The Jewish War: First half of Book 1

[cahn]

I am super not promising to always have this on Saturday, but yay long weekend!

Last week: I know some of you reading this study Talmud -- Josephus asserts at the very beginning that the "sufferings of the Jews" (presumably, in context of Josephus' writing, Titus destroying the temple, etc. though we won't get there for a while) are their own fault: "no foreign power is to blame." It was pointed out that the Talmud may (?) have its own opinion(s) as to whether the destruction of the Temple and the resulting diaspora was divine punishment? And regardless of the former, may also blame Titus? (I also don't know yet, because we haven't gotten there yet and won't for a while, whether Josephus himself thinks it's divine punishment or just plain old temporal consequences. My vague recollection of Feuchtwanger's Josephus is that he was thinking more of the latter, which is also very much borne out by this week's reading.)

This week: First half of Book 1 (Ch 22 / Par 444):

Okay, I must say the first part of this was a slog for me -- flitting between a lot of people I didn't know. Good thing we have this reading group or I might not have got through it. As it was, I had to take copious notes to even make a stab at writing up a summary (I won't promise I'll do this every week, but I had a little extra time and quite frankly I knew I wouldn't remember who any of these people were next week if I didn't), and I'm going to put them in comments so this post doesn't get super long. At least Josephus felt it was "inappropriate to go into the early history of the Jews," which would have made it really long. Anyway, it got substantially more interesting once Herod showed up!

Next week: Finish book 1.

Comments

Paragraphs 31-120: Mattias and a few generations under him

[cahn]

As is perhaps inevitable, I took more notes at the beginning, partially because I really needed to at this point, but also because it was the beginning. Again I will not promise to do this every week :)

- I understand he needs to give some context for what's going to happen, but I was rather amused that after that whole preface of "obviously it's better to write about history you actually saw" he started out with a bunch of history that he absolutely was not a part of!
- Josephus starts right away on the theme of divisions within the Jews: another faction expelled the sons of Tobias, who went to Antiochus and got him to invade Judaea (this is NOT in the books of the Maccabees to the best of my knowledge!!)
- The Hasmonaeans (Matthias and his five sons, of whom the oldest was Judas Maccabeus) drove Antiochus out (this and a couple of the following bullets are, I think, in the books of the Maccabees, which I didn't really have time to read but paged briefly through)
- After Mattias dies, Judas and his brothers kept fighting Antiochus's son, also OF COURSE named Antiochus (the text says Judas allied with Rome, but the footnotes say that didn't actually happen at this point)
- The brothers don't do so well against Antiochus Jr. and keep dying, up until Simon, who drove Antiochus out of Judea and became high priest
- Then Simon's son-in-law Ptolemy killed him (no reason is given) but his third son, John Hyrcanus, escapes
- Hyrcanus fought various people and was pretty successful at this time, according to Josephys, although he "was resented at home and provoked factional hostility." (sensing a theme)
- His oldest son, Aristobulus, became king, killed his fave brother, and died of remorse (this part was super gossipy)
- Another of Hyrcanus' sons, Alexander, became king (and prompty killed one of his remaining brothers)
- He had various conflicts, including one in which his entire army got trapped in a ravine "and was trampled to death by a mass of camels," which I find much funnier than maybe I should
- Some rebels against Alexander get help from Demetrius the Unready, whom the notes say is actually known as Demetrius the Ready, which I feel like is a rather profound difference
- Alexander killed a ton of people but eventually I guess wins over Demetrius and gets peace, but the brother of Demetrius, confusingly also named Antiochus, attacks him
- Alexander dies; his wife Alexandra (really??) ruled for a while, then his sons, confusingly named Hyrcanus (the heir) and Aristobulus (not the heir, but at least has a unique name) duke it out. "Most of Hyrcanus' troops deserted him and went over to Aristobulus." Whoops! (Aristobulus wins.)

Re: Paragraphs 31-120: Mattias and a few generations under him

[selenak]

I do agree the pre Herod part is something of a slog. Which it shares in common with a lot of academic work that summarizes the research history before the main event, so to speak! Also I suspect Josephus' sources get better the closer he gets to his own time. He'd have known any number of people with strong opinions on Herod in his childhood, for starters.

What this summarizing does is show the entanglement of Judea and the Jews in the Hellenistic world and its strife, which is part of the point, I suspect, i.e. Josephus wants the make clear (especially to his Greek reading audience with a snobbish attitude towards the Jews that they were not some weird outliers, they were often the center of the action. The action being the endless series of rivalries and wars between the successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great's generals. As a reminder to you, the three most important kingdoms established in the fallout of the "Successor Wars" (what Stealing Fire is about) after AtG's death were: 1) Macedon. (Its kings tend to be called Philip, Alexander or a combination thereof. Will eventually get mopped up by the Romans who get to demonstrate the legendary Macedonian phalanx is no more the best military tool it was when AtG defeated everyone else with it.) Macedon is also ruling the rest of Greece, and rest of Greece is never really happy about this. They won't be thrilled by the Romans taking over, either, but there you go. 2.) Egypt. Where the Ptolemies reign (when they don't have civil war against each other). Usually not the largest but the richest of the successor kingdoms, the breadbasket of the Ancient World. Has the best natural defense lines which usually, but not always, makes it hard to conquer. 3) The Seleukid Kingdom. The largest of the lot. Persia plus a few other Middle Eastern states (at its height, up and including Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Would have been the most powerful all the time except they also have a lot of internal succession strife, plus they have an ongoing rivalry with Ptolemaic Egypt, though they're also intermarrying frequently. The Seleukid Empire repeatedly breaks up into smaller kingdoms and reunites, too. Their Kings during the relevant time period tend to be called Mithridates and Antiochus. Both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids think Syria should be theirs, which is, of course, there Judea comes in and why there are such a lot alliances of Jewish High Priests with either dynasty, depending on the tactical situation.

On to what Josephus actually writes: His paragraphs on Alexandra struck as the first but not the last example of Josephus following the general tendency of Ancient (male) historians: women in power are by default bad news. In varying degrees. I mean, he even grudgingly admits Alexandra did a pretty good job as regent but simultanously declares she was just a tool for the Pharisees. (Who interestingly get bad press from him. I didn't expect this out of the gospels, whose authors have their own grudge match with the Pharisees.) It will get worse when he gets to Cleopatra, and there are others. Like I said, though, this is anything but unusual. Reading through Suetonius and Plutarch reminded me of this all over again. If you're a woman, and you're not Cornelia Mother of the Gracchi, you should not be famous at all, you should be unseen and unheard, because if you are famous and forced historians to take note of you, you are bad news, and must be written thus.