Similarly, the circumcisions of Azizus, king of Emesa, and Polemo,
king of Cilicia, to marry Drusilla and Berenike, respectively, are mere scenery
for Josephus’s main points. In the first case, we are told that Azizus mar-
ried Drusilla after another king had turned down the marriage because he
was unwilling to convert (A.J. 20.139). Azizus’s willingness to convert, by
contrast, provides a foil for the main story. Felix, the new Judean governor,
is so overcome with passion for Drusilla that he induces her to leave Azizus
and marry him, although he does not intend to make the slightest conces-
sion to Judean tradition. Josephus’s verdict on this arrangement is per-
fectly clear: in marrying Felix, Drusilla “transgress[ed] the ancestral laws”
(20.143). Josephus immediately notes that the unfortunate child of this
marriage was killed in the eruption of Vesuvius (20.144), presumably as a
token of divine retribution (cf. the earlier story of David and Bathsheba),
and goes on to detail Felix’s other impieties (20.162–163, 182). No criticism
of the jilted convert Azizus is implied; unlike the evil Felix, he did the right
thing.
Likewise, Josephus is scandalized by Berenike’s persuasion of Polemo
to be circumcised and marry her only so that she can quash the rumours
of her incestuous relations with her brother (A.J. 20.145). Both of these
cases come in a section of Volume 20 in which Josephus is piling up exam-
ples of divergence from the laws, which finally brought about God’s pun-
ishment in the destruction of the temple (20.160, 166–167, 179–180, 184,
207, 214). He does not mean to suggest, of course, that future converts to
Judaism also run the risk of abuse by Herodian princesses. There is no
moral in the background information that certain people converted. That
Josephus could cite these conversion stories as background without expla-
nation does imply, however, that conversion to Judaism was a common
enough occurrence to be easily understood by his readers.
A Closing Story with a Moral: Conversions in Adiabene
The decisive proof that Josephus warmly welcomed converts is the only
full conversion story in Antiquitates judaicae.It concerns the royal family of
Adiabene, and is the longest single episode in Volume 20, occupying about
one quarter of its text (A.J. 20.17–96). Its position in the narrative consti-
tutes a massive contextual rebuttal of Cohen’s attempt to tease an anti-con-
version stance out of the incidental references to conversion in Volume 20.
The Adiabene story precedes, and completely overshadows, those inciden-
tal notices.
This story has been widely read for what it might reveal historically
about the mechanics of conversion, or about Josephus’s sources (Neusner
1964; Schalit 1975; J.J. Collins 1985, 177–80; Schiffman 1987; Segal 1990,
TheContra Apionemin Social and Literary Context 155