TheLifethus appears to be Josephus’s effort, in a rather hurried com-
position, to close his major work with an appendix “About the Author.”
His historical accounts have been an extension of his personal character
and status, which he will now elaborate according to the accepted criteria.
If this approach to theLifeis correct, the work does not (alas) offer us
better historical traction than any other work. In fact, the text shows much
the same relationship to the parallel stories inWa r2–3 thatAntiquities13–
20 shows in relation toWa r1–2. In both cases Josephus exhibits an evident,
sometimes breathtaking freedom in rewriting the story: rearranging the
order of events, with sometimes differentdramatis personaein different re-
lationships to each other, and offering different moral evaluations. It is
only more striking inLifebecause the subject is Josephus’s own career.
This freedom, although unsettling for historical work, accords with the
prescriptions of rhetoric, particularly the mandate not to repeat the same
things, and with his contemporary Plutarch’s reuse of material in different
ways (cf. also the Gospels, though by different authors). Josephus is unique
only because we have such complete texts in which he retells the same
events.
This new approach toLifetries to deal with his narrative as a whole,
and this implies a concern also for the shape or structure. The structure of
Liferesembles that of his other works in that it reveals his taste for sym-
metrical or “periodic” (chiastic, concentric) design: matching opening and
closing panels and then a movement toward and away from a central ful-
crum, with paired “antiphonal” elements along the way. In theLifethis is
particularly obvious because only the opening and closing sections have to
do with Josephus’s family life; they also both include a voyage to Rome,
benefactions from the wife of a ruling emperor, and providential rescue
(1–16, 414–29). As we have noted, the references to Justus and his rival ac-
count come near the beginning and near the end of the work (40, 336). At
the one-quarter and three-quarter marks are two revolts from Josephus’s
leadership in Tiberias, stories that share strikingly similar features (85–103,
276–308). The delegation from Jerusalem straddles the middle section
(189–332), and at the center of everything sitsLife’s only dream revelation
(208–9), furnishing divine confirmation of Josephus’s mission. It marks it-
self as a fulcrum by the repetition of key terms in reverse order before
(206–7) and after (210–12) the episode.
Observing such a structure takes nothing away from others that may
operate in the narrative at the same time. Dramatic structure, in this case
building to a climax in Josephus’s final confrontation with the delegation294steve mason, james s. mclaren, and john m. g. barclayEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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