VOLUME XXII  February 7, 1999   Number 5

HOSPITAL NEWS:  We are aware of none of our members in the hospital at this time, but we continue to remember Tammy Moss, Bertha Johnson, Ruby Merriman, Grace Straight, Jesse Brown, Jesse Brown's brother and sister-in-law, Ernest and Georgia Brackin, Alberta Roney, the six young people injured in the car wreck a few weeks ago, Tory Smith (Tim's sister in Arkansas, she is scheduled for surgery in Paragould, AR Wednesday, February 3), the Deals, Callie Kilgore, Blondell Cross, and others who have been sick lately.

SPECIAL TEACHER:  Brother Wade Warren is to be with us again Wednesday to teach on the Minor Prophets.  He has been doing a fine job, and we are enjoying him and wish the best to him and his family.

SPECIAL THANKS:  We give a special thanks to all those who have been teaching Bible Classes during the past quarter for their dedication and effort.  Some will retain classes while others will take a break for a while and we will have some first-time (at Enon) teachers this quarter.  Let us encourage them in a worthy endeavor.  We also give our special thanks to Stan Smith, director of the Bible Classes.  His is an important task and he is to be highly commended for the good job he does.

WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?  Hear the Gospel (Romans 10:17), Believe the Gospel (Hebrews 11:6), Repent of Sins (Acts 2:38), Confess Faith in Christ (Acts 8:37), be baptized (Acts 22:16), and remain faithful, even to the point of death (Revelation 2:10).  May we assist you in becoming a faithful Christian?

JOSEPHUS AND THE BIBLE  Installment #1 of 4

Josephus is a name one hears when considering early history, and especially  that portion of history which concerns the origins of the religion of Jesus Christ.  He is often quoted, either favorably or unfavorably, to establish facts or attempt to deny them, with respect to the conditions of the times in which Christianity originated.  But, who was Josephus?  Was he a Christian?  Do his writings confirm or contest the New Testament?  Certainly we cannot fully deal with the voluminous works which came from his pen, but we can see enough to know that his imperfect histories are very valuable to us in that they offer us a glimpse into the conditions and ideas of the first century A.D.

Who was Josephus?**Josephus was born Joseph ben Matthias in A.D. 37/38 in the city of Jerusalem.  He was born into an "aristocratic, priestly family" (JOSEPHUS, THE JEWISH WAR AND OTHER SELECTIONS, Introduction MOSES I. FINLEY, page vii).  He died about the year A.D. 100, but by that time his name had been changed to Flavius Josephus and he was a Roman citizen.  Like Paul, he was a member of the Pharisees, the most fervent and zealous sect of first century Judaism. He wrote of his family, "The family from which I am derived is not an ignoble one, but hath descended all along from the priests; and as nobility among several people is of a different origin, so with us to be of the sacerdotal dignity, is an indication of the splendour of a family" (Autobiography 1).  He proceeded to link his family heritage with the most eminent and influential men of his day.  Of his father he writes, "Now, my father Matthias was not only eminent on account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his righteousness; and was in great reputation in Jerusalem, the greatest city we have" (Autobiography 2).  The name our subject was given at birth, Joseph ben Matthias, means "Joseph, the son of Matthias", "ben" meaning "son of".  He also had a brother named Matthias, after his father and mother.  He indicates to us that he had been well trained in literature:  "Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of the points of the law; and when I was about sixteen years old, I had a mind to make trial of the several sects that were among us" (Autobiography 2).  The Jews have long doubted the extent to which he claims to have been consulted about the law by their former leaders, as we shall see later, and the reason for their dislike of Josephus will also become clear.  Having "tried" the three extant sects of Judaism of his day, those being the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essens, he went out into the desert and found "...Banus, [and with him] lived in the desert, and used no other clothing than grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both night and day, in order to preserve his chastity, I imitated him in those things and continued with him three years.  So when I had accomplished my desires, I returned back to the city, being now nineteen years old, and began to conduct myself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees, which is of kin to the sect of the Stoics, as the Greeks call them" (Autobiography, 2).  So by the age of 19 he had gone through the three leading factions of Judaism, and upon returning to the city of Jerusalem he chose to affiliate himself with the Pharisees.

He tells us of a voyage to Rome:  "But when I was in the twenty-sixth year of my age, it happened that I took a voyage to Rome; and this on the occasion which I shall now describe" (Autobiography 3).  The occasion for his trip, at least according to him, was the arrest and imprisonment of certain priests at the hands of Felix, procurator of Judea.  Felix arrested these priests and sent them to Rome to plead their cause before Cæsar. "These I was desirous to procure deliverance for; and that especially because I was informed that they were not unmindful of piety towards God" (Autobiography 3).  He indicates that he not only freed these men, but also received the favor of and gifts from Poppea, Cæsar's wife, after which he returned to Jerusalem.  On this trip he came to love the Roman way of opulence and ease.

It was about this time that the Jewish revolt against Rome arose, or at least was beginning to arise.  He indicates that upon his return he  "...perceived innovations were already begun, and that there were a great many very much elevated in hopes of a revolt from the Romans" (Autobiography 4).  He goes on to tell us that he tried to dissuade the revolution, knowing the ultimate outcome could mean only destruction for the Jews.  It may well be that he did know of the utter hopelessness of such a revolt, but it is unlikely that any of the claims he has made about his own power and influence are reliable, and this is certainly one of the more unreliable assertions.  We must remember that he is writing this history at the good pleasure of the Romans, whose prisoner he was as he wrote.  It would be foolish for him to have indicated any affiliation with the Jews and the revolt at the time of the writing itself.  In A.D. 66, when the Jewish War broke out (the subject of one of his volumes of history), he was made commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee.  He "defended" the stronghold of Jotapata against the Romans.  When it appeared, as he tells it, that further resistance was useless, he "escaped to a cave with forty others, and when this new refuge seemed likely to be taken they arranged a suicide pact.  Perhaps more by good management than by good luck Josephus found himself one of the last two survivors.  He persuaded his fellow-survivor that they might as well give themselves up to the Romans" (F. F. Bruce, THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS:  ARE THEY RELIABLE?, pages 102-103).  It is at this point that the Jews of modern times (and earlier, no doubt) take great issue with him.  They contend that Josephus never was loyal to the nation of Israel, and that he never was consulted on any point of the law by anyone influential or important, and that he tried to surrender his post from the very beginning.  It is further suggested that he intentionally, after trying unsuccessfully to persuade surrender by all of his forces, prodded them into suicide in order that he might give himself up to and become a helper of the Romans.  In either case, (the truth here does seem to lie between the two extremes), he surrendered to Vespasian, a Roman general and future emperor.  He was able to win the favor of Vespasian by predicting that he would rise to become emperor, a prediction which was fulfilled in A.D. 69.  He served Vespasian first, and then Titus, Vespasians' son, even serving as Titus' interpreter and spokesman when he wished to say something to the residents of Jerusalem under siege by the Roman armies.  When Jerusalem fell Josephus settled down in Rome, changed his name to Flavius Josephus, in honor of Vespasian, whose family name was Flavius.  Regardless of how he came to serve Rome, that he served them was enough to engender two thousand years of hatred towards him from the Jews.
As we mentioned above, he wrote four volumes that have survived to the present, a very unusual occurrence indeed when you consider that he wrote almost 1,500 years before the printing press was invented.  "His literary works include a History of the Jewish war, from 170 B.C. to A.D. 73, written first in Aramaic for the benefit of the Jews on the easternmost confines of the Empire, and then published in a Greek version; an Autobiography, in which he defends his conduct against another Jewish historian, Justus of Tiberias, who in his account of the war had taken a poor view of the part played by Josephus; two books Against Apion, in which he defends his nation against the anti-Semitic calumnies (some of which sound quite modern) of Apion, an Alexandrian schoolmaster, and other writers; and twenty books of Antiquities of the Jews, recording the history of his nation from the beginning of Genesis down to his own day" (F. F. Bruce, THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS:  ARE THEY RELIABLE?, page 103).

Unlike the New Testament writers, Josephus wrote not in the common Greek of the day but in the revived classical Greek of Athens, the "fashion in his day" (JOSEPHUS: THE JEWISH WAR AND OTHER SELECTIONS, Moses I. Finley, page xix).  "The Byzantine patriarch Photius may not have been a great literary critic, but his summary judgment is not without interest:  'Josephus has great purity in his language,...with an agreeable clarity.  He is persuasive and full of grace in his speeches; when he has occasion to make use of his eloquence for antithetical arguments, he is adroit and fertile in argument on both sides...He excels in the art of expressing passion in language, and he is a master in heightening the emotions and then lowering them'" (Cited by Finley, page xix).  Essentially his works have survived whereas many others did not, and this makes him at one and the same time important to us as a recorder of history and suspect, as many contemporary opponents and their works are forgotten to the world.  With respect to biblical matters, it may be assumed that he would favor the Old Testament account of things based on his Jewish roots; but, we must remember when reading him that he also would be prejudiced against contemporaries who counted him a traitor and would not be above reflecting poorly on them or their family ties or particular doctrines.  With respect to Christianity he would have no reason to speak favorably, though he would not be above using it to cut at his Jewish opponents.  His first allegiance, as is easily seen in his works, is to Rome and to himself, and he would record little that reflected on them or himself unfavorably in any way.

Josephus follows the biblical history down to the time of the Maccabees, but there the Bible stops, and his source of history changed.  Most scholars think that he drew from Nicolaus of Damascus for his information on Herod, and from official Roman documents, among which are the commentarii of Vespasian and Titus and other contemporary works.  For the two hundred years before the Hasmoneans, and for the years following the death of Herod, after Nicolaus' history stopped, he had no authoritative source.  He certainly drew from personal experience at some points, covering the time of his own life, and these references must be scrutinized especially closely, understanding the natural tendency to exalt one's own role in things and to slant the facts in such a way as to cast a favorable light on one's own contributions to great historical events.  Most of his reviewers, the more modern the reviewer the more true this statement becomes, think that Josephus was a terrible person, an immoral man, a self-serving traitor in every sense of the word.  But we must remember that we are not examining his morals here, but his history.  It is true that his history must be viewed in the light of his morals, as an immoral man would certainly be more likely to distort history than a moral man, and so we will examine very carefully what he says, the more extravagant and outlandish the statement the closer the scrutiny.

We know that he married three times, and that he had three sons.  He died in Rome.  "Here, in the pages of Josephus, we meet many figures who are well known to us from the New Testament:  the colourful family of the Herods; the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero; Quirinius, the governor of Syria; Pilate, Felix, and Festus, the procurators of Judea; the high-priestly families -- Annas, Caiaphas, Ananias, and the rest; the Pharisees and Sadducees; and so on" (Bruce, page 104).  In this short series of articles we shall endeavor to see what this historian, writing near the time when the New Testament was written, had to say about things mentioned in the New Testament.
TIM SMITH, 1272 Enon Road, Webb, AL 36376  (334) 899-8131