J OSEPHUS , A NTIQUITIES 10.180–82, J EREMIAH , AND N EBUCHADNEZZAR *

Articles in JHS are being indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, RAMBI, and BiBIL. Their abstracts appear in Religious and Theological Abstracts. The journal is archived by Library and Archives Canada and is accessible for consultation and research at the Electronic Collection site maintained by Library and Archives Canada. ISSN 1203–1542 http://www.jhsonline.org and http://purl.org/jhs Volume 13, Article 7 DOI:10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a7

with regard to the historical worth of this text, especially with regard to the campaign against Egypt (Ant. 10.182). 2 Some have offered suggestions for where Josephus obtained his information. 3 No one has offered an extended examination of Josephus' account in order to determine whether it is an independent historical source for such an event. To remedy this, I examine Josephus' sources and the literary techniques that he used to create the account. For sake of convenience, the passage is presented below.
[180] But, when they came there [i.e., the Judeans arrived in Egypt], the Deity revealed to the prophet [i.e., Jeremiah] that the king of Babylonia was about to march against the Egyptians, and He bade the prophet to foretell to the people that Egypt would be taken and that the Babylonian king would kill some of them and would take the rest captive and carry them off to Babylon.  His father, Nabopalassar, hearing of the defection of the satrap in charge of Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia, and being himself unequal to the fatigues of a campaign, committed part of his army to his son Nabuchodonosor, still in the prime of his life, and sent him against the rebel. Nabuchodonosor engaged and defeated the latter in a pitched battle and replaced the district under Babylonian rule. Meanwhile, as it happened, his father Nabopalassar sickened and died in the city of Babylon, after a reign of twenty-one years. Being informed ere long of his father's death, Nabuchodonosor settled the affairs of Egypt and the other countries. The prisoners-Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, and those of Egyptian nationality-were consigned to some of his friends, with orders to conduct them to Babylonia, along with the heavy troops and the rest of the spoils; while he 4 JOURNAL OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES himself, with a small escort, pushed across the desert to  In this section, Berosus provides a condensed account of the military activity of Nebuchadnezzar from his battle against Necho II 8 at Carchemish in 605 B.C.E., down to his campaigns against Judah (598/7 or 587/6 B.C.E.). 9 If one did not know of this history from other sources, one might infer from Berosus' account that Nebuchadnezzar defeated Egypt and promptly subjugated all of Syro-Palestine, when in fact this only began in 605 B.C.E. at the battle of Carchemish. Furthermore, by condensing Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Berosus' account makes it appear as though the death of Nabopolassar occurred around the same time Nebuchadnezzar was deporting Jews and others. Nebuchadnezzar may have taken some prisoners from the battle of Carchemish, but there is no evidence to suggest that Judeans were deported at that time. Thus, while Berosus' account makes reasonable sense of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, the telescoping of historical events makes it difficult to understand the sequence of events without other historical sources.
Josephus' summary of Berosus highlights his adaptive use of sources. Referring to Berosus' account cited above, Josephus writes: In his narrative of the actions of this monarch [i.e., Nabopolassar] he [i.e., Berosus] relates how he sent his son Nabuchodonosor with a large army to Egypt and to our country, on hearing that these people had revolted, and how he defeated them all, burnt the temple at Jerusalem, dislodged and transported our entire population to Babylon, with the result that the city lay desolate for seventy years until the time of Cyrus, king of Persia. He adds that the Babylonian monarch conquered Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia, his exploits surpassing those of all previous kings of Chaldaea and Babylon (Ag. Ap. 1.132-33). 10 In this summary of Berosus, Josephus makes the temporal telescoping of events more visible than Berosus by adding a reference to the burning of the temple (586 B.C.E.). Thus, Josephus' summary of Berosus covers at least the years 605-586 B.C.E. and is equally as compressed as Berosus' account if not more so. Furthermore, Josephus changes the focus of Berosus' account slightly by excluding the information about the death of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar's subsequent emergency return to Babylon. Now, unless it is assumed that Berosus' works contained another more detailed account of Nebuchadnezzar's reign that is no longer extant, the text that Josephus quotes is the text he used to create his account of Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year campaign. It is possible that Berosus used a Babylonian Chronicle to create his account, but even if he did, he did not retain the year-by-year notation of events characteristic of the Babylonian Chronicles. Rather, Berosus compressed the information he found in it. 11 In any case, Berosus does not specifically mention a campaign in Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year. Nor does Berosus mention the Moabites, Ammonites or an invasion of Egypt that resulted in the replacement of the Egyptian king, all of which are mentioned explicitly in Ant. 10.181-82. If Josephus used Berosus, he significantly adapted and added to what he found in order to come up with the account in Ant. 10.180-82.
It is possible that Josephus had another Greek source. Following his discussion of Berosus, Josephus mentions other ancient authors whose works he consulted (Ag. Ap. 1.143-44). However, there is little evidence in Josephus' citations that these authors had precise information about Babylonian history. In Ag. Ap. 1.156-58, Josephus' citation of "the Phoenician record" shows that some ancient records, to which Josephus claims access, may have had a reasonably high level of detail for a particular city such as Tyre. 12 Whether such detail ever went beyond the history of a particular city is unknown since we do not have access to these records except through Josephus.
Thus, while Josephus might have had access to a Greek source-Berosus or otherwise-on which he based his account of Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year campaign, the 12 Although, as Barclay notes, Josephus seems only to know of two Greek authors, Dios and Menander, rather than any truly Phoenician writer (Barclay, Against Apion, 67, 89 n. 509). 6 JOURNAL OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES extant evidence suggests that it would be almost as temporally compressed as his own narrative. If Josephus did construct the narrative of Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year campaign from Berosus' writing, then what he got from it was twofold: 1) the undated mention of military action against Egypt and Coele-Syria; and 2) the deportation of prisoners to Babylonia (Ag. Ap. 1.135-37).

JEREMIAH AS A SOURCE FOR ANT. 10.180-82
In his edition of Josephus, Ant. 9-11, Marcus also suggests that Josephus used Jeremiah 44-49 as a source for the conquest of the Moabites and Ammonites mentioned in Ant. 10.180-82. 13 More recently, Begg, in his analysis of Josephus Ant. 10.155-85, as well as Begg and Spilsbury in their commentary on Josephus' Antiquities, have argued that Josephus used Jer 40-52 in composing his narrative. 14 Begg also analyzes Josephus' compositional strategies. These strategies include expanding, compressing, rearranging, adapting, and modifying the narrative of his sources. Josephus also retouches characterizations and specifies matters that his sources leave to inference. 15 Begg's and Spilsbury's insights are to a significant extent judgments of a literary rather than a historical nature. Nonetheless, their identification of Josephus' literary sources and discussion of his historiographic method are crucial in coming to a conclusion on the historical problem. This discussion takes advantage of their insights and adds additional observations, achieving a higher resolution understanding of Josephus' compositional method for Ant. 10.180-82.
In the narrative leading up to our passage, Josephus describes events after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. . The relation between this narrative and that found in Jeremiah is important for understanding Ant. 10.180-82 and so I will summarize it briefly. In Ant. 10.155-75, Josephus provides a straightforward summary of the narrative he found in Jeremiah 39:11-41:18 with a few modifications, expansions, and the like. 16 Key to this narrative is the assassination of the Babylonian-appointed governor Gedaliah-including the Chaldean troops with him-by Ishmael who had the support of the Ammonites. Afraid of Babylonian reprisals for the bloodshed, the Judean soldiers fighting against Ishmael decide to make their way to Egypt.
Josephus continues the story in Ant. 10.180-82, the main object of this investigation. This brief section of Josephus' narrative has a more complex relationship with Jeremiah than Ant. 10.155-79. Table 1 lays out Ant. 10.180-82 alongside the possible source texts from Jeremiah. While the translation of the biblical text provided here follows the MT, some caution is necessary because it is not certain that the text that Josephus had available to him was the same as the MT. Furthermore, Josephus was aware of and occasionally followed something approximating the LXX. 18 21 The referent of Coele-Syria changes over time and from author to author. Generally, however, it included the inland areas of Damascus, Samaria, and areas east of the Jordan River (R. W. Smith, "Coele-Syria," ABD 1:1075-76). This conclusion comports with Josephus' usage of the term. One important example appears in Ag. Ap. 1.133, where Josephus summarizes part of an account from Berosus by referring to Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia. Josephus then quotes the text he just summarized and there one finds Berosus speaking of Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia (Ag. Ap. 1.135). This suggests the basic identity of Coele-Syria with Syria and Arabia, or in other words, non-coastal areas. In Ant. 1.206, Josephus retells the story of Gen 19, in which Lot's daughters give birth to the eponymous ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites, and then includes them both as people of Coele-Syria.

Antiquities
10.182-Fulfillment Part 2 "Then, after making these nations subject to him, he invaded Egypt in order to subdue it, and, Jer 46:13-26 (cf. 43:8-13) Undated oracle predicting the destruction of Egypt at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar having killed the king who was then reigning and appointed another, "Yahweh of hosts, the god of Israel says, 'I am about to punish Amon of Thebes, Pharaoh, Egypt, her gods, her kings, Pharaoh and all who trust in him. I will give them into the hand of those seeking their life, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and into the hands of his servants.'" cf. Jer 44:30).
he again took captive the Jews who were in the country and carried them to Babylon." "Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, deported 745 Judeans" (Jer 52:30a; cf. the prediction in Jer 43:11 mentioned above).  Table 1, Josephus structured his text using a prediction and fulfillment pattern. Josephus builds the prediction (10.180) primarily on Jer 43:8-13, which is an oracle predicting a campaign of Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt. In particular, Josephus appears to have focused on Jer 43:11, which mentions both destruction and deportation. 22 This verse also seems to have been crucial in structuring the fulfillment in Ant. 10.182 with its notice that Jews were deported to Babylon. Dependence on Jer 43:11 becomes all the more clear when one considers that the following chapter (Jer 44) contains oracles predicting the destruction, but not deportation, of the Judeans who have fled to Egypt. Josephus' technique here is to compress the oracle in Jer 43:8-13 down to its essence: an invasion by the king of Babylon that would result in Judean deportations.
Josephus' source for the prediction in Ant. 10.180 is reasonably clear, but understanding the sources behind the fulfillment section of the passage (Ant. 10.181-82) is more problematic. The key issue is that the text of Jeremiah moves into a series of poetic oracles that do not narrate a fulfillment to Jeremiah's prediction of destruction and deportation. This part of Jeremiah consists of an oracle to Jeremiah's scribe Baruch (Jer 45), a series of "oracles against the nations" (Jer 46-51; hereafter OAN), and a historical appendix about Zedekiah, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the release of Jehoiachin (Jer 52; cf. 2 Kgs 24:18-25:30 and Jer 19:1-10). If Josephus did not find a narrative fulfillment of the prediction in these chapters of Jeremiah, are there any clues as to how he came up with his narrative? Here also, a few items in Josephus' and Jeremiah's texts suggest a plausible solution.
First, Josephus states that the Babylonian campaign took place "in the fifth year after the sacking of Jerusalem, which was the twenty-third year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar" (Ant. 10.181). As indicated in Table 1, the most obvious source for this date is Jer 52:30, 23 which is part of the list of Babylonian deportations carried out in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh (598/7), eighteenth (587/6), and twenty-third (582/1) years. 24 This conclusion is strengthened by Josephus' statement that the campaign took place in the fifth year after Jerusalem's destruction (Ant. 10.181). The dates given in Jer 52:29-30 specify Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth and twentythird years as two of the instances in which Judeans were deported. 25 The difference, of course, is five years. This is crucial because only a few verses earlier in Jer 52:12-16-and in its parallel in 2 Kgs 25:8-12-the Temple is said to have been destroyed and Judeans deported in Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year, only four years separated from Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year. Josephus' explicit reference to the five year difference between the destruction of Jerusalem and the campaign makes his use of Jer 52:30 as the source of his 23 Begg, Josephus' Story of the Later Monarchy, 617; Eph'al, "Nebuchadnezzar the Warrior," 184 n. 10; Josephus, Antiquités Juives, Livres X et XI (trans. E. Nodet), 54 n. 4; Katzenstein, The History of Tyre, 336 n. 218. 24 On the discrepancy between the eighteenth year mentioned here and the nineteenth year mentioned in 2 Kgs 25:8, see Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52, 533. The LXX does not contain this summary of deportations. 25 Although the text of Jeremiah 52:29-30 does not say that the eighteenth year was the year when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, it seems to imply this when it states that the people deported in that year were from Jerusalem (v. 29). Furthermore, in Ag. Ap. 1.154, Josephus refers explicitly to the eighteenth year as the year that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple and adds that this information comes from "our books." date very likely. It also shows that Josephus was at this point dealing with something like the MT tradition because the LXX does not contain this summary of deportations.
Next, the inclusion of the Moabites and the Ammonites in Josephus' account of Nebuchadnezzar's campaign needs explanation. Both Jeremiah and Josephus state that Gedaliah's assassin Ishmael had the support of the king of the Ammonites (Jer 40:14; 41:10; Ant. 10.164, 174). Furthermore, both Jer 41:18 and Ant. 10.175 paint a picture of Judeans worried about Babylonian reprisals for the assassination of a Babylonian appointee. It would be a simple step in creating a narrative to infer that the Babylonians would attack the Ammonites because of their collusion in the assassination. Not surprisingly, a variety of scholars make this inference exactly. 26 This might plausibly account for the mention of the Ammonites.
In addition, one can also account for the attack extending to the Moabites by Josephus' regular pairing of the Moabites and Ammonites. Consider the following examples in addition to the present occurrence: 1. Ant. 1.205-6. This passage retells the story of Gen 19, where Lot's daughters give birth to the eponymous ancestors of Moab and Ammon. 2. Ant. 6.90. A retelling of how God delivered the Israelites from Egypt and then subdued their enemies, first the Assyrians, then the Ammonites and Moabites, and finally the Philistines. 3. Ant. 6.129. In this passage, Saul is said to have subjugated the Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines, Idumeans, Amalekites, and Soba. 4. Ant. 9.7. The Moabites, Ammonites, and Arabs appear as enemies of the Judean king Jehoshaphat. 5. Ant. 11.21-25. The people in Syria, Phoenicia, Ammon, Moab, and Samaria write a letter to Cyrus in order to hinder the Jews from rebuilding Jerusalem. As these examples illustrate, the Ammonites and Moabites (in this order or the reverse one) appear together alongside various other groups. They also appear separately, but never without each other in lists, as is the case in the present text. Perhaps their genealogical (as implied, at least, by Gen 19) or geographical relationship makes this pairing natural; but whatever the reason, the regular pairing of the two peoples may account for the inclusion of the Moabites where one would not otherwise expect them. 27 If collusion in the assassination of Gedaliah is the motive for including the Ammonites in Nebuchadnezzar's campaign, the OAN in Jer 46-51 most likely provided the inspiration. 28 These oracles proclaim the destruction of Judah's enemies including Moab (48) and the Ammonites (49:1-6), both of which are the objects of undated oracles. The position of these oracles following the prophecies that the Judeans would be punished in Egypt (Jer 42-44) makes it likely that the OAN are the inspiration behind Josephus' narrative fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. That is to say, Josephus understood these oracles to indicate the assured destruction of the nations mentioned therein. As a result, it was a matter of inference to portray them as the objects of a Babylonian attack.
One can make a similar case for Egypt. In addition to Jeremiah's prophecy in 43:8-13, which foretells Nebuchadnezzar attacking Egypt, two OAN against Egypt appear in Jer 46. The first oracle against Egypt in Jer 46:2-12 contains a superscription that dates it to when Necho met Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish in 605 B.C.E. (v. 2). Josephus was clearly aware of this event and its relative date as shown by his description in Ant. 10.82-83. It seems unlikely that he would have turned to this for constructing the present narrative. Jeremiah 46:13, however, introduces another oracle against Egypt with, "The word that Yahweh spoke to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the coming of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, to smite the land of Egypt." In the following verse (v. 14) there is a specific injunction for the cities of Migdol, 27 The reasons for not including other nations mentioned in the OAN can be specified in some cases while not in others. The superscription to the oracle against the Philistines (Jer 47) implies that Egypt was the aggressor, despite the reference to the waters "rising out of the north" in 47:2 that points to an aggressor from the north such as Babylon. The exclusion of Edom is not clear given the undated oracle in Jer 49:7-22, other than that Edom was not connected in any way with the assassination of Gedaliah. Damascus (Jer 49:23-27), and Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor (Jer 49:28-33) may have been considered part of Coele-Syria and hence not otherwise noted. It is also the case that Damascus was destroyed in the eighth century by the Assyrians and so did not need to be included in this account. The exclusion of Elam (Jer 49:34-39) is explicable in terms of the orientation of the campaign to the Levant rather than to the east of Babylon. The exclusion of Babylon (Jer 50-51) is selfexplanatory. 28  Tahpanhes, and Memphis to be ready for battle. These three cities are significant. Tahpanhes is the city to which Jeremiah was forcibly taken (Jer 43:7). Furthermore, Tahpanhes is mentioned alongside Memphis and Migdol as one of the Egyptian cities in which Judeans were living (Jer 44:1). These cities, mentioned at the beginning of the second oracle against Egypt (Jer 46:13-26), make the connection between a post-586 B.C.E. Babylonian invasion of Egypt and the deportation of Judeans from those three cities a simple inference. The line of thought would proceed more or less as follows: 1) Jeremiah predicted a deportation of Jews from Egypt; 2) Jews had settled in Tahpanhes, Memphis, and Migdol; 3) the oracle against Egypt in Jer 46:13-26 indicates that Nebuchadnezzar will attack Tahpanhes, Memphis and Migdol; 4) therefore, Nebuchadnezzar's attack against Egypt would result in the deportation of Judeans who had settled there, fulfilling the prophecy. Additionally, because the second oracle against Egypt in Jer 46:13-26 is undated, Josephus could easily connect the details that follow to nearly any campaign, including one of his own making.
Josephus goes on to state that Nebuchadnezzar killed the Egyptian king and replaced him with another (10.182). There is no precise statement in Jeremiah indicating that Nebuchadnezzar killed and replaced an Egyptian king. However, Jeremiah's response to the Judeans in Egypt states that they will have a sign that his predictions will come true (Jer 44:29). Yahweh says, "I am going to give Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies and into the hand of those seeking his life, just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, his enemy who sought his life" (Jer 44:30; cf. 46:25-26). Josephus' mention of Pharaoh's replacement appears to be what Begg and Spilsbury term "an implicit realization of Jer 44:30." 29 Moreover, Jer 44:30 states that Hophra's end will parallel what happened to Zedekiah. And what happened to Zedekiah? Nebuchadnezzar deported him and replaced him with a governor of local descent (Gedaliah), something that Josephus obviously knew (Ant. 9.155). It is only a matter of slight inference on Josephus' part to state that Hophra's deposition led to his replacement.
The final statement in Ant. 10.182 concerning the deportation of Jews to Babylon fulfills the prediction in Ant. 10.180. The source for the fulfillment might be the prediction itself, which was probably derived from Jer 43:11. It is also possible, as Begg suggests, to see a relationship between the notice of deportation in Ant. 10.182 and the deportation