On abraham schalit, herod, josephus, the holocaust, Horst R. Moehring, and the study of ancient Jewish history

Abstract

In a note to the introduction to his 1944 Hebrew translation of Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, discussing Josephus1 view in The Jewish War that God was on the Romans' side (JW 5.367), the late Professor Abraham Schalit (1898?1979) of The Hebrew University referred his readers to a proposed article entitled "Zur nationalpolitischen Theorie des Josephus."1 The article never appeared. This is not very remarkable, as Schalit, like so many scholars, announced in the course of his career plans for books and articles that were never published.2 What is peculiar and thought-provoking in this particular case is that a decade earlier, in 1934, Schalit had published a detailed study, in Hebrew, with virtually the same title: "Josephus' National-Political Views (in JW)".3 Why, then, did he refer his Hebrew readers, in 1944, to an unpublished German article? Why did he not, at least, refer to the Hebrew article "in the meantime," as is so often done, alongside the reference to the proposed German study? This is all the more puzzling, since JW 5.367 plays a central role in the Hebrew article, just as it evidently would have in the German one.