Tradition and Innovation in Josephus' Antiquities

This study elucidates the interpretive strategies, compositional method, literary creativity, and ideological agendas of the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in adapting native textual traditions to form new and imaginative accounts for an elite Greco-Roman milieu in his twenty-book history, Antiquities of the Jews. I begin with literary analysis of the stories of Joseph and Esther in both their Hebrew and Greek scriptural versions, and then especially as retold by Josephus in his Antiquities. I am attentive to the unique features in each textual tradition as well as to the ways that even minor alterations impact the unfolding narratives. Those results anchor my analysis of Josephus' adaptation of the Joseph and Esther stories in two accounts in the non-scriptural second half of his Antiquities, those concerning the Tobiads and Agrippa I. There, I show how the Joseph and Esther stories are used archetypally as models for fresh compositions, enlivening his narratives through conscious scriptural echoes while exhibiting considerable creativity and imagination in composing narratives wholly his own. Rather than merely imitating the Joseph and Esther stories, Josephus uses subversion, inversion, and irony to portray the Tobiads and Agrippa I in relation to their scriptural archetypes. I conclude that, in addition to exhibiting Josephus' considerable literary creativity, his use of these techniques serves to further several programmatic agendas in Antiquities such as extolling the Jews' illustrious ancestors and demonstrating a decline in the post-scriptural period of Jewish history. Josephus' adaptation of the Joseph and Esther stories in the accounts of the Tobiads and Agrippa I also reflects a broader and significant preoccupation with court-tales. Within his diaspora context, this is driven by the utility of court-tales in proving that Jews are successful in the highest reaches of Gentile society and power—including Josephus himself, as a client of the Flavian imperial house in Rome.