The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Josephus

Josephus

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Monday, February 23 2009, 21:33:46 (CET) from *** - *** Non-Profit Organizations - Windows XP - Mozilla Website: Website title:

Josephus He was a great scoundrel, turncoat, traitor, opportunist and a very shady chronicler. He says that he was a respected commander of Jewish forces, feared even by the Romans. When Vespasian attacked the Jews for their rebelliousness Josephus and his Jews, refusing to surrender, were forced to draw lots to see who would kill his fellows and then ultimately himself. He tells us that at the end it came down to two Jews...Josephus killed his fellow, promising to join him...and then surrendered to the Romans, fawned all over Vespasian and was pardoned....going to live in Rome as a friend and suck-up to the new emperor. I don’t believe a word of his two contradictory books about this war written when he was kissing ass in Rome. I don’t believe a word of the bible either, when it tries to present actual events. For one thing this business about killing each other and then the last few killing themselves, rather than surrender....how is that honorable? At other times we hear how men waded into the thick of battle knowing they had no chance but vowing to take as many enemies with them....and yet at other times they’re praised for killing their own and then themselves...what a waste. Six hundred men supposedly died this way at Masada. If each one had taken two Romans to hell with him....it would have been far more commendable and useful. How is committing suicide, on the eve of battle, commendable? If that’s the kind of stuff you’re made of, why start a war at all? I think religion glazes over people’s eyes as well as their brains. You have to make so many allowances for the garbage that passes for history that, if you want to continue, you have to throw your hands up in despair and park what’s left of your mind on a hat rack. For instance... “Festus’ friend Agrippa does not come off so well” our author describes how tactlessly he had added to his palace a vast dining-room where he could recline, and during the meal keep an eye on all that went on in the Temple courts (in Jerusalem, mine). As this was a breach of the Law, the priests were incensed and built a high wall to block his view. This naturally enraged the king, and Festus ordered the Jews to pull the wall down again.” What was against the Law....to build a dining-room? To eat your meals while looking at the Temple courts? How did they manage to build a wall without the reclining Agrippa knowing about it? Did no servant carrying a tray come to the reclining Agrippa and say, “look at that, they’re starting to build a wall”. It takes time to build a wall...you have to haul bricks from somewhere, lay out the area, take measurements, mix mud for mortar...you build such walls a brick at a time....did Agrippa, digesting his meals each day, not think to ask himself, “I wonder what they’re building over there, blocking my view”? Or did he just continue munching, day in and day out, until finally it dawned on him, Hey! That’s a WALL”! Then there’s the tale of one Simon, one of many called so, who... “...had wrought prodigies of valour in defence of his native city. But now, so far from defending his kith and kin from the Syrians who were so treacherously attacking them, he proclaimed his guilt for all to hear, then proceeded to punish his own foul deeds, prove his courage, and prevent his enemies from gloating over his death. He seized his aged father by the hair and ran him through with his sword. Next he killed his mother, wife and children. Finally, mounting the pile of corpses to make himself as conspicuous as he could, he drove the blade up to the hilt into his own throat.” What the...? I can see if out of despair, not wanting his parents, wife and family tortured or sold into slavery, he kills them himself...although I still can’t see why he wouldn’t prefer to go down fighting himself and maybe killing a few more of the enemy...or force them to commit your suicide for you...why it’s preferable to take your own life. But to turn this tragic act of murdering ones own loved ones into an attempt to “punish his own foul deeds” is a little sick..and just the sort of thing them old Hebrews loved to concoct. These people were in love with sin. Then there are inexplicable accounts of battles between Jewish villagers, they had no standing army, and Roman legions. At some points in the narratives the Jews manage to rout the same Romans who, on the next day, massacre the fleeing Jews. There’s no rhyme nor reason for how villagers could chase off legionaires they ran from the next day. “The Jews...relying on their numbers and enthusiasm charged down in no sort of order upon the Romans, broke through their line and, at a cost of only twenty-two of their own men, killed over five hundred of their trained and well-armed opponents.” Then there’s the question of battering rams and walls. The Romans attacked several villages and towns before arriving before the walls of Jerusalem. For some reason the same battering rams could knock holes in some walls and some parts of walls, but were totally useless at other walls....with no explanation given as to why and how. And then this... “The Damascenes had as a precautionary measure some time before shut up the entire local Jewish population, numbering ten and a half thousand, in the Gymnasium. They now decided to avenge the defeat of Cestius (never mind, mine) by massacring the lot, but were afraid of being stopped by their wives, who with the proneness of their sex to fall for the latest religion imported from another country had almost all turned Jewesses.” Those silly women had almost all become Jews? In other places Josephus mourns how Jews fought and killed each other...so why would it matter that all the silly wives had become Jews? Why would that prevent murder? While Josephus was still in command of Jewish forces, before he switched sides...he tells of a captured Roman, Clitus, he condemns to have his hands cut off by one of his soldiers. The soldier refuses at which point Clitus begs to be left with one hand to which Josephus agrees...then Williamson, who is as much a fool as his subject, adds this... “If the reader chooses, he may accept the later version (Of Josephus’ two books recounting the same incidents, mine) according to which the soldier was ordered to cut off only one of the young man’s hands, and....he dared not do so...but in order to disguise the soldier’s poltroonery turned to Clitus himself and addressed him in the best literary style:’ Inasmuch as you are worthy to forfeit both your hands, having acted so ungratefully towards myself, act now as your own public executioner’...To the offender’s tearful entreaties to be left with one hand Josephus unwillingly consented, at which the young man, delighted at not being compelled to cut off BOTH HIS OWN HANDS (emphasis emphatically mine, but Williamson’s as well.” What are you going to do with a “historian” like this? If he were alive and writing today I know of a Cambria Press that would print this idiotic “chronicle”. The next time someone mentions Josephus as a “source”....hit him. In yet another engagement between Romans and Jews the Jews come out on the short end... “...and an unknown number leapt into the water, rendering the river impassable with their bodies.” Here again...if you can’t swim, why jump into a river? It’s sure death and not a pleasant one...wouldn’t it be far more satisfying, on every level, to whack several Romans as you go down? If Simon didn’t mind stepping on top of his bleeding family merely to be “more conspicuous”...why didn’t Jews, and Romans, simply walk over the corpses in the river.....what does Josephus mean, “rendering the river impassable”? When the siege of Jerusalem finally came, after several towns had been taken and destroyed we come to this.... “...the only safe and speedy way (to get at the Jews inside, mine) was to enclose the whole City with a wall. Then, while resistance was crumbling, work on the platforms could be resumed....it was a stupendous undertaking: the circuit measured four and a half miles, the ground was very difficult, and thirteen large forts were to built on outside. Yet such was the competition from legion down to individual that the task was completed in three days.” Three days? Four and half miles of wall, made of mud bricks thick enough to resist attack plus thirteen “large forts”, all in three days? Where did the bricks come from? The Romans were outside the city walls....there were no warehouses filled with bricks....it takes days to make mud bricks and dry them in the sun. Once again, the Jews along the ramparts couldn’t see what was coming? If the point was to keep the Jews locked up inside, isn’t that what Jews themselves wanted...to remain safe behind a wall....the Romans added a SECOND wall? In other places and times the Jews rushed out and managed to destroy fortifications, siege engines and the platforms under them...but this time they couldn’t? Three days? And here... “How many died we shall never know” This is strange. In this instance Josephus doesn’t want to make something up? And... “...deserters put the number of pauper bodies thrown out in three and a half months at six hundred thousand, and stated that others had been stacked in the biggest houses and locked in.” If you can throw hundreds of thousands of dead over the wall, why would you lock others away? Why? To make sure disease and pestilence and stink enveloped the town from inside as well as outside? Any idea what that many bodies rotting in the sun can do? It isn’t only numbers that are exaggerated...the entire story is an tall tale. Same with the bible. In some places not even Williamson can be fooled... “ The partisans, believing him (Josephus, mine) dead, were cock-a-hoop, and Josephus’ imprisoned mother uttered a lament which he somehow managed to put on record.” At this point Josephus is himself a prisoner of the Romans....how he heard his mother lament...and how he knew her shrieks from those of the thousands of shrieks coming from inside Jerusalem, over all the bedlam of war and camp and wailing....well, it’s just a miracle that’s all. At least Williamson shows himself to be somewhat rational. When the Jews were nearly finished they asked for terms... “The Romans, who even now were prepared to spare their lives if they threw down their weapons and surrender unconditionally. To this they replied by requesting leave to go with their wives and children right away into the desert. Regarding this surely reasonable plea as gross impudence the infuriated commander, who had no doubt hoped to round up thousands of human chattels to be profitably auctioned, declared that henceforth he would spare no one; and the next day he sent his men to burn and sack the City...” I don’t get it. I mean what was Josephus trying to accomplish with such wild tales? No doubt he was trying to in some way justify his own treachery. You’d think the guy was an Assyrian nationalist the way he turned on his own people. By with these wild and improbable accounts, wasn’t he just holding up a banner saying ...”Do Not Trust Anything I Say”? If the Roman commander had visions of rounding up and selling the Jews...why NOT agree to their conditions? Why not allow them to lay down their arms and go out into the desert? What better way was there of “rounding them up”? They were willing to deliver themselves over to him. Instead he decides to burn them down in their city? Then Josephus expresses his indignation that the Jews wouldn’t , with their usual willingness to believe any old ridiculous thing they heard, believe certain portents.... “Josephus here takes occasion to remark on the stubborn refusal of the Jews to heed a whole series of unmistakable portents...stars, comets, strange lights, gates that opened of their own accord, chariots in the clouds, and even a cow that gave birth to a lamb in the Temple courts!” Yeah! What got into them Jews anyway! Jesus Christ, they never met a whopping tale they wouldn’t believe...and now they refused to believe something as common and ordinary as a cow giving birth to a lamb? Why that’s nothing compared to all the nonsense they swallowed whole. What was the matter with them all of a sudden? When the Romans finally burst into the city.... “...they blocked the streets with the dead and deluged the whole city with blood, so that in numerous instances it extinguished the flames.” Blood....put out fires? And now to numbers...that great field for mendacity... “He (Josephus, who else, mine) goes on coolly to give statistics: prisoners taken in the whole war totaled ninety-seven thousand; those who perished in the siege one million one hundred thousand.” There’s no way the land could support that many people. Cities were ten to fifteen miles distant in many cases..there simply wasn’t space enough, enough fields to feed that many people. If, as they say, testimony in court is worthless is one is found uttering even one lie, why does anyone believe anything these people wrote? With the war over and Jerusalem subdued, except for two more fortresses, one of which was Masada, Titus, son of Vespasian, decided to break up his legions, sending each to another part of the empire...but one legion didn’t fare so well... “The Twelfth, in spite of its excellent services to himself, was punished for its defeat under Cestius by being banished to the upper reaches of the Euphrates.” This is too much. The upper reaches of the Euphrates is where Assyria used to be. The land was known for its riches, its fields and cities and monuments. Surely that can’t have been a punishment. I don’t know what to make of this guy. Actually I do. Whatever his motives, clearly the man was unreliable to say the least. The puzzle is why Williamson, and so many others, don’t come out and call him the liar or fantasist that he is. All I know is that today only Cambria Press would print this book. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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