Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

You wrote:

>1) Josephus was brought up with and knew fairly well the 22 books 
>(according to his reckoning) in Hebrew corresponding to the whole of 
>the existing MT, including Ezra.

He may have known many books well.

>2) Josephus when composing his writings used the best available Greek 
>translations of these books, 

He says in his Antiquities that he set out to translate the Hebrew books
(AJ 10,10,6).

>namely the Septuagint (or something similar). 

We have very little knowledge of what the state of Greek translation of the
TaNaCh was. You are making too many assumptions again.

>Either he did not have the Hebrew text available in the 
>Gentile setting in which he was working, 

He says he did.

>or he chose to work from the 
>Greek text because he was writing in Greek. (If you, Ian, were writing 
>a paper on the Bible in Italian, would you have open in front of you 
>an Italian Bible or an English one?) Obviously he followed the Greek 
>text in front of him when spelling names.

Besides 1 Esdras, what texts can you show evidence for? None, of course. So
the assumption you are firing on is unsupported. I'll therefore cut the
following stuff based on it.

>In the Greek translation which Josephus used, [..]
>
>As for your corollary on Nehemiah, I think this question depends on the 
>obviously complex textual history of the Greek Esdras materials. The 
>Greek text of 1 Esdras as we have it ends abruptly (see the NRSV 
>footnote) in the middle of a sentence, whereas the text continues both 
>in the Hebrew Nehemiah 8:13 and in the Greek ESDRAS B 18:13. 

Yup.

>Apparently 
>the whole of Hebrew Ezra and Nehemiah is reflected in ESDRAS B, and 
>presumably you would suggest that Josephus did not have ESDRAS B. 

This seems to be the case.

>ESDRAS A = 1 Esdras, which Josephus apparently had in front of him, 
>starts with material not found in Hebrew followed by something similar 
>to the whole of the Hebrew book of Ezra, 

You forget the order of the letter of the opposers to the building of the
temple (1 Esdras 2:16-30) which appears before the three pages, but after
the foundation laying of the temple in Ezra. He was simply following 1
Esdras. Please read the evidence.

>and then the last half chapter 
>is similar to part of Nehemiah chapter 8. But how much more of Nehemiah 
>was in the original text of 1 Esdras, or in the version in front of 
>Josephus which may not have been truncated? Perhaps Josephus' version 
>included Nehemiah chapters 1-6, following chapters 8 and 9. 

Hey, while we're speculating, it's possible.

>For that 
>matter, perhaps Josephus chose not to use the Nehemiah 7-13 simply 
>because much of the material is lists of names which were of little 
>interest, or perhaps his copy of Nehemiah was defective. 

Including the dedication of the wall, Nehemiah's reforms and the Sabbath
reform.

As I said in an earlier post Josephus has snatches of Nehemiah material
that is not in the book of Nehemiah.

You're arguing that Josephus who had such good access to so many books had
a defective copy of Nehemiah. Hmmm.

>Too many 
>perhapses I'm afraid to draw any real conclusions, certainly for 
>someone with your rigorous approach to history.

The perhapses seem to come profusely from you, at least.

>By the way, what is the date of the earliest manuscripts of Josephus or 
>other definite evidence of his existence? How can you use him as a 
>source for anything earlier than that? Surely, by your exacting 
>standards, the dating of his writings to any date before those earliest 
>manuscripts and his very existence are pure speculation and should be 
>ruled out of court in any discussion of anything. 

Josephus can very often find support in the archaeological and epigraphic
heritage. We know who he was, where he wrote, under what circumstances,
what his purposes were.

>To quote your other 
>E-mail in the similar context of the NT, "1) you don't know when the 
>texts were written; 

We know when AJ was written. The historical situation is relatively precise.

2) you don't know who wrote them; 

We know who wrote it. Many of the fathers quoted him.

3) you don't know the connection between the writers and Palestine." 

And you are being desperate. 

Except that at least 
>we can date much of the NT before the end of the 2nd century 

Very little actually. But exaggeration is for effect.

>as we have 
>dateable manuscripts, whereas I guess the deadline for Josephus is much 
>later. So why do you treat the (alleged) works of Josephus as a good 
>source but reject my parallel use of the NT?

This red herring is merely taking us away from the discourse that you
wanted to argue against but had no evidence for.

1) Each of Josephus's works contextualise themselves, giving a historical
situation in which they were *written*. This is not true for any of the NT.

2) Many of the events in Josephus's works has a lot of archaeological and
epigraphic support. Would you like to provide substantial examples for the NT?

3) Josephus claims to be an eye witness to a lot of his data. Which of the
NT works offers a writer who claims to have been an eye witness?

4) Josephus shows very little in the way of anachronisms in his comments on
contemporary history. There are some interesting anachronisms in the NT.

5) Josephus claims to be writing history and gives the impression that that
is what he is trying to do.

This is off the top of my head, but it should be enough. Literary tradition
is clearly not enough.

At least you seem to come round to my conclusion that Josephus was probably
using the Greek 1 Esdras as his main source for the Ezra story. He states
that he was using Hebrew books -- that's why I found the use of 1 Esdras
interesting -- and he was happy to "deliver these accounts to the Greeks"
(AJ 20,11,2).


Cheers,


Ian