Introduction

INTRODUCTION The essays collected in this volume have appeared over a period of over forty years and deal largely with the way in which Jews and non:Jews reacted to one another during the Hellenistic-Roman pe riod. The student of the history of scholarship may well ask how my views have changed or whether they have remained the same over such a long period. When inconsistencies in my views have been pointed out to me I have replied that they are the views of a younger contemporary. I am grateful for the opportunity on this occasion to set forth some of the principles that have guided my scholarship. I find that the key questions are two: (1) Inasmuch as our funda mental source for the period is Josephus, what are his sources and how reliable is he as a historian? (2) To what degree did Jews, es pecially the rabbis, have knowledge of non:Jews, and to what degree did non:Jews have knowledge of Jews, and how did they react to each other? As to Josephus, most scholars emphasize the many privileges that Josephus had received from Vespasian and Titus: clothes and other precious gifts (War 3.408): freedom for his brother and fifty friends; a gift of sacred books; liberation, at his request, of captive women and children and various friends and acquaintances whom he had recognized; freedom of three of his acquaintances who were actually in the process of being crucified; a lodging in the house previously occupied by none other than Vespasian himself; the privilege of Roman citizenship; a pension which enabled him, so far as we can tell, to be free of any duties so that he could devote himself totally to research and writing (Life 418-423). In the face of such favors can we believe that Josephus was impartial? In reply, I would certainly be skeptical whenJosephus speaks about the Romans, and especially about Vespasian and Titus, and about himsel£ But even here I would not necessarily condemn his account of the war completely. Scholars have long regarded Josephus' treatment of Titus' attitude (War 6.241) toward the question of whether the Temple should be set on fire as a litmus paper test of his credibility as a historian. According to Josephus, Titus, in the council that he held with his staff prior to the attack on Jerusalem, urged that the Temple be 2 INTRODUCTION spared, inasmuch as it would be an ornament to the Empire if it remained standing. On the other hand, we find the very opposite view in the fourth-century Christian historian, Sulpicius Severus (Chronica 2.30.6-7), who, describing the same council, says that Titus expressed the view that the Temple should be destroyed without delay in order that the religion of the Jews and the Christians should be more completely exterminated. Most scholars have preferred Sulpicius' account and have argued thatJosephus was attempting to whitewash his sponsor, Titus; 1 and they have adopted the suggestion of Bemays2 that Sulpicius' source was none other than a lost portion of Tacitus' Histories, which, in tum, was derived from a lost work, De Iudaeis, of Marcus AntoniusJulianus, who apparently is identical with the procu rator of Judaea and who was present at Titus' council (War 6.238). But this, we may suggest, is a case of obscurus per obscurius. In the first place, there is no proof that Tacitus actually described the burning of the Temple, since, in the extant portion of Histories, Book 5, after Histories 5.13 he shifts from his account of the Jewish War to Civilis' campaign in Germany. The only indication that perhaps he intended to describe the final destruction ofJerusalem is his very general state ment (Histories 5.2) at the beginning of his account of the Jewish War that he was about to relate the last days of a famous city. As to Antonius Julianus, we have not a single fragment of his work but merely a reference to it in Minucius Felix (Octavius 33.4). As to the hypothesis that Sulpicius used Tacitus' Histories, this rests on the as sumption that since he used Tacitus' Annals (15.37 = Sulpicius 2.28.2; 15.44 = Sulpicius 2.29.1-3) he must have known Tacitus' Histories; but there is no evidence in Sulpicius that he used the Histories. On the contrary, he definitely usedJosephus, as we can see from the fact that he gives the number of Jews killed in the siege as 1,100,000, precisely the number given by Josephus (War 6.420), whereas Tacitus (Histories 5.13) says that the total number of those besieged was 600,000. While we may well be suspicious that Josephus has misrep resented the attitude of Titus in order to make him appear to be a man of clemency, we must likewise be suspicious of the Christian Sulpicius' statement that Titus demanded the destruction of the 1 See my smvey in Josephus and Modem Scholarship (1937-1980) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984) 363-366; and the discussion of Menahem Stem, Greek and lAtin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. 2 Uerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980) 64---67. 2 Jakob Bernays, Ober die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus (Breslau: Grass, Barth, 1861). .

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