following sentences, Josephus ties the Judean laws very closely to the laws
of nature. Indeed, he says that Moses first treated the creation of the world
before disclosing his legislation precisely so that his laws would be seen to
be based upon the construction of the universe. Josephus downplays or
omits material from his sources dealing with Israel’s special election and
covenant (Attridge 1976, 78–92; Daniel 1981; Amaru 1980–1981; Bailey
1987; contra E.P. Sanders 1992, 279). This is in keeping with Josephus’s view
that the Judean laws reflect universal law. His detailed account of the
emperor Gaius’s death shows the efficacy of divine retribution across
national lines (A.J. 19.201–204). This view of history is not meaningful to
Judeans alone, therefore, but will be clear to “any who care to peruse”
Josephus’s work (1.14).
The second outstanding feature of Josephus’s thesis is related to the
first: namely, conformity to the Judean laws promises happiness! He will
repeat the point in A.J. 1.20: those who follow God, the father and Lord of
all, who beholds all things, find a happy life. The word eudaimoniain these
passages is worthy of close attention, because it was the recognized goal of
philosophical schools in Josephus’s day (see, e.g., Aristotle, Eth. Nic.10.6.1;
Epictetus, Diatr.1.4.32; cf. Weiss 1979, 427–28). Two generations after Jose-
phus, Lucian would take pleasure in exposing the philosophers’ competing
and contradictory recipes for happiness (e.g., Vit. auct., Hermot.). But his
many satires on this issue are only effective because philosophers promised
eudaimoniato their adherents.
In that context, it is noteworthy that Josephus presents Judaism much
more as a philosophy than as an ethnic cult. The remainder of the preface
is taken up with philosophical reflections on nature, reason, and law, which
Josephus concludes by saying that, if anyone wishes to search further, he
will find the inquiry “profound and highly philosophical” (A.J. 1.25). This
is not merely an ad hoc device for the preface, for he will portray some of
the key figures in Judean history, notably, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and
Daniel, as peerless philosophers in their own right. And, of course, Josephus
presents Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes as schools within the national
philosophy (A.J.13.171–173; 18.12–18). Further, he introduces the word
eudaimoniasome forty-seven times into his biblical paraphrase, though it
is missing from the Greek Bible. Evidently, he means to present Judaism
as an option, the preferred option, in the philosophical marketplace.
Josephus’s positive advocacy of Judaism seems confirmed, finally, by
a series of direct appeals to the reader. For example: “At the outset, then,
I exhort those who engage these volumes to place their thought in reliance
upon God and to prove our lawgiver, whether he has had a worthy concep-
nora
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