Josephus' Portrait of Gedaliah

Josephus' Portrait of Gedaliah . JOSEPHUS' PORTRAIT OF GEDALIAH by Louis H. Feldman Louis H. Feldman, professor of classics at Yeshiva University , received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1951. He is the editor of Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, Books 18-20, in the Loeb Classical Library, and author ofScholarship on Philo and Josephus (1937-1962), Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1937-1980),Josep.hus: A Supplementary Bibliography, and (most recently, Princeton University Press, 1983),Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World. 1. Introduction 1 When one examines the six fast days in the present-day Jewish calendar, one notes that three of them (the Tenth of Tevet, the Seventeenth of Tammuz, and the Ninth of Av) are connected with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Day of Atonement is based on Leviticus 16:29, 23:27, and Numbers 29:7, and the Fast of Esther is based on Esther 4: 16. The most unusual of these fast days is the Fast of Gedaliah, which is nowhere mentioned as such in the Bible, though it is said (Rosh Hashanah 18b) to be alluded to by Zechariah's reference to the fast of the seventh month (8:19). It is significant that when the rabbis comment on this fast day they compare it with the three fast days connected with the destruction of the Temple, since, they say, "the death of the righteous is put on a level with the burning of the House of our G-d." One is naturally led to wonder why the assassination of a minor J~wish official, serving as the apparent puppet governor, a collaborator no less, of a conquering foreign king-indeed, the very king, Nebuchadnezzar, responsible for the destruction of the Temple itself-, should occasion such outpouring of mourning as to be placed upon the religious calendar forever. That Josephus should evince great interest in Gedaliah should occasion no surprise since he apparently recognized in him a predecessor of himself, as he did in his portraits of Joseph, Jeremiah, Daniel, Esther, 2 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 and Mordecai, all of whom had prophetic powers (as he claimed for himself) and all of whom suffered for their people.1 The analogy with Gedaliah is perhaps the closest of all, however, inasmuch as both he and Josephus advocated subservience to the foreign power and an end to the desire for an independent state. How to justiJY such subservience, whether in the case of Gedaliah or in Josephus' own case, must have presented a real problem to Josephus. His solution is that it was a matter of military necessity. Thus, whereas the Bible (2 Kings 25:22,Jeremiah 40:7) indicates that Gedaliah was appointed by King Nebuchadnezzar ofBabylon, in Josephus' version (Ant. 10.155) the appointment is made by Nebuchadnezzar's· general Nabuzardanes. Moreover, that there was no military possibility of continuing the war against Nebuchadnezzar is clear from Josephus' statement (Ant. 10.155) that those who were left in Judaea and over whom Gedaliah was made governor were the poor (so also Jeremiah 40:7)2 and the deserters Gosephus' addition). 2. Gedaliah's Virtues The first of the thirty-six stages, according to the Greek rhetorician Theon, when praising a person was to laud his ancestry.3 Indeed, the Hippias Maior (285D), ascribed to Plato, notes, as one of the particular concerns of an "archaeology" (the very title ofJosephus' magnum opus), the genealogies of heroes and of men. Josephus' Greek readers would have thought of the importance attached to genealogy in Homer, as, for example, in the scene where Glaucus meets Diomedes (Iliad 6.123-231) and where they first exchange genealogies when they are at the point of 'See David Daube, "Typology in Josephus," journal ofjewish Studies 31 (1980), pp. 18-36. 2Generally speaking, Josephus in his Antiquities follows the Greek te.xt. Here, however, he quite clearly is follOWing the Hebrew te.xt, inasmuch as the Greek text for this passage does not mention the poor and says only that the Babylonians committed to Gedaliah the men and their wives. On the question of the text employed by Josephus see my "Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the...