Samuel already insisted (Ant.4.223; 6.36, 84) — was that of an aristocracy
anchored in the hereditary priesthood (cf. 5.135; 6.267-68; 11.111; 14.91). The
high priest offers effective leadership, with many advantages of a monarch
but only asprimus inter pares.This system obviates the two main pitfalls of
kingship: the inevitable tendency to tyranny (cf. Herodotus 3.80) and the
problem of hereditary succession; even if a king should personally avoid
tyranny, children are often not like their parents (Ant.6.33-34). Collegial
aristocracy, by allowing the prominence of one leader but from within a
group of families, affords the advantages of unified direction without ei-
ther tyranny or succession woes.
With such rare and partial exceptions as David and Solomon,
Josephus portrays kingship as a disastrous aberration whenever tried,
leading as Samuel had warned to outrages against the law, tyrannical be-
havior — marked especially by the murder and plunder of the nobility —
and the downfall of the state. Here, incidentally, is the important back-
story ofWa r : in the earlier work it was precisely individuals whom
Josephus styled “tyrants” who revolted against the collegial priestly aris-
tocracy and thus fomented the civil strife that led to Jerusalem’s recent fall
(J.W.1.9-10). In both works it is the Hasmonean Aristobulus who trans-
forms the government into a monarchy, with disastrous consequences for
native rule (J.W.1.70;Ant.13.401). InAntiquitiesJosephus apparently de-
votes so much space in the later work to the world-famous King Herod
(books 14–17) because his reign furnishes a case study in kingship: it was a
crucible of tyranny, undermined by his perpetual anxiety about succession
as he clung to absolute power in the present. Herod had constantly to re-
write his will and groom new successors from the offspring of his various
wives, not least because he would tyrannically execute those who seemed
eager to replace him. His many violations of the law led to his predictably
gruesome death (17.164-92).
Josephus goes on to apply these same themes and language clusters to
Roman rulers in the early decades of his life (Antiquities18–19). Tiberius,
who tyrannically sent more nobles to death, at his personal whim, than
anyone else (Ant.18.226), faced a bizarre succession crisis that produced
the miscreant Gaius Caligula, who himself thrived on harassing the Senate
and those of noble birth (19.2). His grisly end after a short tyranny, re-
counted in minute detail, illustrates the same divine retribution that had
overtaken Herod. Most remarkably, Josephus gives full play to the senato-
rial discussion that followed Gaius’s death concerning the need to restore
aristocratic-senatorial liberty, and he as narrator joins the senators in307JosephusEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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