Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Hi Peter,

A corollary to Josephus's use of 1 Esdras is that he either must have
preferred its structure to that of Nehemiah or his version of Nehemiah
doesn't match what the text is like today. He prefers to place Ezra's
reading of the law (Neh 7:73b - 8:12) in the location found in 1 Esdras and
not within the text of of Nehemiah. On top of this Josephus shows knowledge
of only chapters 1 to 6 (excluding 3 and then some) of Nehemiah. When he
uses 1 Esdras he shows that he knows the whole book. The same goes for
Esther. The OT/HB texts that he thought were historical he used as
historical. 

What happened to Nehemiah? 1 Esdras gets 15 1/2 columns of in my old
translation, while Nehemiah gets 2 1/2. Hey, Josephus didn't want to use
much of Nehemiah for some reason, right? Well, if you compare Nehemiah's
1st chapter with Josephus's AJ 11,5,6 you'll find interesting little extra
tidbits in Josephus that do not come from the little in Nehemiah that he
may have taken; this is also true for other parts of Josephus's Nehemiah
text. A simpler solution would be that his version of Nehemiah was quite
different from that we now have today.


Cheers,


Ian