Kate Leeming on the Slavonic Version of Josephus Jewish War

[Ken Olson]

We have been discussing Samuel Zinner's arguments for assuming a Josephan original different from the Greek text of Josephus Jewish War that we have underlies the Slavonic Version of the Jewish War on this forum a good bit recently. In this post I will address instead Kate Leeming's arguments from her chapter in the Blackwell Companion to Josephus (2016), as I think Zinner's arguments are derivative of hers. She argues both that there are Omissions (i.e., material found in the Greek text, but not in the Slavonic) in the Slavonic that would suggest that it is not based on a source other than known Greek text of the Jewish War, and that there are Additions (i.e., material that is in the Slavonic but not the Greek text) that most probably came from Josephus himself, thus requiring a Josephan source other than the known Greek text of the Jewish War). I do not think any of her arguments make the case for her conclusion.

First, the Omissions:

Leeming 393 Omissions - Highlighted.png (310.95 KiB) Viewed 11171 times

Three points here:

First, there is a very plausible reason that the Chronicler would not use Josephus' prologue, which is that he is writing his own chronicle of events and not simply translating Josephus Jewish War. He is not concerned with Josephus' credentials as an author (as Josephus is not the author of the Chronicle but a source for it). I have previously suggested that the fourth century Latin work De excidio Hierosolymitano whose author is called Pseudo-Hegesippus by convention, is similar.

Second, Leeming's claim that the Chronicler's use of John Malalas and George Hamartolos 'make good' some omissions from the Greek text is an awkward attempt to avoid acknowledging that the Chronicler is not, in fact, making a copy of Josephus Jewish War, but writing a chronicle of the events based primarily on Josephus but also using other sources.

Third, Kate Leeming's recapitulation of the argument made by her late father in his 2005 paper is inconclusive; notice how she qualifies it by saying it is compatible (as she earlier uses 'consistent') with the the theory that Josephus wrote two versions of the Jewish War rather than that it proves it. Henry Leeming's argument is basically that in the known Greek text of the Jewish War there are explanatory glosses for the Gentile audience that do not appear in the Slavonic version and that this is because the Slavonic is based on the earlier Aramaic (or Hebrew?) version of the War that Josephus wrote for his fellow Jews who did not need the matters covered in the glosses explained to them.

The problem with these two examples (and all of the examples in the 2005 paper) is that the omissions can readily be explained otherwise, though Henry Leeming does not examine this possibility in the paper. It is very plausible to think that the Chronicler omitted the elaboration on the Cutheans mentioned in Josephus' account of Antiochus' campaigns against the Medes in BJ 1.63 because he thought it was of little relevance to his medieval Russian audience. At the same time, he may have thought a Christian audience familiar with the gospels would know what a Pharisee was without his needing to explain the term.

Second, the Additions:

Leeming 398 Additions - Highlighted.png (315.68 KiB) Viewed 11171 times

Leeming 399 Additions - Highlighted.png (38.74 KiB) Viewed 11171 times

First, the Addition in IV.6.3 383:

And if someone dared to throw earth from his sleeve
secretly on his [dead kin) lying [there], they would kill him also.

This may indeed be more vividly presented than the statement in the Greek text:

For burying a relative, as for desertion, the penalty was death,
and one who granted this boon to another

But vividness of narration is at least as likely, if not more, to be an effect of authorial effort than of eyewitness testimony because authors regularly try to make their narration vivid and have practice at doing so.

Second, the claim that the brief story about the Jewish centurion Phoia comes from Josephus is possibly true, but it hasn't been demonstrated to be probably true. Here is the story:

And on the other side, where Simon was standing, a certain Phoia, a centurion, summoned the Roman commander Cerealius, pleading that he should give him his hand, and he »came out« with his own [men]. And having covered a stone tablet with gold, they called on Titus to order his own men to pick it up, [so] that it would not crumble. And these, seeing the glitter of the gold.
ran forward, and they threw the board from the wall and hit them. And Caesar, having realized their deception, grew sad [Leeming-Meshchersky, Slavonic Version, V 328 p.502].

It is true that this story is not from the known Greek text of Jewish War, nor from the New Testament, but that hardly justifies Leeming's conclusion that it must come from Josephus. The Chronicler might well have found the story, or a similar story which he rewrote himself, elsewhere and decided to include it because it was interesting.

Third, the argument about the Slavonic version preserving the precise text of an Essene oath has already been discussed on this list an is a simple error on Leeming's part. There is no text of an Essene oath in the Slavonic, nor does Rubinstein say there is. (I find Rubinstein's actual argument to be indecisive, as the detail he points to may simply be a minor expansion of the text and does not require a source and the parallel he points out in the Qumran scrolls is vague).

viewtopic.php?p=163686#p163686

Fourth and finally, Leeming's allows that the addition of Old Testament references could be due to the Chronicler (or Chronographer), but that it is also possible they came from Josephus and they corroborate the theory that the references come from Josephus' own writing. This is a luke warm argument.

For comparison, the author of the Excidio introduces Old Testament references into his Christian book based on Josephus Jewish War with extreme frequency. Even Titus Caesar makes them in his speeches. Carson Bay has recently published a book on the use of Old Testament exempla in the Excidio, where they usually occur within speeches.

Here is a speech given to Josephus by the author of the Excidio in which he cites Daniel:

Iosephus wept at this, he beseeched Iohannes, he lamented the condition of the country, he entreated with tearful speech, he called upon him as a fellow citizen although more stubborn than the rest, he bore witness that by the grace of omnipotent god he would be safe with his men, if only he would cease to arouse the Roman military to the overthrow of the city. When he was unable to prevail upon him: "It is not a wonder," he said, "Iohannes, if you persist all the way to the destruction of the city, since divine aid has already abandoned it. But it is a wonder that you do not believe it is about to be destroyed, since you may read the prophetic books, in which the destruction of our country has been announced to you and the restored greatness again destroyed by the Roman army. For what else does Daniel shout? He prophesized not indeed what had already been done but what would happen. What is the abomination of devastation which he proclaimed would be by the coming Romans, unless it is that which now threatens? What is that prophecy, which has been often recalled by us announced by god on high, that the city would be utterly destroyed at that time, when its fellow tribesmen will have been killed by the hands of the citizens, unless that which we see now being fulfilled? And perhaps, because it no longer pleases for the temple polluted with forbidden blood to be defended, it pleases that it be cleansed by fire.” (Excidio 5.31).

None of this, of course, proves that the author of the Slavonic Chronicle could not possibly have had other earlier sources and perhaps even a Josephan one, but the positive case for requiring the Chronicler's use of a Josephan source other than the known Greek text of the Jewish War (and Malalas and Hamartolos) is surprisingly weak and does not establish the claim.

References

Bay, Carson, Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus (Cambridge 2023).

Leeming, Henry, 2005. “Josephus slavonice versus Josephus graece: Towards a Typology of Divergence.”
Slavonic and East European Review 83: 1–13 (2005).

Leeming, Kate, 'The Slavonic Version of Josephus Jewish War' in A Companion to Josephus (Wiley Blackwell 2016) edited by Honora Chapman and Zuleika Rogers, 390-401.

Leeming, Henry and Katherine Leeming. 2003. Josephus’ Jewish War and its Slavonic Version:
A Synoptic Comparison of the English Translation by H. St. J. Thackeray with the Critical Edition by
N. A. Meščerskij (Meshchersky) of the Slavonic Version in the Vilna Manuscript Translated into English by H. Leeming
and L. Osinkina. Leiden: Brill.

Best,

Ken

[StephenGoranson]

A comparison or contrast on how Slavonic Josephus and Sefer Yosippon each dealt with or avoid dealing with Essenes might be instructive.
Is there a good publication that addresses such?

[Ken Olson]

Also further implying its disunity is the fact that despite Cerealius seems to be crushed here (which is what M also thinks of this), the same general Cerealius appears as an actor later in the narrative. Furthermore, according to the parallel columns, it looks like multiple phrases within the Phoias episode are found in Greek separate (i.e., "Caesar, now that his eyes were opened to the trick"). So yeah... it looks like the chronographer/chronicler was just sprucing up this specific passage with a story, that we know isn't from Josephus because it contradicts outright other known material from Josephus afterward, at least the way I'm looking at it.

It looks to me like something has been garbled in transmission in the passage. It's not made explicit that Cerealius was crushed, but it's hard to tell what the point of introducing him and his men was if it's not that they were the ones crushed. I haven't looked at the Slavonic text (i.e., the old Russian), but I wonder if we're supposed to understand the stone tablet covered with gold and the 'board' thrown from the wall are the same object.

Best,

Ken

[Ken Olson]

A comparison or contrast on how Slavonic Josephus and Sefer Yosippon each dealt with or avoid dealing with Essenes might be instructive.
Is there a good publication that addresses such?

None that I know of, but I doubt that the Slavonic Addition in this particular case is based on a source as opposed to someone's expansion of the existing Greek text.

Slavonic Addition on the Essenes.png (283.23 KiB) Viewed 11083 times

The addition is not really providing any new information. The addition 'they rest little at night and rise for song, praising and praying to God' restates what is already in the Greek. If they offer prayers before the sun is up (i.e., while it's still night) then it could be deduced that they rest little at night or at least less than people that d not get up that early. The part about "song, praising and praying to God' is not really three different activities, but an expansion of the 'certain prayers' of the Greek text.

Best,

Ken

P.S. I think a comparison of the Sefer Yosippon and the Excidio might be more fruitful, but I haven't looked at that yet.

[StephenGoranson]

Thanks, Ken. Yes, comparing also the Excidio could be fruitful. As for omissions or avoidances, Yosippon largely omits Essenes, and sometimes converts them, calling them Hasidim. In part, due to Jewish and Christian polemics, perhaps.

[Ken Olson]

At the beginning of the History Valley interview with Samuel Zinner on the Slavonic Josephus, Zinner argues that the fact that the Slavonic text is late and based on a Greek exemplar does not show that it could not be ultimately based on an Aramaic (or Hebrew) version of Josephus' Jewish War. Many early writings survive only in translations found in late manuscripts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4NJpBg0oSM&t=1758s

This is true, but sidesteps the point of the objection. Zinner needs positive evidence for claiming that the Slavonic text does indeed descend from a Semitic language original. Simply saying the the data do not disprove it is not enough. Kate Leeming's arguments in the OP do attempt to provide such evidence, but they are indecisive.

According to Kate Leeming's article on the Slavonic Josephus cited in the OP, the earliest manuscript of the Slavonic version of Josephus Jewish War is from 1463. We do not know the date at which it was written, but it must have been after the start of the Christianization of Russia in the late 9th century. The traditional date (which is, of course disputable) at which Vladimir, Grand Price of Kiev, was baptized as a Christian is 988 CE. So the text was written somewhere between the 10th and 15th centuries.

Arie Rubinstein, in 'The Essenes According to the Slavonic Version of Josephus' "Wars"', Vetus Testamentum, 6.3 (1956) pp. 307-308, writes:

That the Slavonic version, however, can hardly be a from a Hebrew or Aramaic document is suggested by the total absence of semitisms, as distinct from a number of Biblical cliches not found in the Greek version, and by the fact that a good number of corruptions in the Slavonic version can only be explained on the supposition that it was made from a Greek version.

As Chrissy Hansen has previously noted, there are a number of places where the Slavonic version of Josephus War does not provide a translation, but simply writes out a Greek word, which shows that the author knew used a source in Greek. One notable example of this is in the story about Pilate's having the imperial standards brought into Jerusalem, which is found directly before the Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavianum. The Slavonic edition has the Greek word semeia (sign or standard) written out rather than translated.

Slavonic II IX.2, p 260.png (149.67 KiB) Viewed 11070 times

Slavonic II IX.2, p. 261.png (130.97 KiB) Viewed 11070 times

The belief that the Slavonic version of Josephus' Jewish War is based on an early Josephan text (distinct from the known Greek text), based on considerations such as those discussed in the OP, is driving the belief that it is derived from on an early Aramaic (or Hebrew) work. It does not derive support from the date of the manuscripts or the presence of Semitisms in the text.

Best,

Ken