Additions
to Josephus Reader Mail
Replies
are by G. J. Goldberg
Contents
Josephus
on Audio
Archaeological
Correction
The
Veil of the Temple
A Rope on the High Priest?
Michal's
Idol
Translating
the Sodomites
Josephus
on Audio
Do
you know if Josephus is on
a
audio format, tape, CD.
etc?
Reply:
There
are audio versions of Josephus available, although I have not listened to them
myself. Audio Connoisseur published the unabridged "Jewish War" in 2003 in two
10-hour volumes. There are also some taped excerpts available: Recorded Books
put out "The Destruction of Jerusalem" (4 1/2 hours) in 1992, and Barbour &
Co. published "Thrones of Blood" (concerning Herod and the pre-war period) in
1998. These are available via the internet at, for example, http://www.audible.com/.
There are some audio samples on that site and they sound fine.
Thanks
for the question. I did not have this information on my web site and I will
definitely add it.
Archaeological
Correction: Galilee
I stumbled on your very neat website
today. I appreciate the work input in it, and found it quite interesting. Your
comment on the suggested use of BC and AD for Herod and Caesar is quite witty,
I must say.
I'd
like to call your attention to your map, which is quite outdated as far as the
site of
Gamla
is concerned (Yes, I know that western scholarship is stuck with 'Gamala',
but I prefer to use the authentic form 'Gamla').
Anyway, your map shows
Gamla
opposite the southern end of the
sea
of Galilee, which is where it was thought to be until 1976. The excavations by
Shmarya
Gutmann
(and lately myself) at the site of
es-Salam
from 1976 to 2000 confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that
Gamla
was located opposite the northern end of the
sea
of Galilee. I recommend that you update your map.
I was also interested to see that
you place
Cana
NOT at its traditional site of
Kafar
Cana, but at the alternative site of
Khirbet
Qana, where the excavator believes a parallel
tradition existed, at least in the
Medieval
period. What made you choose this site over the other?
Best wishes,
Danny
Syon
Israel Antiquities Authority
Reply:
I admit I relied uncritically on
older published maps, particularly those of the Loeb edition of
Josephus. I have no excuse. I have updated the maps of Galilee to
show the correct location of Gamla. Since Cana plays no important role in
Josephus I have left it where it is, although readers should take note of the
two proposed sites. (Readers can note that in December 2004 more finds at Kafar
Cana have refueled the controversy.) Thank you for taking the
time to correct me and for your kind words about my site.
The Veil of the Temple
Did Josephus describe the Temple
veil has being unusually strong? There is a reference to this in The Ryrie
Study Bible New American Standard Translation (Moody Press copyright 1976,1978
ISBN 0-8024-7471-3).
It is in the footnote for Exodus 26:31-35 and reads
"
.
. .Josephus reported that the veil was 4 inches thick, was renewed every year,
and that horses tied to each side could not pull it apart." I
have used this in a youth group lesson and communion meditation before, so I am
interested where it came from. Thanks.
Paul Baker
Reply:
I can find no such description in
Josephus. When praising the former splendor of the destroyed Jerusalem Temple,
Josephus describes the veil as follows:
"The Temple had…golden doors of
fifty-five cubits altitude and sixteen in breadth; but before these doors there
was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain,
embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a
contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its
mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; for by the
scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the
earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea…. This curtain had also
embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the
twelve signs of the Zodiac, representing living creatures."
(War 5.5.4
211-214.
See also Ant 3.6.4 126, Ant 3.7.7 183 and Ant 8.3.3 and the story of
Crassus and the wily priest Eleazar at
Ant. 14.7.1)
The fineness of the linen and the
embroidery is stressed, not thickness or strength. There are also other veils
mentioned in similar terms, including the inner veil separating the Holy
of Holies.
In the New Testament, the veil of
the Temple spontaneously split during the crucifixion. Certainly if the veil
were as thick as your source said, that would make this a more impressive
miracle; so one suspects the idea of an especially strong veil, and its
citation of Josephus as authority, is a pious invention.
At the time of the Jewish Revolt, the veils were saved from destruction when
the priest Jesus son of
Thebuthus
was allowed by the Romans to remove them and other items as the Temple burned
(War 6.8.3 387).
Other people have asked about this
but did not supply the source of the attribution to Josephus. Thank you for the
reference!
A
Rope on the High Priest?
Can
you help me and our class to find out if this is true…We have heard it said
often that the High Priest had a rope around his leg to pull him from the Holy
place if he should die. Can you tell me where this is located? We are unable to
find it in the Bible.
E.
Mccoy
Reply:
This
legend has sometimes been attributed to Josephus, but it is not found in his
works. The story seems to have originated in the
Middle
Ages and is apparently found in medieval Jewish
kabbalistic
works. On
the Internet are citations to the medieval Jewish writings,
Zohar
Achrei
Mot 67a and
Zohar
Emor
102a, which supposedly records this legend; but I haven't looked these up
myself and can't vouch for it. This would only date back to the 12th century or
so. See for example:
http://www.torah.org
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/anklerope.html
Michal's
Idol
I
came upon your writing while seeking out information of Flavius Josephus. I am
hoping you might help me with something that is bothering me. It is a passage
that comes from the Old Testament writings in 1 Samuel 19:13. In these
passages, regardless of translation, they talk of
Michal
taking an "idol," "household god," "teraphim," etc.
and putting it in the bed to make it look like David was still there. But in
Josephus' version of the account he says the only thing she put in was a goat
bladder (even describing how it would jiggle as if someone were really in the
bed). Do you know of other Jewish texts that either
support
the idol or the goat bladder?
Know this probably sounds like a trite question, but it comes from a study I am
attending on women of the Bible. If the idea of her putting an idol into the
bed is used, it means that
Michal
may have not been as devout to God as she should have been and worshipped other
gods. If it was indeed a goat bladder, then the passage would not throw doubt
on her piety.
Thank you for any information you can give me.
Judy
Kitson
Reply:
Thank you for the interesting question. I
don't
think it's trite at all.
In this passage (Antiquities 6.11.4 217) Josephus hides from his Roman audience
the reference to an idol. Most likely this is to maintain his message of the
continuity and the piety
of Jewish
religious tradition: Romans knew there weren't supposed to be any idols in
Judaism (and the issue had caused protest riots in Jerusalem).
Some guidance on this passage is given by Thackeray and Marcus in the Loeb
edition, who also cite Rabbinic sources. The goat liver (not a bladder) appears
in the Greek translation of this passage in the Septuagint. We know from many
such coincidences that Josephus used the Septuagint as the basis of his
Antiquities. In the original Hebrew
Michal
places at the head of the bed, above the idol, a KBYR ETZ, whose meaning is
disputed but seems to mean "a weaving of goat", i.e., a weave of goats'
hair, used as a wig. The Septuagint and Josephus, however, read KBYR as KBD,
"liver", and so Josephus writes in Greek HEPAR AIGOS, "goat liver". Thus
Josephus has left out the idol completely and translated the wig into a liver.
If this was not deliberate, it would mean Josephus was not as familiar with the
Hebrew writings as he maintains, or that he had Greek assistants who wrote this
section for him.
The very interesting question of why
Michal
and David have a household idol is not within my expertise to say, although it
is one of the very many clues in the Bible that idol worship was a constant
feature of Jewish life up until the destruction of the First Temple.
Translating
the Sodomites
First
of all, let me congratulate with you for the excellent Internet site on Flavius
Josephus and Judaism you are running. Appreciating your expertise in this
field, I turn to you with a question about a passage to be found in
Antiquitates
Judaicae, 1,194 (at the beginning of
chapter XI). I have noticed that
Whiston’s
translation at this point, speaking of the Sodomites, has: "they hated
strangers, and abused themselves with
Sodomitical
practices." I see that
Whiston's
translation is also the one used in the site on Josephus that you are running.
However,
comparing the English translation of the Antiquities of the Jews with
the three Italian ones I have at hand (the one by
Pietro
Lauro
Modenese, of 1638, the one by Francesco
Angiolini, dated 1840, and the more recent one by
Luigi
Moraldi, of 1998), I noticed that none of them has
anything even resembling the expression "Sodomitical
practices." I also looked up a French translation of the same work available in
the Internet (the one by René
Harmand
of the beginning of the 20th century) and I saw that more or less the same
translation was given in that language. I turned to the
Perseus
Project internet site to look up the critical edition by B.
Niese, and I found that the original Greek sentence
reads (I use the transliterated text): "Einai
te
misoxenoi
kai
tas
pros
allous
homilias
ektrepesthai." That is something like "they were
against strangers and turned away from staying in company with all the others."
However,
I saw that this expression is often quoted to show that the first use of the
words "sodomy" and "sodomitical" in their modern
sense dates back to Josephus. In all these instances,
Whiston’s
English translation is quoted. Actually, I am not interested at all in polemics
concerning homosexuality. However, I would like to know if there is any textual
testimony giving a basis for
Whiston’s
translation. Could you be
so
kind as to help me under this respect?
I
thank you very much in advance for any help on this.
Yours
sincerely,
Luca
Zucchini
Rome, Italy
Reply:
The
answer to your question lies in variations in the textual evidence. In Ant
1.194, quite a number of manuscripts have "allelous"
instead of "allous." This could be read, if one
chose, that they "turned away" (from normality) in their relationships toward
each other, instead of turning away from "companionship toward others."
That
reading looks strained. Moreover, "allous" appears
in the two earliest manuscripts, the 11th century Codex
Parisinus
and Codex
Vindobonensis, and is consistent with the prior
remark that the Sodomites were haters of strangers (misoxenoi).
The textual evidence is noted by
Niese
in his critical edition (1885-1895). The xenophobic interpretation is commented
upon by Louis Feldman in the Brill Josephus
Commentary, Volume 3, who notes also that it is consistent with
Talmudic views of the story of Sodom. Moreover, he points out that in Roman
times Jews themselves were accused of being haters of non-Jews, and it is one
of Josephus' themes to dispel the charge, so is likely emphasizing here how
unacceptable the Sodomites' behavior is.
Whiston
is known to have used an unreliable Greek edition for his work (Haverkamp's
1726 version), so despite his best efforts he was always open to making
mistakes. I
hadn't
noticed this passage before, so I thank you for bringing it to my attention.
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