Jennifer Gerrish (College of Charleston)
This paper argues that Josephus’ laudatory portrait of Julius Caesar offers an aetiology for the special relationship Josephus hoped to (re-)establish between the imperial Caesars and the Jews following the Flavian victory in 70 CE. In both the Bellum Judaicum and the Antiquitates Judaicae, Caesar’s interactions with the Jews are amplified (or exaggerated). Josephus suggests that Caesar only escaped the siege of Alexandria thanks to the support of Antipater, Hyrcanus II and the Jews (BJ 1.187-192; AJ 14.127-136). This version diverges from the prevailing historiographical tradition (originating with the Bellum Alexandrinum), which elided the role of the Jews in Caesar’s victory (Canfora 2007). Josephus illustrates Caesar’s gratitude toward the Jews with a collection of official documents that he attributes to Caesar granting the Jews a variety of protections and expressing thanks for their support (AJ 14.190-216). However, these documents are probably not all Caesarian (Eilers 2003); Josephus also incorrectly credits Caesar with granting citizenship to the Jews of Alexandria (AJ 14.188; Apion 2.37; Mason 2008: 352 n. 2998). While these may be genuine errors, I will argue that they reflect Josephus’ studied carelessness about misrepresentation or ambiguity when it supports his underlying themes.
By establishing the “ancient” origins of the protections granted to the Jews, Josephus creates a defense against the erosion of those rights in his own day. By focusing the Jews’ unique relationship with Julius Caesar, Josephus creates an origin “myth” for Jewish rights and the Jews’ relationship with the later Caesars. Caesar resided in the recorded past rather than the mythological, but he was the earliest figure to whom Josephus could plausibly trace a mutually beneficial relationship between the Romans and the Jews. For Josephus’ Jewish audience, the message was hopeful: their loyalty and bravery had once been rewarded by the Romans, and there was reason to believe they would be recognized again in the future. For Rome’s Jews in particular, who inhabited a city now dotted with monuments funded by the spoils of Jerusalem, there were daily reminders of their subjugation. While Josephus’ writings could not wholly outweigh these tangible markers, Josephus offered hope for a future conciliation between the Caesars and the Jews by recalling the foundation on which their relationship was originally built. Conversely, Greek and Roman readers were put on notice: the Jewish people had won the favor of the great Julius Caesar by saving him in a moment of crisis; their rights and privileges under Roman rule were legitimized by their “ancient” pedigree (Pucci Been Zeev 1998: 5-6).
Scholars have debated whether Josephus should be counted among the “Roman historians” (Mason 2016). This aetiological focus places Josephus squarely within the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition of the early empire. Just as Livy, Velleius Paterculus, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus tried to make sense of the transition from Republic to Empire by reaching to Rome’s distant past, Josephus processes the new relationship between Rome and the Jews by reaching back to the perceived founder of the Jews’ protections under Roman law.