archōn (BJ 7.46). A story about a Jewish apostate, who caused great suffering for the Jewish community during the revolt against Rome, shows that the life of the Jews in Antioch was sometimes not a bed of roses. This man, named Antiochus, was the son of one of the Jewish magistrates called archōn. He stirred up the non-Jewish Antiochenes and accused his fellow Jews, including his own father, of a plan to set the city on fire. He caused some of them to be burned in the theater and forced others to renounce Judaism and sacrifice according to the customs of the Greeks. With the help of Roman soldiers he also forced the Jews to work on the Sabbath (BJ 7.46–53). After a fire did happen in the city, ignited by non-Jews who had hoped to get rid of their debts through the destruction of the archive, Antiochus’s earlier accusation caused the Antiochenes to be infuriated and to throw themselves upon the Jews. Only with great difficulty was the Roman legate Gnaeus Collega able to restore peace and quiet (BJ 7.54–58). Josephus also notes that notwithstanding the triumph over the Jews in 70 CE Titus did not comply with the request by the non-Jewish inhabitants of Antioch to cancel the engraved-in-bronze privileges of the local Jews and expel them (BJ 7.100–111).
Josephus’s references to non-Jewish nations in the Near East add up to a long list, which includes the peoples that were neighbors of the Israelites (e.g. Ammanites, Amoraites, Gabalites, Midianites, and Moabites; see the Appendix to this chapter). He mentions the Parthians (see Chapters 2 and 27) more than 130 times, especially in War 1 and Antiquities 14. Josephus confirms that the Parthians were the most powerful enemy of the Romans, who sometimes even dared to take action within the Roman sphere of influence. He describes how the Parthians interfered in the power struggle between the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great after they managed to capture Syria in 40 BCE (Cassius Dio 48.24; Buchheim 1960: 11, 74–79; Schürer I 1973–87: 278–279). The Parthians supported the Hasmonean Antigonus, who opposed Herod’s appointment by the Senate. They managed to get hold of Jerusalem and delivered the city to Antigonus. They took Herod’s brother Phasael and Hyrcanus II prisoner and transferred the latter to Babylon (BJ 1.269, 273; AJ 14.330–369).
Josephus is the most extensive external source about the Nabataeans (Hackl et al. 2003), the nation of nomadic merchants living in a territory running from the Southern Hauran (east of the Decapolis) to the mountainous region of the Northern Hedjaz (east of the Red Sea) as well as in the Northern Negev Desert and the Sinai Desert (Chapter 23). The famous city of Petra in the fertile plains of Moab was its capital. Josephus recalls that the Nabataeans descend from Ishmael, whose 12 sons dwelt in the territory extending from the Euphrates to the Erythrean Sea, which was called Nabatene (AJ 1.220–221). He sometimes calls them Nabataioi (“Nabataeans,” e.g. BJ 1.178; AJ 12.335), but mostly uses the name Arabes (“Arabs”) when he refers to the Nabataeans (Millar 1993a), perhaps because this name original meant “nomads” (cf. Chapter 34). Josephus does not offer a coherent history of the Nabataeans, but he mentions them frequently as a neighboring nation of the Jews in connection with actions by the Maccabean and Herodian Jewish leaders, especially in book 1 of The Jewish War and books 12–18 of The Jewish Antiquities. The Nabataean royal family was intertwined with the Herodians through the marriage of Herod’s father Antipater with Cypros/Cypris, who probably was a Nabataean princess, although Josephus does not say so explicitly (BJ 1.181; AJ 14.121–122; cf. also the Nabataean Syllaeus’s attempt to marry Herod’s sister Salome, BJ 1.566; AJ 16.220–225; 17.10; the daughter of the Nabataean king Aretas IV was married to Herod Antipas, AJ 18.109; Kokkinos 1998: 95, 183–184, 229–232, 268). During internal Jewish power conflicts prominent Jews sometimes fled to the Nabataeans or attempted to do that (e.g. Herod in 40 BCE, BJ 1.266–267, 274–279; AJ 14.361–362, 370–376), which once again suggests that the ruling families of both nations were connected. Nevertheless, the Nabataeans were also competitors of the Jews: they sometimes decided to support Jewish rulers in their conflicts, but more than once they fought them if they thought they could benefit from that. Herod the Great fought several battles against the Nabataeans after they refused to refund him (BJ 1.364–371, 380–385; AJ 15.106–160; 16.271–299). A passage from Herod the Great’s commander speech before a decisive battle against the Nabataeans offers a negative characterization of them, which is given in by their – in Herod’s view as presented by Josephus – treacherous behavior before the battle: “for I suppose you [i.e. Herod’s soldiers] know of the lawlessness of the Arabs [i.e. the Nabataeans], and how treacherously they deal with everyone else, as is the custom of a barbarous people that also lacks any notion of God. Of course, the main reason that they were hostile to us was greed and jealousy; they were waiting to make a sudden attack in our confused state” (AJ 15.130). The Nabataeans had murdered Herod’s envoys, but interestingly, Herod explains their misdeeds (besides treachery and unreliability, 15.110, 130, 132, 134, 140, also lawlessness, 15.130, 136, 140, 156, and greed, 15.134) by arguing that they were a barbarous nation that lacked any notion of God. The knowledge of God is apparently the principle difference between the Jews and the Nabataeans, and Herod implies that the Jews have the support of the God of Israel and the Nabataeans do not (AJ 15.144–146). This brings us ultimately back to Josephus’s basic message that the God of the Jews determines what happens in human history.
Appendix: List of Groups of non-Jews in the Near East
For the Hellenistic and Roman periods Josephus’s references to nations or inhabitants of a region or city include the Adiabenes (BJ 1.6, 4.567, 5.147, etc.), the Albani in the Caucasus (AJ 18.97), the Arabs (BJ 1.6, 90, etc.), the Antiochenes (AJ 14.323; also above), inhabitants of Arad (Phoenicia, AJ 14.323), Armenians (BJ 1.116; AJ 1.92, etc.), Auranites (inhabitants of the Hauran; BJ 2.421), the Babylonians (BJ 1.6 2.520, etc.), the Bataneans (BJ 2.421; AJ 18.106), the Beruthians (BJ 2.67, 506, etc.), the inhabitants of Borsippa (in Babylonia; Ap 1.152), the inhabitants of the Bosporus (BJ 2.366), the Cappadocians (BJ 1.446, 2.114, etc.), the Cilicians (BJ 1.88, 2.368; AJ 13.374), the Colchi (east/southeast of the Black Sea; BJ 2.366; Ap 1.168–170); the Commagenes (AJ 18.140; see also Chapter 19), the Cordyeans (Armenia; AJ 1.93), the Damascenes (BJ 1.103, 398, 2.559, etc.), the Dahae (Iranian people; AJ 18.100, 20.91), the Elamites (AJ 1.143), the Gadarenes (east of the Sea of Galilee; BJ 1.116, 2.478, etc.), the Heniochi (east of the Black Sea; BJ 2.366), the Ituraeans (AJ 13.318, 319; 15.185; see also Chapter 21), the Medes (BJ 1.13, 50, 62, etc.), the Nabataeans (BJ 1.178; AJ 12.335, etc.), the Parthians (BJ 1.6; 175, etc.), the Phoenicians (BJ 2.380; AJ 8.142, etc.; see also Chapter 20), the Sacae (Iranian people; AJ 18.100, 20.91), the Sarmates (Scythian tribe; BJ 7.90, 92), the Scythians (BJ 7.90, 244, etc.), the Sidonians (BJ 1.249, 539, etc.), the Syrians (BJ 1.88, 205, etc.), the Tauri (BJ 2.366), the Trachonites (BJ 2.58, 421, etc.), the Trallians (AJ 14.242), the inhabitants of Tripolis (Syria; AJ 14.39), and the Tyrians (BJ 1.231, 238, etc.).
FURTHER READING
Bilde 1988 and Rajak 2002 offer excellent and readable introductions to Josephus and his four works and Chapman and Rodgers 2016 includes detailed discussions of many topics connected with Josephus and the content and reception of his works. For the history of the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66–73/74 CE), which is the main topic of Josephus’s War, see especially the articles in Popovic 2011 and the excellent fresh interpretation of the events in Mason 2016a. Goodman 1994, Mason 2003b, 2005, Price 2005, Tuval 2013, and Den Hollander 2014 discuss the importance of Josephus’s Roman context for his audience, and his aims. For Josephus’s handling of geographic information, see especially Shahar 2004 and Van Henten and Huitink 2012. An overall study of Diaspora Judaism as presented by Josephus