Titus Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish scholar and historian, can certainly be thought of as an imperial success story. Even with origins as a rebellious imperial subject, Josephus was able to rise in the ranks of the ruling power’s society. In 67 C.E. Josephus, then a commander in the First Jewish-Roman War, escaped to a cave with other rebels after the fall of Jotapata. The men agreed to make a suicide pact rather than surrender to the Romans. However, Josephus fixed the lots so his name would be last; then after the other fighters committed suicide, Josephus convinced the one remaining man to surrender to Vespasian with him. Josephus gained the favor of Vespasian by claiming that Jewish Messianic prophecies predicted the general’s future attainment of the Emperorship. After Vespasian became Emperor in 69 CE, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperor’s family name of Flavius and soon became a full Roman citizen. He then served as translator to Titus, Vespasian’s son, and documented Titus’s siege of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple.
Josephus fashioned himself as a reputable, knowledgeable, and fair interpreter of events in his works of history. Despite the author’s self-characterization as reliable, Josephus often gave accounts that may seem somewhat conflicting, laying both harsh criticism and gushing praise on the Jewish people as well as giving slightly less inconsistent, but still varied, opinions of Romans. Josephus’ willingness to separate his fate from his coreligionists’, to switch sides, to flatter himself, and to express conflicting assessments has created an image of Josephus as an egoist motivated first and foremost by self-interest. Two authors, Joseph Farmer and Steve Mason, have both disputed this understanding of the ancient historian. Farmer and Mason, while acknowledging elements of self-motivated writing and action, make use of differing evidence to argue that Josephus carefully crafted his characterizations of Jews and Romans to reconcile the groups with each other and to fulfill political and ideological imperatives rather than only to write what might help him advance.
Joseph Farmer’s 1956 book, Maccabees, Zealots and Josephus, an Inquiry into Jewish Nationalism in the Greco-Roman Period, explores Josephus’ ideological projects, especially his distancing of most Jews from the leaders of the Jewish revolt, whom he portrayed as immoral troublemakers. Farmer notes that Josephus seems to have had a mission to redeem his people in the eyes of Rome, the dominant power that could influence the fate of Jews. Directly after a major rebellion, Romans would have good reason to be on edge about the trustworthiness of Jews, so this quest to better the image of Jews certainly had practical implications for the treatment and wellbeing of Jews under Roman rule. While Josephus may well have wanted to be viewed as a noble “voice for his people” (though his friendliness with the Romans caused some Jews to see him as a traitor), Farmer puts forward that the historian genuinely wanted the most advantageous outcome for his coreligionists.
Farmer notes that Josephus wanted to absolve the Judean people as a group, placing culpability onto just a few troublemakers. He points out that Josephus not only minimized the number of those to blame for the war, but also disconnected the few agitators from any past Jews by making clear that this war was completely separate from past Jewish conflicts. Farmer discusses at length how Josephus distinguishes circumstances and motivations of various uprisings, especially the large one against the Seleucids, in order to show that the Jewish psyche does not have rebellion ingrained in it. Josephus started his narrative two and a half centuries before the Judeo-Roman War with the Judeo-Seleucid War, yet “failed to show any explicit attention to the connection between these two wars” (4). Farmer firmly believes that Josephus is wrong in his disconnected version of Jewish war history, that reminders of past militancy would be held up as glorious inspiration, and that motivations for rebellion remained similar over time.
While Josephus tried to defend Jews to Romans, Farmer argues that he also attempted the reverse. Josephus heavily praised Roman might and practices of governance. This favorable depiction of Rome has often been interpreted as a strategy for of advancement in Roman society. However, instead of seeing Josephus’ praise of the Flavians as self-serving flattery, Farmer views it as a means to encourage cooperation between the Jews and Romans and to ease tensions. Highlighting benefits of living under Rome could reassure Jews that their post-rebellion futures were not so dim, prevent future revolts, and create more cohesion.
In his role as an apologist for both his fellow Jews and the Romans, Josephus is reminiscent of his contemporary, Polybius, who played a similar role between Romans and his fellow Greeks. To Josephus, protection of Jewish community depended on the separation of the whole group from the small number of instigators that started the rebellion. Farmer thinks that protecting the Jews included preventing them from rebelling once more against the clearly stronger power, which explains much of Josephus’ praise of the Romans.
Like Farmer, Mason discusses how Josephus desired to differentiate the Jewish people from rebel agitators in his essay “Josephus’s Judean War.” However, rather than focusing on large ideas across Josephus’ body of work, Mason zooms in to dissect closely the language used in his history of the Judean War. Mason cites specific phrases to reveal how the historian created a picture of the noble overall character of Jews. In advocating for his nation, Josephus distinguishes cleanly between the bad political choices made by some of his people and the national-ethnic character. For example, Mason names bravery as one of the many positive traits that Josephus assigns through pointed wording and allusion. Mason discusses how “near the end he portrays Romans admiring, or at least being amazed at, the unexpected daring of the people at Masada, the ‘nobility of their resolve’ to take their own lives, and their ‘contempt of death’ (7.405–406)” (40).
Similarly to Farmer, Mason also touches on Josephus’ flattery of Rome. Josephus declares that the Romans have never been beaten. Mason considers that “on the one hand, this assures his audiences that the Judeans were beaten by the very best (3.108: ‘for the consolation of those who have been bested’),” (41) but it also congratulates the Romans for their might.
While both authors acknowledge that selfish considerations may have been at play, though to different degrees, both articles emphasize the greater ideological and political mission that Josephus had in advocating for both the Jews and the Romans. Josephus was a very effective apologist for the Romans but also, and perhaps with more difficulty (it was a tough stance to defend a population the dominant power was recently at war with), one for the Jewish people. In order to defend his co-religionists, however, he had to write his history of the war against Rome so as to show that the leaders of the revolt were not true Jews. By contrast, he argued, real Jews were respectable and had a distinguished history. Josephus appears as a complex person, an individual struggling to reconcile survival with responsibility to his people, and loyalty with self-interest. In tackling this intriguing imperial figure, both Farmer and Mason convincingly dispute the idea that his main goals in his works were his own advancement and legacy.