Date and Provenance

The date of composition is determined by a statement in the work itself, which declares that it was written 885 years after the Roman destruction of the Herodian temple. At the time Josippon was written, the date of this destruction was customarily believed to be ad 68 (although it is actually ad 70), which puts the date of the composition of Josippon at ad 953. This mid-10th-century date is also confirmed by internal indications in the text itself and because the book is not quoted before this date (Feldman, “Flavius Josephus Revisited,” 775–76).

Southern Italy was the foremost center of Jewish learning in Europe in the 10th century, and there are indications in the text that the author lived in that region. There was in the 9th–10th centuries renewed Jewish interest in their own history. This interest led to the translation into Hebrew of many Jewish books that had been collected in the biblical canon of the Catholic Church. The author of Josippon advanced this interest by using the historical works of Josephus (via Pseudo-Hegesippus) to provide additional information about Jewish history—especially the Second Temple period, much of which the deuterocanonical books did not cover.

Although the original author of Josippon distinguished between himself and his source Josephus, the book came to be attributed to Flavius Josephus within a few decades of its composition (Flusser, “Josippon,” 388). The attribution of Josippon to the first-century historian Josephus probably seemed plausible in light of the fact that Josephus himself says that he wrote an account of his Jewish War “in the language of my homeland” before he wrote the Greek version of the same account (Josephus, Jewish War, 1.3). It was natural, then, that some assumed Josippon was this earlier version of the Jewish War.

The original author of Josippon did, however, make a mistake in identifying Flavius Josephus properly. The name of Flavius Josephus’ father, which in the Greek version of the Jewish War (Josephus, Jewish War, 1.3) was Matthias, does not appear in the Latin Pseudo-Hegesippus. However, the text of Pseudo-Hegesippus mentions another Josephus who had a role in the First Jewish War—a Josephus ben Gurion. The original author of Josippon mistakenly equated these two men. This equation was then combined with a translation difficulty. The Latin Pseudo-Hegesippus references Josephus ben Gurion as Josephus Gorionides. When translated into Hebrew, it became Josippon, after the Jewish—Greek form of the name.

The Book of Josippon underwent expansion by anonymous writers in the first half of the 12th century. As the mistaken identification of Flavius Josephus as the author became more widely accepted, the ascription of the work to Josephus was explicitly added to the text and the passage about the book’s composition 885 years after the destruction of the temple (which rules out the first-century Josephus as the author) was deleted, though the notice about the date survives in one manuscript copy of Josippon. When the expanded edition was created, the text was also rewritten so that the narrative read as a first-person account by Flavius Josephus himself (Flusser, “Josippon,” 389–90). The original author’s references to himself and his editorial activity thus disappeared in subsequent copies. The expanded edition of Josippon also contains several fictitious stories relating to Jewish history.

The text of Josippon has been known principally in two editions. The older edition was published in the late 1400s in Mantua, Italy, and is closer textually to the original form of the work. The other edition was published in Constantinople in 1510 and reflects the 12th-century expansion and re-editing of the original text. This latter edition became the one best known to scholars and historians, and until recently was the source for most subsequent reprints (Feldman, “Flavius Josephus Revisited,” 774). By 1970, Flusser had produced a third, critical edition of the original text based on the available manuscripts which cleared the mistaken categorization of pseudonymity (Flusser, The Josippon).