBEON ACCORDING TO JOSEPHUS Introduction Jos 9:3-27, the story of the making of a treaty between Israel and Gibeon1, places the reader before many puzzlements. Literarily, there are the pervasive repetitions (most notably the double “enslavement” of the deceiver Gibeonites, see vv. 19-21 and 22-27), and the oscillation as to who is conducting the negotiations from the Israelite side — is it the men of Israel?, Joshua?, the “leaders of the congregation”2? Questions of historic versimilitude likewise suggest themselves. Is it, e.g., conceiv- able that the Israelites, positioned in the midst of hostile territory and with Moses' prohibitions against covenant-making with the inhabitants (Deut 7:2; 20:16-18) still fresh in their minds, would have allowed themselves to be convinced so easily by the Gibeonites' claims? Con- versely, how is it that those Gibeonites are in a position to cite Moses' words in Deuteronomy the way they do throughout Joshua 9 (compare, e.g., v. 10 and Deut 29:1.8; v. 13b and Deut 8:4; 29:5; v.24a and Deut 7:1-2)? Finally, too, the story leaves one with unresolved problems of a juridical/ethical/ theological nature: was the oath which the Gibeonites secured from the Israelites by deception a valid, binding one, especially since it involved a violation of a divine decree mediated by Moses? In other words, should the Israelites have abided — as they do in fact do — by the oath, once they became aware of the Gibeonites' deceit and their own, albeit unwitting, transgression of God's decree? All of the above problems — and others as well — have long been identified by critical scholarship, and many proposals for their solution, mostly involving distinctions of traditions and/or strata within Jos 9:3- 27, have been put forward. I shall not rehearse that discussion3 or pre- 1 The notices on the formation of the anti-Israelite coalition in Jos 9:1-2 are generally seen as an introduction to the segment Joshua 9-11 as a whole which, as such, lack organic connection with the immediately following 9:3-27. See the commentaries and the MT p following 9:2. 2 Note too how the “inhabitants of Gibeon” (v. 3) unexpectedly get designated as the “Hivites” (MT, LXX tòn Xorra⁄on) in v. 7. 3 On Jos 9:3-27, see in addition to the commentaries, e.g.: J. LIVER, The Literary History of Joshua IX, in JSS 8 (1963), p. 227-243; J.M. GRINTZ, The Treaty of Joshua with the Gibeonites, in JAOS 86 (1966), p. 113-126; J. BLENKINSOPP, Are There 124 C.T. BEGG sent “solutions” of my own here. Rather, I propose to examine how a much earlier — and in his own way critical — Bible reader, i.e. Flavius Josephus dealt with the problems of a text like Joshua 9 in his Antiqui- tates Judaicae (hereafter Ant.) 5.49-574. More specifically, I wish to investigate the following questions regarding Josephus' version of the Gibeonite treaty: Which text-form(s) of Joshua 9 did he have available5? What “rewriting techniques” has he applied to the story's repetitions, “inconsistencies”, inverisimilitudes, etc.? How, overall, does his version compare with the source account? Finally, why did he opt to include the story within his history at all? Traces of the Gibeonite Covenant in Deuteronomy?, in CBQ 28 (1966), p. 207-219; ID., Gibeon and Israel: The Role of Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel (SOTMS 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 28-40; G. SCHMITT, Du sollst keinen Frieden schliessen mit den Bewohnern des Landes (BWANT 91; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970), p. 30-45; P.J. KEARNEY, The Role of the Gibeonites in the Deuteronomic History, in CBQ 35 (1973), p. 1-19; J. HALBE, Gibeon und Israel. Art, Veranlassung und Ort der Deutung ihres Verhältnisses in Jos IX, in VT 25 (1975), p. 613-641; B. HALPERN, Gibeon: Israelite Diplomacy in the Era of the Conquest, in CBQ 37 (1975), p. 303-316; H. RÖSEL, Anmerkungen zur Erzählung vom Bundesschluss mit den Gibeoniten, in BN 28 (1985), p. 30-35; A.D.H. MAYES, Deuteronomy 29, Joshua 9, and the Place of the Gibeonites in Israel, in Das Deuteronomium. Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft (BETL 68; ed. N. LOHFINK; Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 1985), p. 321-325; ID., The Gibeonites as a Historical and Political Problem in the Old Testament, in PIBA 10 (1986), p. 13-24; C. SCHÄFER-LICHTENBERGER, Das gibeonitische Bündnis im Lichte deuteronomischer Kriegsgebote. Zum Verhältnis von Tradition und Interpretation, in BN 34 (1986), p. 58-81; J. BRIEND, Israël et les Gabaonites, in La Protohistoire d'Is- raël. De l'exode à la monarchie (ed. E.M. LAPERROUSAZ; Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 121- 182; R.K. SUTHERLAND, Israelite Political Theories in Joshua 9, in JSOT 53 (1992), p. 65-74. 4 For the text and translation of Josephus' works I use H.ST.J. THACKERAY, R. MAR- CUS, A. WIKGREN, and L.H. FELDMAN (eds.), Josephus (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1926-1965 [Ant. 5.49-57 is found in Vol. V, p. 23-27 where the translation and notes are by Marcus). I have likewise consulted the text and apparatus of Ant. 5.49-57 in B. NIESE, Flavii Iosephi Opera, II (Berlin: Weid- mann, 21955), p. 302-304 as well as the text, translation and notes of E. NODET, Flavius Josèphe, II (Paris: Cerf, 1995), p. 126-128. 5 It has been long and widely held that, in his version of the Book of Joshua in Ant. 5.1-119, Josephus bases himself, in first place, on a text similar to MT (as opposed to that of LXX). See A. MEZ, Die Bibel des Josephus untersucht für Buch V-VII der Archäolo- gie (Basel: Knober & Jaeger, 1895), p. 80; L.H. FELDMAN, Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the Writings of Flavius Josephus, in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (CRINT 2,1; ed. M.J. MULDER and H. SYSLING; Assen: van Gorcum, 1988), 455-518, p. 462; NODET, Flavius Josèphe, II, p. xiii. For a comprehensive discussion of Josephus' treat- ment of Joshua in Ant. 5, see L.H. FELDMAN, Josephus' Portrait of Joshua, in HTR 82 (1989), p. 351-376. ISRAEL'S TREATY WITH GIBEON 125 Before, however, turning to my consideration of Ant. 5.49-57 itself, I begin with a brief remark concerning the respective contexts of the Gibeon treaty account in the Book of Joshua and in Ant. 5. In MT Joshua that account is preceded by a sequence (8:1-9:2) consisting of the following elements: the capture of Ai (8:1-29), Joshua's altar- building on Mount Ebal and subsequent reading of the law-book (8:30- 35), and notices on the Cis-jordanian coalition against Israel (9:1-2). As is well known, LXX presents the last two of these items in reverse order, giving its rendition of MT 8:30-35 only after its version of 9:1- 26. Both witnesses, on the other hand, follow the story of the Israel- Gibeon treaty (MT 9:3-27) with a narrative concerning Joshua' over- throw of an assault upon Gibeon by five southern Canaanite kings (10:1-27). Josephus too (5.58-61) presents this latter narrative as his immediate sequel to the treaty episode (5.49-57). By contrast, he diverges from both MT and LXX with regard to the immediately pre- ceding context for the treaty story. In particular, he has no equivalent to the notices on the enemy coalition of 9:1-2 (MT) which lack recogniz- able coherence with what now follows them in either MT (i.e. the Gibeonite treaty) or LXX (i.e. the events at Mt. Ebal). As for the con- tent of 8:30-35 (MT), Josephus gives a highly compressed version of this at a much later point in his story of Joshua, i.e. after the conquest of the land and the erection of the tabernacle in Shiloh (// Jos 18:1), see Ant. 5.69-707. Accordingly, in Josephus' presentation, the story of the Gibeonite treaty (5.49-57) is attached directly to his (highly com- pressed) version of the Biblical account of the conquest of Ai (Jos 8:1- 29) in Ant. 5.45-48. His rendition of the Ai narrative itself ends up with an elaboration of the booty notice of Jos 8:27. This reads: “The Hebrews captured moreover herds of cattle and money in abundance, for the region was rich, and all this Joshua distributed to his soldiers, while he was in Galgala”8. 6 On the explanation of this divergence and the question of textual priority, see the commentaries. 7 On Josephus' version of Jos 8:30-35 in Ant. 5.69-70 and the reasons for his placing it where he does, see C.T. BEGG, The Cis-jordanian Altar(s) and their Associated Rites according to Josephus, in BZ 41 (1997), p. 192-211. 8 Jos 8:1-29 does not speak of Joshua's distibution of the Ai booty, nor does it men- tion the site “Gilgal”. Josephus apparently “anticipates” his reference to the site here from Jos 9:6 according to which the Gibeonites approached Joshua “at Gilgal”. In any event, his mention of the place at the end of 5.48 provides an implicit setting for the events to be related in 5.49-57.
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