Josephus' Use of Heimarmene in the Jewish Antiquities Xiii, 171-3
JOSEPHUS' USE OF HEIMARMENE IN THE JEWISH ANTIQUITIES XIII, 171-3 LUTHER H. MARTIN Josephus uses the word heimarmene (fate, or, destiny) in but four passages in his Jewish Antiquities: XIII, 171-3: XVI, 397; XVIII, 12-22; and XIX, 347.1 In two of these passages, XIII, 171-3 and XVIII, 12-22, as well as in a parallel passage in The Jewish War II, 162-6, he uses the issue of determinism to distinguish between the three Jewish "philosophies": the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.2 2 The Pharisees, according to Josephus in Ant. XVIII: postulate that everything is brought about by fate still they do not deprive the human will of the pursuit of what is in man's power, since it was God's good pleasure that there should be a fusion and that the will of man with his virtue and vice should be admitted to the council-chamber of fate. (Ant. XVIII, 13) Later, in this same passage, he characterizes the position of the Sadducees and the Essenes by contrasting them with this Pharisaic position on heimarmene. The Sadducees, he writes, "own no obser- vance of any sort apart from the laws," while the Essenes "leave everything in the hands of God" (Ant. XVIII, 16). Josephus also refers here (Ant. XVIII, 11) to a parallel account in the second book of his earlier The Jewish War, in which he described both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, in part, in terms of their contrasting attitudes towards heimarmene: the Pharisees... attribute everything to Fate (alyapyivq) and to God; they hold that to act rightly or otherwise rests, indeed, for the most part with men, but that in each action Fate (alyapyivq) cooperates...
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