The Samaritans in Flavius Josephus

375 Pages·2009·32.581 MB·English

by  Reinhard Pummer

Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism
Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum
Herausgegeben von/Edited by
Peter Schäfer (Princeton, NJ)
Annette Y. Reed (Philadelphia, PA)
Seth Schwartz (New York, NY)
Azzan Yadin (New Brunswick, NJ)
129

Reinhard Pummer
The Samaritans
in Flavius Josephus
Mohr Siebeck
Reinhard Pummer, born 1938; 1967–2004 professor of Religious Studies at the Uni-
versity of Ottawa, Canada; since 2004 Professor Emeritus, Department of Classics and
Religious Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.
e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151462-3
ISBN 978-3-16-150106-7
ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)
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graphie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© 2009 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany.
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Preface
Flavius Josephus included in his works Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities
a number of narratives and short comments about the Samaritans whose
apparent incongruities and contradictions have puzzled modern historians
and occasioned a great variety of explanations. Many a scholar has labored
to disentangle Josephus’ accounts and assign different parts of the stories
to distinct sources, to date these purported sources and to determine the
meaning their various elements had before Josephus incorporated them
into his histories.
The present work adopts a different perspective. It examines Josephus’
Samaritan passages within the context of his work as a whole. The discus-
sion of Josephus’ narratives and comments on the Samaritans in this volume
is designed to show the historian’s scattered statements in their interrelated-
ness and to achieve a Zusammenschau which reveals more than an analysis
of individual pericopes in isolation. From this it will emerge that, regard-
less of the provenance of Josephus’ information and its original context,
the historian used the material at his disposal to put forward and buttress
his own conception and portrayal of the Samaritans. Thus, the study will
delineate Josephus’ personal view of the Samaritans and suggest an answer
to the question of why he depicted them the way he did.
Help in carrying out the research for this work came from the Social Sci-
ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of grants.
It was thanks to these funds that I was able not only to gain access to the
resources necessary for such a work, but also to attend conferences and con-
gresses where I could confer with other scholars interested in the questions
treated in this book, present my preliminary views, and receive feedback.
The grants made it also possible to meet scholars outside the framework of
conferences and to discuss my ideas with them.
Among my colleagues, I owe a special gratitude to two persons: Paul-
Eugène Dion who read and discussed with me an early draft of the manu-
script, offering numerous comments; and to Gary N. Knoppers who read
the version which underlies the present text and made many helpful sugges-
tions for improvements. To both I am most grateful.
Among the librarians who extended their help, I would like to say a
special thank you to Matthias Wendt from the Universität Wien. His quiet
VIII Preface
and efficient assistance was greatly appreciated. To my assistant, Dr. Dina
Teitelbaum, I am grateful for her meticulous proof-reading of the text and
for her help in preparing the indexes.
As always, any errors and other shortcomings that remain in the finished
work are solely my responsibility.
My thankfulness is also extended to the editorial board of the “Texts and
Studies in Ancient Judaism” for accepting my manuscript for this series, and
to the staff at Mohr Siebeck who was as gracious and efficient as ever. To
Dr. Henning Ziebritzki I am grateful for his interest in and support of my
endeavours. It is a pleasure to work with him and his associates.
Last, and most of all, I thank my wife, Lucille, for all her help and en-
couragement during the genesis of this book. It is to her that it is dedicated.
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
a. “Samarians” and “Samaritans” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
b. “Judeans” and “Jews” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Early Non-Josephan Sources About the Samaritans . . . . . . . . . . . 8
a. Ben Sira 50.25–26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
b. 2 Macc. 5.22–23 and 6.1–2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
c. Delos Inscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
d. The Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
e. The Samaritan Pentateuch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
f. The New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
g. Samaritan and Rabbinic Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3. Archaeological Excavations on Mt. Gerizim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4. Samaria in the Time of Josephus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5. Scholarship on the Samaritans in Josephus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6. Josephus as Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7. The Intended Audiences of Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities . . 59
a. The Intended Audience of Jewish War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
b. The Intended Audience of Jewish Antiquities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8. Text and Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9. Aim and Method of this Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Chapter One: / / in Samaria . . . 67
1. Josephus’ Version of 2 Kgs. 17.24–41 (Ant. 9.288–291) . . . . . . . . . 67
2. The Deportation of Israel (Ant. 10.183–185) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3. The Origin and Character of the
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80