The Jewish War, fit the third, covering Book II

[lethargic_man]

(No, you haven't missed two installments; I'm counting my book review as the first two posts, and I'm not covering Book I and the first half of Book II, because they repeat material from Antiquities.)

In War II.8.163, Josephus attributes to the Pharisees the belief that only good people get to be reincarnated:

They say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, - but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.

This is, of course, completely the opposite way around to Indian religions today!

As for Judaism today, it is mostly not so hot on reincarnation, but there are some who say that there are only a certain number of souls going around, which have to be reused after they run out. The question is: as the Earth's population increases, what happens when the living outnumber the dead? And, indeed, has this already happened? According to Auntie, no... though this may change if you consider the world to have been created 5772 years ago (and I suspect there's a moderate correlation between those who believe this and those who believe in reused souls).

War makes use of the term "rabbi", as do the Gospels, which were written at the same time. I have heard that this is anachronistic, though: the term "rabbi" was not in use at the time of Jesus—and is not used of any of the Sages of that time—but only came into use in the mid first century.

I had vaguely heard before I started reading this work of the kings Agrippa I and Agrippa II. What I hadn't realised was that Agrippa II wasn't actually king of Judaea! II.11:

[Agrippa I] left behind him three daughters, born to him by Cypros, Bernice, Mariamne, and Drusilla, and a son born of the same mother, whose name was Agrippa: he was left a very young child, so that Claudius made the country a Roman province [i.e. brought it under direct rule again, rather than under a client king], and sent Cuspius Fadus to be its procurator, and after him Tiberius Alexander, who, making no alterations of the ancient laws, kept the nation in tranquillity. [...] After the death of Herod, king of Chalcis [in Syria], Claudius set Agrippa, the son of Agrippa, over his uncle's kingdom.

An insight into the city that proved the cause of the conflict, Caesarea (II.13):

The Jews claimed the city was theirs, and said that he who built it was a Jew, meaning king Herod. The Syrians confessed also that its builder was a Jew; but they still said, however, that the city was a Grecian city; for that he would not have set up statues and temples in it had it meant it for the Jews. On which account both parties had a contest with one another; and this contest increased so much, that it came at last to arms, and the bolder sort of them marched out to fight; for the elders of the Jews were not able to put a stop to their own people that were disposed to be tumultuous, and the Greeks thought it a shame for them to be overcome by the Jews.

That said, he then almost immediately says (II.14), in the context of increasing lawlessness and corruption and financial oppression of the people in Jerusalem:

Upon the whole, nobody durst speak their minds, but tyranny was generally tolerated; and at this time were those seeds sown which brought the city to destruction.

The problem was largely due to the procurator, Gessius Florus:

Truly, while Cestius Gallus was president of the province of Syria, nobody durst do so much as send an embassage to him against Florus; but when he was come to Jerusalem, upon the approach of the feast of unleavened bread, the people came about him not fewer in number than three millions; these besought him to commiserate the calamities of their nation, and cried out upon Florus as the bane of their country. But as he was present, and stood by Cestius, he laughed at their words. However, Cestius, when he had quieted the multitude, and had assured them that he would take care that Florus should hereafter treat them in a more gentle manner, returned to Antioch. Florus also conducted him as far as Caesarea, and deluded him, though he had at that very time the purpose of showing his anger at the nation, and procuring a war upon them, by which means alone it was that he supposed he might conceal his enormities; for he expected that if the peace continued, he should have the Jews for his accusers before Caesar; but that if he could procure them to make a revolt, he should divert their laying lesser crimes to his charge, by a misery that was so much greater; he therefore did every day augment their calamities, in order to induce them to a rebellion.

One should be absolutely appalled by this.

(As for the figure of three million, Josephus is given to exaggeration, and Williamson comments "Josephus has surpassed himself this time!" However, the Talmud (IIRC, though possibly it was Antiquities—the book I'd check this in is six hundred miles away!) talks about the priests setting aside, one year, one kidney from every Paschal sacrifice, which, on counting afterwards, they discovered there was something like a hundred thousand. Given the size of the typical family group for the Paschal meal (which had to be large enough to consume the entire animal), this meant there would indeed have been over a million pilgrims in Jerusalem at the time.)

In II.16, King Agrippa II delivers a lengthy speech to try and dissuade the Judaeans from revolting against Rome. I had assumed it to be another case of Josephus putting his own words into other people's mouths; this commentator suggests it was actually Agrippa's own words, given by him to Josephus, with whom he was friends. In the middle of this I was amused to discover a reference in Williamson's translation to "Britain, that land of mystery"; Whitson's translation is more prosaic: "such British islands as were never known before".

Not only did Agrippa argue against revolting, but (II.17) he lent help to try and put the revolt down in its earliest stages, after the insurgents had persuaded the priests to discontinue the sacrifices for Rome and the Emperor, which, amounting as it did to sedition, made a Roman response inevitable.

So the men of power perceiving that the sedition was too hard for them to subdue, and that the danger which would arise from the Romans would come upon them first of all, endeavoured to save themselves, and sent ambassadors, some to Florus, the chief of which was Simon the son of Ananias; and others to Agrippa, among whom the most eminent were Saul, and Antipas, and Costobarus, who were of the king's kindred; and they desired of them both that they would come with an army to the city, and cut off the sedition before it should be too hard to be subdued. Now this terrible message was good news to Florus; and because his design was to have a war kindled, he gave the ambassadors no answer at all. But Agrippa was equally solicitous for those that were revolting, and for those against whom the war was to be made, and was desirous to preserve the Jews for the Romans, and the temple and metropolis for the Jews; he was also sensible that it was not for his own advantage that the disturbances should proceed; so he sent three thousand horsemen to the assistance of the people out of Auranitis [Hauran, SW Syria], and Batanaea [Biblical Bashan, east of the Golan Heights], and Trachonitis [east of Batanaea], and these under Darius, the master of his horse, and Philip the son of Jacimus, the general of his army.

II.17 gives us a minor Jewish festival, of which few I suspect have heard nowadays:

The next day [the fourteenth of Av]^* was the festival of Xylophory [Williamson: Feast of Wood-carrying]; upon which the custom was for every one to bring wood for the altar (that there might never be a want of fuel for that fire which was unquenchable and always burning).

* This Thursday, this year.

Funnily enough, I came across a reference to this somewhere completely elsewhere at around this time, probably in Eliyahu Kitov's The Book Of Our Heritage, but I can't check as my copy of Volume III is now six hundred miles away.

The Romans having sent Cestius Gallus to put the revolt down, he got as far as the gates of Jerusalem, then, strangely, retreated (II.19):

When Cestius was come into the city, he set the part called Bezetha, which is called Cenopolis, [or the new city,] on fire; as he did also to the timber market; after which he came into the upper city, and pitched his camp over against the royal palace; and had he but at this very time attempted to get within the walls by force, he had won the city presently, and the war had been put an end to at once; but Tyrannius Priscus, the muster-master of the army, and a great number of the officers of the horse, had been corrupted by Florus, and diverted him from that his attempt; and that was the occasion that this war lasted so very long, and thereby the Jews were involved in such incurable calamities.

See my previous post for why Florus wanted war. Florus and Priscus have a hell of a lot to answer for, then; had it not been for them, the revolt would have been put down, the Temple remained standing, and hundreds of thousands of Jews not killed, enslaved or driven into exile.

Josephus says:

And now it was that a horrible fear seized upon the seditious, insomuch that many of them ran out of the city, as though it were to be taken immediately; but the people upon this took courage, and where the wicked part of the city gave ground, thither did they come, in order to set open the gates, and to admit Cestius as their benefactor, who, had he but continued the siege a little longer, had certainly taken the city; but it was, I suppose, owing to the aversion God had already at the city and the sanctuary, that he was hindered from putting an end to the war that very day.

Williamson's translation is stronger:

I think that because of those scoundrels God had already turned His back even on the Sanctuary, and would not permit that day to witness the end of the war.

As it happens, Priscus got his due punishment: He was killed by the Jews during the Romans' retreat, even before their subsequent massacre at Beth-Horon.

In II.20, we learn that "almost all of" the wives of the people of Damascus had converted to Judaism; as all too often in War, the context in which we learn it is not pleasant:

In the mean time, the people of Damascus, when they were informed of the destruction of the Romans, set about the slaughter of those Jews that were among them; and as they had them already cooped up together in the place of public exercises, which they had done out of the suspicion they had of them, they thought they should meet with no difficulty in the attempt; yet did they distrust their own wives, which were almost all of them addicted to [Williamson: gone over to] the Jewish religion; on which account it was that their greatest concern was, how they might conceal these things from them; so they came upon the Jews, and cut their throats, as being in a narrow place, in number ten thousand, and all of them unarmed, and this in one hour's time, without any body to disturb them.

With the Romans temporarily driven from the land, Josephus is appointed governor of Galilee, where he first encounters John of Gischala, "the most unprincipled trickster that ever won ill fame by such vicious habits" [Williamson]. After John has tried to induce towns to revolt against Josephus, and came within a squeak of assassinating him (Josephus only escaped by taking a flying leap onto a boat and making for the centre of Lake Tiberias), he tried to get the authorities in Jerusalem to impeach Josephus. Josephus ignores the impeachment attempt, and retakes the towns that go over to the other side, but then Tiberias revolted again, calling in King Agrippa and being taken by Roman cavalry.

Josephus is at the time in Tarichaeae, and has no soldiers with him, having sent them all out in search of food; but he still manages to retake the city through an amazing tactic:

In the first place he ordered the gates of Taricheae to be shut, that nobody might go out and inform [those of Tiberias], for whom it was intended, what stratagem he was about; he then got together all the ships that were upon the lake, which were found to be two hundred and thirty, and in each of them he put no more than four mariners. So he sailed to Tiberias with haste, and kept at such a distance from the city, that it was not easy for the people to see the vessels, and ordered that the empty vessels should float up and down there, while himself, who had but seven of his guards with him, and those unarmed also, went so near as to be seen; but when his adversaries, who were still reproaching him, saw him from the walls, they were so astonished that they supposed all the ships were full of armed men, and threw down their arms, and by signals of intercession they besought him to spare the city.

Upon this Josephus threatened them terribly, and reproached them [...]; owever, he would admit of any intercessors from them that might make some excuse for them, and with whom he would make such agreements as might be for the city's security. Hereupon ten of the most potent men of Tiberias came down to him presently; and when he had taken them into one of his vessels, he ordered them to be carried a great way off from the city. He then commanded that fifty others of their senate, such as were men of the greatest eminence, should come to him, that they also might give him some security on their behalf. After which, under one new pretence or another, he called forth others, one after another, to make the leagues between them. He then gave order to the masters of those vessels which he had thus filled to sail away immediately for Taricheae, and to confine those men in the prison there; till at length he took all their senate, consisting of six hundred persons, and about two thousand of the populace, and carried them away to Taricheae.

[...] Thus he took the people of Tiberias prisoners, and recovered the city again with empty ships and seven of his guard.

Josephus notes         Jewish learning notes index