Josephus slavonice versus Josephus graece: Towards a Typology of Divergence

Abstract

THE SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 83, Number i January 2005 Josephusslavonice versusJosephus graece: Towards a Typology of Divergence H. LEEMING THE relationshipbetween the Slavonic and the extant Greekversions1 ofJosephus Flavius'_ewishWarhas been the subjectof controversyand polemic since the publication of A. Berendts' studies and German translation of the first four books of the Slavonic version.2 Berendts believed that the Slavonic text was not translated from the Greek version, extant in numerous codices from the tenth century onwards and well known in English and other Western translations,but from the originalAramaic edition, of whichJosephus himself tells us in the preface of the Greek text. This view was energeticallypropagated by Robert Eisler, who believed that the original of the Slavonic version could be reconstructedon a word-for-wordbasis.3 This view was categoricallyrejectedby N. A. Mescerskij,editor of a full and scholarly edition of the Slavonic or Old Russian version Henry Leeming retired as Reader in Comparative Slavonic Philology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in I 985. He is a corresponding member of SAZU and Polska Akademia Umiej,tno?ci. ' Here quoted according to the following editions: for Slavonic, N. A. Mescerskij, Istoria IudejskojVojnyIosifa Flav#a v drevnerusskom perevode,Moscow-Leningrad, 1958 (hereafter, Mescerskij); for Greek, JosephusinNine Volumes, vols 2 and 3, 7The Jewish War,with an English translation by H. StJ. Thackeray, London, 1927 28. For the synoptic edition, see note 8. Note that a literal rendering has been substituted for Thackeray's wvordingwhere, for comparative purposes, this departs too far from the Greek original. 2 A. Berendts and K. Grass, Flavius josephus vomJfidischenKriege,Buch I-IV. Aach der slavischen Ubersetzung deutsch herausgegeben mitdemgriechischen Textverghichen, Dorpat, 1924-27. 3 R. Eisler, Iesousbasileusou basileusas(in Greek uncials). Die messianische UnabhdngigkeitsbewegungvomAuftretenJohannes des Tdufersbis zum UntergangJakubs des Gerechten nach der neuerschlossene 'Eroberungvon Jerusalem' des Flavius Josephus und den christlichenQuellen, Heidelberg, vols 1-2, 1929-30. 2 JOSEPHUS SLAVONICE VERSUS JOSEPHUS GRAECE accordingto the so-calledVilna Chronograph.ForMescerskijthe Old Russian version 'derives in the main precisely from the generally accepted Greektext'.4He assertsthat 'comparisonof the Old Russian translationwith the Greektextwith all itsvariantreadingsin the copies we know,persuadesus that the translatoras he workedhad before him the generally accepted Greek text'.5 But the translator was using a particularmanuscriptdistinctfromallsurvivingcopies. In hiseagerness to confute Berendts'theory,Mescerskijcasts doubt on the existence at any time of an Aramaic edition and suggeststhatJosephus' mention of it may have been 'simply a literarymystificationby the author, who thus strove to ensure greaterintereston the part of Roman readersin the book offered for their attention'.6This observation occurs at the end of chapterseven of the lengthy studywhich formsthe introduction of Mescerskij'sedition, and may have been intended as no more than a light-heartedquip, a snappyending to the discussion. The most strikingdifferencebetween the Slavonicversion,which we may referto asJS orJosephus slavonice, and the standardGreekversion, which we may designate asJG orJoseplusgraece, lies in the numerous, occasionallylengthypassagesfound in the formerbut not in the latter. In a spirit of deference to Greek seniority, which I would term hellenocentric, these passages have become conventionally known as 'additions'. Mescerskij lists forty-one of these:7 Eisler supplied an English translation, based on Berendts' German version, of twentythree 'principaladditionalpassages'as an appendixto the Loeb edition of H. St J. Thackeray's translation. Berendts and Eisler wished to ascribe authorship of these passages to Josephus himself, while admitting that some might be the work of later hands. Meserskij regards them in the main as the work of the Old Russian translator himself. The 'additions' are classified according to their content as 'Christological'and 'non-Christological';the formerwith their stories of 'the wild man' (John the Baptist),'the wonder-worker'(Christ)and 'the servantsof the wonder-worker'(the apostles)are widely regarded as the workof devout Orthodox interpolators. It is hoped that the synoptic edition of the Slavonic and Greektexts in English translation8will enable a wider readership,not necessarily versed in Greek and Slavonic, to make their own judgment. The projecthasaligneda moderntranslationof the Slavonictext, according 4 Mescerskij, p. 69. 5 Ibid.,p. 75. 6 Ibid., pp. 68-69. 7 Ibid., pp. 5 I-64; the first of these should be discounted as the result of a...