Kleinere Beitrage
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Kleinere Beitrage joshua's Southern and Northern Campaigns according to Josephus The conquest account in the Book of Joshua culminates in its chaps. 10-11 where Joshua successively defeats coalitions of southern Gosh 10,1-43) and northern (11,1- 23) Cisjordanian kings. 1 In this essay, I shall focus on Josephus' retelling of the two episodes in his Antiquitates Judaicae (hereafter Ant. 5.58-67).2 I undertake this study with a series of overarching questions in mind: (1) Given the divergences among the various textual witnesses for Joshua to-11, i.e. MT (BHS), 3 Codex Vaticanus (hereafter B) of the LXX, 4 the \ktus Latina (here after VL),5 the Vulgate (hereafter Vg.),6 Targum Jonathan of the Former Prophets 1 On Josh 10,1-11,23, see R.C. Boling/C.E. Wright, Joshua (AB 6), Garden City, NY 1982,273-317. 2 For the text and translation of Ant. 5.58-67 I use R. Marcus, Josephus V (LCL), Cam bridge, MAlLondon 1934, 26-33. I have further consulted the text and translation of and notes on the passage in E. Nodet, Flavius Josephe Les Antiquites Juives II: Livres IV et V, Paris 1995, 128-131 'f as well as the translation and notes in C. T Begg, Flavius Josephus 4, Leiden 2005, 16-18. 3 The Qumran manuscript 4QJos' preserves a portion of Josh 10,3-5.8-11 which evidences no significant differences with the MT. For the text, see E. Ulrich et al., Discoveries in the Judean Desert XIV, Qumran Cave 4 IX, Oxford 1995, 151-152 and for the translation M. AbeggJr. et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, San Francisco 1999, 206-207. 4 For the B text of Josh 10,1-11,23 I use A.E. Brooke/N. McLean, The Old Testament in Greek I:IV Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Cambridge 1917, 709-721. I have likewise consulted the translation of and notes on this text in J. Moatti-Fine, Jesus Oosue) (La Bible d'Alexandrie 6), Paris 1996, 147-161. On the B text ofJoshua overall, see A. G. Auld, Joshua: Jesus Son of Naue in Codex Vaticanus (Septuagint Commentary Series), Leiden 2005. On the marked differences between MT and LXX Joshua overall, see the discussions of E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis/Assen 1992, 327-332 and A.G. Auld, Joshua Retold: Synoptic Perspectives (Old Testament Studies), Edinburgh 1998, 7-18 (both of whom maintain that in many instances the LXX preserves an older form of the text than does MT). 5 For the VL text of Josh 10,1-11,23 I use U. Robert, Heptateuchi partis posterioris versio latina antiquissima e codice lugudensi, Lyon 1900, 70-75. 6 For the Vg. text of Josh 10,1-11,23 I useR. Gryson, Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, Stuttgart 1994, 299-303. Begg, Joshua's Campaigns 85 (hereafter Tg,f and the "Samaritan Chronicle No. II" (hereafter Sam.),8 where do Josephus' textual affinities in Ant. 5.58-67 lie? (2) What kind of rewriting techniques does Josephus apply to the data of his biblical Vorlage(n) and what is distinctive about his own rendering as a result of their application? Finally (3), how does the historian's treatment of Joshua's two campaigns com pare with the handling of these incidents elsewhere in early Jewish and Christian 9 tradition? The Southern Campaign Josh 10,1-43 relates Israel's defeat of a coalition of five southern kings; Josephus' (highly compressed) version of this happening is Ant. 5.58-62. The episode com mences in Josh 10,1-4 with a series of initiatives by "Adonizedek (Mf; LXX: Adonibezek) king of Jerusalem": he hears of previous threatening developments (v. 1), "fears" (v. 2 emended, see n. 12), and summons four other kings to join him in attacking Gibeon, Israel's new ally (v. 3_4).10 Already at this point, Jose phus' abbreviatory approach to Joshua 10-11 manifests itself, his rendition of the sequence Josh 10,1-4 in Ant. 5.58a reading: "But the king of the Jerusalemites,l1 indignant 12 that the Gabaonites should have passed over to the side of Joshua, 13 7 For the targumic text of Josh 10,1-11,23 I use A. Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic II, Leiden 1959,17-22, and for the translation of this D.J HarringtonIA.] Saldarini, TargumJonathan of the Former Prophets (The Aramaic Bible 10), Edinburgh 1987, 32-36. 8 For the Hebrew text of Sam. corresponding to MT Josh 10,1-11,23 I use Samaritan Chronicle No. II; see] Macdonald, The Samaritan Chronicle No. II (or Sepher Ha-Yamim) from Joshua to Nebuchadnezzar (BZAW 107), Berlin 1967,20-25 and for the translation of this ibid., 89-93. The dating of this document remains uncertain and controverted. 9 As representative of early Christian treatment of Joshua 10-11, I take the Origen's "Hom ilies on Joshua" 11-15; for the (Latin) text and translation of these homilies I use A. faubert, Origene, Homelies sur Josue (Sources chretiennes 71), Paris 1960,282-357. 10 The Israelite-Gibeonite alliance has been related just previously in Josh 9,3-27; on Jose phus' version of the episode in Ant. 5.49-57, see C. T. Begg, Israel's Treaty with Gibeon according to Josephus, in: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 28 (1997) 123-145. 11 Josephus leaves the Jerusalemite king of 10,1 unnamed. Nodet (see n. 2, ad loc.) suggests that he may have done so in order to avoid the appearance of a duplication that one finds in the Bible where there is double mention of a king associated with Jerusalem and bearing a similarl identical name, i.e. Adonizedek (MT Josh 10,1)/Adonibezek (LXX Josh 10,1 and MT and LXX Judg 1,5-6; d. Ant. 5.121-122 Adonizebek), whom Israel defeats. 12 In all witnesses to Josh 10,2 the emotion prompted by Gideon's defection is rather "great fear." All witnesses with the exception of V g. attribute that fear to a collectivity, "they" (i. e. the king of Jerusalem and his four royal colleagues cited in Josh 10,3). Josephus agrees with Vg. ("timuit valde") in making only the former the subject of the emotion. 13 With the above formulation Josephus conflates the separate references to the king's "hear ing" of Gibeon's making peace with Israel Gosh 10,1) and his (and his colleagues', see previous note) "fearing," due to Gibeon's size and military might Gosh 10,2). In addition, he leaves aside the references to "Ai" (see Joshua 7-8 II Ant. 5.35-48) in Josh 10,1-2, i.e. Joshua's destruction of Ai and its king (10,1) and Gibeon's being "greater than Ai" (10,2 MT, > LXX VL). .