BYZANTINE-JEWISH ETHNOGRAPHY: A CONSIDERATION OF THE SEFER YOSIPPON IN LIGHT OF GERSON COHEN’S “ESAU AS SYMBOL IN EARLY MEDIEVAL THOUGHT”

Joshua Holo

I. Introduction

In his classic essay on the Jewish identification of Rome with the bibli- cal figure of Esau, Gerson Cohen relies heavily on the Hebrew adap- tation of Josephus known as the Sefer Yosippon.1 Probably penned in Byzantine southern Italy of the mid-tenth century, the Yosippon figures prominently not only in the Byzantine-Jewish intellectual tradition but also in medieval Hebrew literature at large, on account of both its con- tent and style.2 TheYosippon chronicles the Second Temple period (for which the medieval Jewish readership had few, if any, sources that it considered reliable), and its rigor and readability made it the historio- graphical gold standard for Hebrew literature until the modern age.3 On the strength of these qualities, the Yosippon was copiously cop- ied, and it attracted a number of later interpolations and accretions, including a Hebrew version of the Alexander romance, for example. In sum, the Yosippon, more than any other Hebrew work, situated the

1 G. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,” in Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures, (Philadelphia, 1991; repr. from Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann, [Cambridge, Mass., 1967], 19–48), 255–9. 2 For a brief review of the scholarly discussion on the date of the Yosippon, see S. Bowman, “Dates in Sepher Yosippon,” in Pursuing the Text (Sheffield, 1994), 353–9, and J. Reiner, “The Original Hebrew Yosippon in the Chronicle of Jerahmeel,” Jewish Quarterly Review 60 (1969): 133–4. An earlier generation of summaries of the debate can be found in A. Neubauer, “Pseudo-Josephus, ben Gurion” and “Yerahmeel ben Shlomo,” Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1899): 355–64, 367–8. Most agree that the Yosippon was composed in Byzantine Southern Italy, as per D. Flusser, “The Author of the Book of Josiphon: His Personality and His Age” (Heb.), Zion 18 (1953): 116, reprinted in Josippon: The Original Version MS Jerusalem o8 41280 and Supplements, ed. and intro. D. Flusser (Jerusalem, 1978). 3 S. Bowman, “Josephus in Byzantium,” in Josephus, Judaism and , ed. L. Feldman and G. Hata (Detroit, 1987), 375–7; idem, “Sefer Josippon: History and Midrash,” in The Midrashic Imagination, ed. M. Fishbane (Albany, 1993), 281. 924 joshua holo

Jewish experience in relation to the history of the Roman Empire and, by extension, the Christian world that claimed to be its heir.4 Conscious of this function, the Yosippon’s author worked hard to integrate Josephus’s tone of critical historiography into the prevailing Jewish ethnography of the Roman Empire.5 The rabbis of Late Antiq- uity had claimed that the Romans descended from Esau, or Edom, and that their rivalry with the descendants of Israel, or Jacob, stemmed from the eponymous twins’ enduring grudge (despite the distinctly positive light shone on their relationship in Gen. 33 and Deut. 24). While adopting this conventional ethnography, the Yosippon couches it in historicizing narratives of Edomite migrations to Rome.6 It vali- dates, in other words, the rabbis’ ethnography of Rome by attending to Greco-Roman standards of historical proof.7 Behind this effort, as Cohen duly points out, the Jewish interest was more urgent than at first it may appear. Superficially, the Jewish association of Rome with Edom merely continued a longstanding tra- dition, according to which Jewish ethnic taxonomy connected contem- porary peoples to those mentioned in the so-called “table of nations” in Genesis 10. Thus, by the Middle Ages and (Gen. 10:3) came to mean and Turkey, respectively. But the specific ethnographic assignations had changed over time; Josephus, for example, associates Ashkenaz with the Reginians and Togarmah with the .8 In the case of the Yosippon, two parallel ethno- graphies link the Romans simultaneously with the Biblical Kittim (kin to the Greeks) and the Edomites (or Idumeans, a neighboring the Land of Israel to the south).9 The Yosippon acknowl- edges both genealogies for Rome but goes to great lengths to justify the Edomite one, and the deeper significance of this preference lies in the

4 Bowman, “Sefer Josippon,” 286. 5 L. Feldman, “Josephus as an Apologist to the Greco-Roman World: His Portrait of Solomon,” in Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. E. S. Fiorenza (Notre Dame, 1976), 91. Bowman, “Josephus in Byzantium,” 376. 6 Cohen, “Esau as Symbol,” 256; Bowman, “Sefer Josippon,” 285; Flusser, “The Author of the Book of Josiphon,” 121–26. See also related sections to David Flusser’s introduction to his authoritative edition of the Yosippon text, Sefer Josippon, ed. D. Flusser, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1978), 2:140, 164, 171–6. All references to the Sefer Josippon are to this edition, unless otherwise noted. 7 Bowman, “Sefer Josippon,” 285. 8 Josephus, Antiquities of the , trans. W. Whiston in The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus (Philadelphia, 1957), 1:6. 9 Cohen, “Esau as Symbol,” 257; the Kittim appear in Gen. 10:4.