(printed p. 26 — Book I)
There is certainly no conflict between these two Josephuses concerning the number of Jewish sects. As was shown in the preceding chapter, each breathes and sounds together in the triad. Yet because Drusius perhaps prefers war between them to changing an opinion once adopted, I shall now show this: if, as they do not, these two Josephuses fought with one another, we should go over to Flavius rather than to Gorionides.
First, the age, name, family, whole manner of life, and deeds at home and abroad of Josephus Flavius himself are very well known to all who have even a modest acquaintance with letters and histories.
(printed p. 27)
For he lived while Jerusalem still stood; he saw it, with its temple, burned by Vespasian and Titus; after that burning, in the times of those same men, he wrote the books on the Jewish captivity; and finally, in the thirteenth year of Domitian, who was the son of the one and the brother of the other, he composed the twenty volumes of the Jewish Antiquities. His name is now, and always has been, so illustrious that if someone cites “Josephus,” no one understands anyone other than him.
His family and office were priestly. From boyhood he devoted his life to various studies of virtue and letters; for a long time he bore arms for his country; and at last he came into the power of the Romans, as he himself narrates all these things in his own Life, in book 20 of the Antiquities, the last chapter, and also in book 1 Against Apion.
His authority is now so great that his commentaries were approved by the Emperor Titus’s own hand, praised by King Agrippa, and entered into the public library at Rome, as may be read in the Life itself. There too he was deemed worthy of a statue for the glory of his intellect, as Saint Jerome handed down in the Catalogue. Jerome also, in the little book to Eustochium on the keeping of virginity, calls him the Greek Livy.
But what similar thing can be said about Josephus Gorionides? Everything in him and about him is obscure. None of the ancient Latin or Greek writers mentions him.
[margin: Josephus Flavius is better known and more illustrious than Gorionides.]
(printed p. 28)
It is not known when he wrote, where he lived, what he did, or what sort of man he was. In my notes on Saint Kilian, note 5, page 24, I indicated three different opinions of men about him, to which I now add a fourth.
The first opinion is that he is the same as Josephus Flavius himself. Certain rabbis, such as Radak, think this; indeed he is also cited by Pagninus under the word Meshech. So do almost all the modern Innovators: Munster in the preface to Gorionides himself, Fagius in his translation of Elias’s Tishbi, where he treats Jesus, and Lepusculus in the preface to the compendium of the same Josephus.
These two men ascribe to that Josephus, the son of Gorion, the very noble and most illustrious testimony about Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, which Saint Jerome in the Catalogue and Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History 1.22 attribute to Josephus Flavius; which is still read today in his Greek text, book 18, chapter 4; and which was also in the Hebrew translation of the same author, but was erased by impious Jews in some manuscripts, as the most reverend Baronius writes he had discovered at Rome in volume 1 of the Annals. But Flavius Josephus was the son of Matthias, as he writes at the beginning of his Life, not the son of any Gorion; nor is he read anywhere to have written anything in Hebrew, but everything in Greek.
There was another Josephus in his time, the son of Gorion, also a leader of no common standing in the Jewish factions against the Romans, prefect of the city of Jerusalem together with Ananus, the prince of the priests,
[margin: On Josephus Gorionides: a fourfold opinion. First opinion.]
(printed p. 29)
as our Flavius himself narrates about him in book 2, chapter c. 42. Therefore there is a second opinion of men: that this very Josephus, mentioned by Josephus Flavius, is the author of the Hebrew history. Thus those two Josephuses would be contemporaries and men of the same age. This seems to please Genebrard in book 3 of his Chronology, and not without cause.
For the Jews set that Gorionides down as very ancient; and he himself says in book 5, chapter 25, that he saw with his own eyes the Jerusalem temple built by King Herod, but that he wrote after the ruin brought upon it by the Romans. For after he had said that there were twelve gates of the temple courts, he proceeds in these words:
In these there was one great gate by which we entered together with our wives, our little ones, and our wood. He is referring to the festival of the wood-offering, of which the other Josephus speaks in book 2, chapter 31. But with holiness and purity we entered that temple, both entering and coming over the pavement which is in the court before the vestibule, which is before the face of the house of the Lord; and we came as far as the vestibule, except only for the women, who did not come to it. And we did not approach the house itself, because it is the place of the priests; and even the priests themselves did not approach the Holy of Holies, but only the high priest once a year. Yet we saw everything that is in the house, while we stood in the vestibule in those days, namely every golden work that was in the house, since that house itself was open
[margin: Second opinion.]
(printed p. 30)
toward the court. The vine which is of gold was seen, and every golden work that was in the house, and all the golden ornaments which the king had hung on the wall of the temple, namely the spoils of the nations whom the Lord had given into his hand or power. And we saw these spoils, and we rejoiced.
Does the person who says these things not live while Jerusalem and its temple were still standing? Does he not indicate that he was an eyewitness of all these things? But when, before the words just cited, he was describing the vine just mentioned, he added: “And many Roman writers testified that they saw it at the destruction of the house itself, which even today they call chourbam habbaiith.” Therefore it appears that he wrote those things after the destruction.
The third opinion, from his own book 4, last chapter, could be that he is Nicolaus Damascenus, that great friend of Herod, from whose name Augustus Caesar, according to the witnesses Pliny, book 13, chapter 4, Athenaeus, book 14, Photius in the Bibliotheca, and Illustrius in the Lives of the Philosophers, if these three are now read corrected, called a certain kind of dates, or palms, Nicolaoi. And so this Gorionides would be not only a most celebrated author, but even older than both Josephuses already mentioned.
Yet this opinion could have arisen from the error of the translator alone. Otherwise Gorionides very clearly distinguishes himself from that Nicolaus in the cited passage, since in Hebrew the words are:
[margin: Third opinion.]
(printed p. 31)
Many writers testify, as do I. And so Nicolaus Damascenus. And so said Strabo the Cappadocian.
Not, however, as Munster translates: “Many writers testify to the riches of the temple, namely I, Nicolaus Damascenus; and also Strabo concerning Cappadocia.”
The fourth opinion, finally, is that of those who suspect him to be one of the more recent rabbis, and certainly a writer later than the times of Saint Jerome. This is the opinion of many learned men, among whom our Ribera is chief, on Obadiah chapter 1, number 110.
For first, if this writer had existed before Saint Jerome, Jerome would never have passed over an occasion to mention him somewhere. Secondly, this same writer uses certain names of peoples and cities which only a later age employed. For in book 5, chapter 1, he says that Julius Caesar subdued the Franks, the Britons, and the whole West as far as the Ocean. And in chapter 41 in the Hebrew, chapter 42 in the Latin, when he narrates Herod’s funeral, he says that his bodyguard soldiers, Germans and Gauls, carried him out; and of these he adds, “hem Phrankous,” that is, “these were Franks.” But in that Herodian age the name of the Franks had not yet been assigned to the Gauls, especially those whom Caesar conquered in Gaul, as is clear from the passages in which I explained the ancient name of the Franks in the cited notes on Saint Kilian.
Again, in book 3, chapter 15, he says that Hannibal reigned in the city
[margin: Fourth opinion.]
(printed p. 32)
of Cartagena. But this name of Carthage is both new and Spanish, whereas in Hebrew, or rather in Syriac, it would be called Carthachadattha, or, as in Solinus, Carthada; in Josephus, Antiquities 1.7 in Greek, and in others, as Saint Jerome testifies in letter 133, Tharsis. Thirdly, that the part of Africa in which Carthage lies should be called Barbary is both very recent and barbarous in the Latin language. Yet in that same chapter of Gorionides it is said that “with Hannibal was all the strength of Barbary.” Fourthly, in the same place Hannibal is said to have come into Spain and there to have “crushed the pride of the nation of the Goths.” But the Goths did not settle in Spain before the age of Saint Jerome.
Fifthly, he always names Spain Sepharad. But Josephus Scaliger says in book 7 On the Correction of Chronology: “This is the new and recent stupidity of the Jews, interpreting Tzarphath, that is, Sarepta of Syria, as France, Sepharad as Spain, and Ashkenaz as Germany.”
It is added that, if he had been equal or nearly equal to Josephus Flavius, each would have remembered the other, either by commending or by reprehending, as we see Flavius did with the historian of his own time from Tiberias, whose name was Justus, about whom he says so many serious things in his own Life. And surely the arguments brought forward for this last opinion, and also for the second one, seem so probable that they make even learned and skilled men doubt who, finally, this Josephus Gorionides is. For although
(printed p. 33)
For although something can be said in favor of the reasons on either side, which, in order to be brief, I willingly pass over for now, it nevertheless remains always obscure and ambiguous what family this author came from, where his home was, and in what period he lived. If, therefore, there is disagreement between these two Josephuses, and if a decision cannot be obtained especially from elsewhere, should we not rather trust the earlier one, so well known, so celebrated, and praised by so many?
And although it must not be denied that in this very Josephus there are some blemishes, and that he sometimes departed from that excellent and most certain rule which he announced in his Life, namely that truth is necessary for the writer of history - for many have made this clear, and especially the most reverend and illustrious Baronius in volume 1 and in the appendix to volume 10 - nevertheless, when no refutation of him is supplied either from divine Scripture, from writers, or from the weight of other arguments, greater trust should certainly be given to him than to that other author, obscure, unknown, and unpraised, who not long ago crept out from the shadowy caves of the Jews.
To this latter author, where he does not disagree with better witnesses, I myself grant only as much as I grant to other masters from the workshop of the rabbis: namely, enough to illustrate and confirm some point, unless the sun of truth shines from some other quarter. But Flavius treated the question at issue here so often, as is clear from chapter 3, in so many places, and with such diligence
[margin: Other things being equal, Josephus Flavius should be preferred to Gorionides.]
(printed p. 34)
and fullness; the other, by contrast, touched it only once, and, so to speak, with the very tips of his fingers. Indeed, in the four books which this same Flavius intended to write about God and the Jewish laws, he had resolved to pursue the sects and opinions of the Jews, as appears at the very end of his Antiquities. Should not greater trust, then, be given to him than to the other on the number of these sects?
Finally, when Flavius states this threefold number, his words are plain, explicit, and in no way ambiguous. By contrast, the words of Gorionides are of such a kind that I shall show clearly that three sects are present in them, while Drusius sees only two.