Hello Friends,

Below is my reply to  Georgios in his Philoxenia forum. It truly saddens me that posts of this sort have to be written but I believe I had no choice other then to reply.

Shalom,

Peter

Georgios,

This is the last time I will post in any of your threads and any further replies will be made in my forum. In previous posts of mine I alleged that you had an agenda with your supposed pro Hamas/Palestinian thread and I was waiting to see how long it would take for the true reasons for the initiation of this thread and others to come out. Well it didn't take long and today you've shown all Adland and the internet what your true intentions are.

David Duke that you quote is a rabid racist, white supremest and of course antisemite. That alone shows what your true beliefs are I guess. Then you used the antisemitic  "The Protocols of  the Elders of Zion" as additional proof of your "theories". Well we all know that it is a forgery and it has been proven by countless scholars and organizations world wide. You go one step further and say there is an additional chapter. Oh well, add that to all your list of conspiracies that the Zionists, Jews, Israel and Israelis are "guilty" of (and don't forget the USA they are guilty too).

We've had many chats and talks the last being just a few weeks ago. I thought we were beyond hatred, bias, the dissemination of hate propaganda etc. Guess I was mistaken or I was just waiting for the next outbreak of your true passion.

You replied to Robert that only Philoxenia can post information of this sort and you are 100% correct in that statement but not for the reasons you implied but for other reasons that are obvious to all now.

Below you'll find true information on the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the source is wikepedia. There are a myriad of sources that say the same thing but this was the quickest and easiest to source immediately.

Peter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, Library of Congress's Uniform Title; Russian: "Протоколы сионских мудрецов", or "Сионские протоколы" ; see also other titles) is an antisemitic tract alleging a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve world domination.

The Protocols has been proven by respected international scholars, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to be a forgery,^[1][2][3] a fraud^[4][5] and a hoax,^[6][7] as well as a clear case of plagiarism.^[8] The original source has been clearly identified as an 1864 book by Maurice Joly entitled The Dialogue in h*ll Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, which was written as a satirical attack against the ambitions and methods of French Emperor Napoleon III.^[9] In the book, Machiavelli represented Napoleon III, and described a series of steps that he intended to take to become ruler of the world. The Joly book was in turn based on material borrowed from a popular novel of the time by Eugène Sue entitled The Mysteries of the People, in which those plotting to rule the world were the Jesuits instead of Napoleon III. Neither the Joly book nor the Sue book mentioned either Jews or Masons.

Based on evidence repeatedly corroborated by British, German, Ukranian, Polish and Russian sources over a 75 year period, The Protocols, far from being a "discovered" document as it was claimed to be, was in fact deliberately fabricated sometime between 1895 and 1902 by Russian journalist Matvei Golovinski. There are unconfirmed indications that the forgery was created at the direction of Pyotr Rachkovsky, Head of the Paris branch of the Russian Secret Service.^[10]

The source material for the forgery was a synthesis between Joly's book and a chapter from a work of fiction entitled Biarritz, which was written in 1868 by antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche and translated into Russian in 1872.^[11] In the forgery, Golovinski took Joly's novel and changed the plotters from Napoleon III (represented by Machiavelli) to the Jews, in the same way that Joly had changed the plotters from the Jesuits to Napoleon III when he created his version of the story.

The current belief is that the forgery was initiated and authorized by factions of the Russian aristocracy opposed to the political and social reforms initiated by the previous Tsar (Alexander II). The fabricated document was intended to convince the antisemitic Tsar Nicholas II not to allow any additional reforms, since all reforms would be playing into the hands of this just-discovered "secret Jewish plot".

Once the Russian Revolution began in 1905 however, the use of the forgery changed. The same group, now part of the White Army, widely disseminated the document during their 16 year fight^[when?] against the Red Army in an attempt to link the Red Army, which had a few Jews in its leadership, to the fictitious Jewish conspiracy.^{[dubious – discuss]}

The forgery contains numerous elements typical of what is known in literature as a "False Document" - a document that is deliberately written to fool the reader into believing that what is written is truthful and accurate even though, in actuality, it is not.^[12] It is also one of the best-known and most-discussed examples of literary forgery, with analysis and proof of its fraudulent origin going as far back as 1921.^[13]

The forgery is also an early example of "Conspiracy Theory" literature.^[14] Written in the first person singular, the text embodies generalizations, truisms and platitudes on how to take over the world: take control of the media and the financial institutions, change the traditional social order, etc. It does not contain specifics.

The forgery typically consists of 24 to 27 paragraphs or sections entitled "Protocols". It has been published and distributed in many forms: manuscript, periodical, booklet, book and via the internet. It was first edited and disseminated to the public in 1903 by Pavel Krushevan, the instigator of the Kishinev pogrom. It was re-published in 1906-1907 by the Union of the Russian People, a part of the pro-Tsarist antisemitic group The Black Hundreds, as a pamphlet entitled Enemies of the Human Race. The pamphlet was published specifically to blame the Jews for Russia's embarrassing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War.

It was similarly used in opposition to the Russian Revolution of 1905, the October Revolution (1917), and the peace negotiations at the end of World War I, becoming known worldwide during the 1919-1920 period when it was widely circulated in the West.

It was first published in the English language in 1919 as two newspaper articles in the Philadelphia Public Ledger by journalist Carl W. Ackerman, but all references to Jews were replaced by references to Bolsheviks and Bolshevism.^[15] Its first publication in the United States in its original antisemitic form was in 1920 in "The Dearborn Independent", a newspaper owned and controlled by Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion

Hello Helen,

Thank you for your post and support. I can't but agree with your comments and applaud you for having the initiative to respond to these virulent attacks on Zionism, Israel and the Jews. It is much appreciated.

Another source that he used in his thread as "proof" of his mythical theories aside from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (see previous post) is David Duke a well known racist, white supremest and antisemite. Please see below.

Shalom & Thanks,

Peter

Born: 1950 Ideology: White supremacism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Holocaust denial Extremist Affiliations: • Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (founder, 1974); • National Association for the Advancement of White People (founder, 1980); • European-American Unity and Rights Organization (founder, 2003); • enjoys a following in Eastern Europe and Russia, where he lived and toured as a speaker in 2001 and 2002. Criminal record: Imprisoned for 13 months in 2003-2004 on mail fraud and tax evasion charges relating to contributions to his political campaigns. Political campaigns: In 1989, Duke won a seat representing Metairie, Louisiana, in the Louisiana State Legislature. Five unsuccessful political campaigns followed: a 1990 to bid for the U.S. Senate, a 1991 campaign for the governorship of Louisiana, a bid for the Presidency in 1992, another senatorial race in 1996, and a 1998 attempt to win a Congressional seat in Louisiana. In both the 1990 and 1991 races, he attracted a majority of Louisiana's white voters. Works: • African Atto (1973, as Mohammad X), a street-fighting manual avowedly written to help the Klan identify "radical" African-Americans, who would buy the book; • Finders Keepers (1976, as Dorothy Vanderbilt), a  self-help sex manual for women; • My Awakening (1998); • Jewish Supremacism (2002), an updated version of the section, "The Jewish Question," in My Awakening. Significance: Highest profile white supremacist of the last two decades.

Young David Duke at work. Perhaps America's best-known racist, David Duke was instrumental in the Klan resurgence of the 1970s. He has since continued to propagandize white supremacist views as a frequent political candidate, with a variety of fringe organizations and, in recent years, in Russia, Europe and the Middle East. Duke's messages typically include conspiratorial depictions of Jewish power and Jewish hatred for non-Jews, a combination he refers to as "Jewish supremacism." Duke pioneered the now common effort on the far right to camouflage racist ideas in hot-button issues like affirmative action and immigration, successfully appealing to race and class resentments. Similarly, he was one of the first neo-Nazi and Klan leaders to discontinue the use of Nazi and Klan regalia and ritual, as well as other traditional displays of race hatred, and to cultivate media attention. Wanted on tax and mail fraud charges relating to contributions to his political campaigns, he spent much of 2001-2002 in Russia and the Ukraine promoting anti-Semitism. Returning to the U.S. late in 2002, he plea-bargained a thirteen-month prison sentence, which he completed in May 2004. Upon his release he convened a white supremacist conference attended by numerous far-right leaders. While he seemed poised to re-establish himself as a significant force on the domestic scene, by January 2005 he was again touring Europe.

David Duke’s preoccupation with racist ideology dates back to his youth. At 17, he became active in right-wing extremist groups. While attending Louisiana State University in the early 1970s, he founded the White Youth Alliance, a group affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Socialist White People’s Party in Arlington, Virginia. To protest a speech by attorney William Kunstler at Tulane University, Duke picketed wearing a Nazi brown shirt and a swastika armband and carried a placard that said “Kunstler is a Communist-Jew” and “Gas the Chicago 7” (referring to the well-known leftist activists). Duke now describes the event as a folly of youth.

Shortly after graduating in 1974, Duke covered his swastika with a Klan robe and founded the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He first came to broad public attention during this time: the young Imperial Wizard successfully marketed himself in the mid-1970s as a new brand of Klansman – well-groomed, engaged, professional: the Klan leader as a corporate manager. And as a progressive: for the first time in the group’s history, women were accepted as equal members and Catholics were encouraged to apply for membership.

Duke’s efforts not only boosted membership, they also, to a significant degree, made traditional Klan ritual obsolete. He urged an overhaul of the organization at the grass-roots level, encouraging his colleagues to “get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms.” In media appearances and political venues, he skillfully exploited issues like illegal immigration, affirmative action and court-ordered busing, and sanitized Klan vocabulary, titling himself “national director” and referring to cross burnings as “illuminations.” He also professed nonviolence and encouraged members to become politically active; following his own advice, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Louisiana State Senate in 1975, receiving one-third of the votes cast. His already evident skill at sublimating his bigotry led journalists to describe his style as “rhinestone racism” and “button-down terror.”

Meanwhile, the Klan enjoyed a resurgence under his leadership. In 1976, he organized the largest Klan rally the nation had witnessed since the 1960s in Walker, Louisiana, with an estimated attendance of 2,700. In addition, he built up local organizations in other states, including California, Florida and Texas. Although he publicly shunned violence, he was convicted in 1979 of inciting a riot in connection with a Klan rally in suburban New Orleans.

White Rights Advocate

In 1980, Duke’s days as a Klan leader ended abruptly. Bill Wilkinson, who had left Duke’s organization five years earlier to organize the Invisible Empire Knights of the KKK in Louisiana, told the press he had forced Duke’s resignation from the Knights of the KKK by secretly videotaping a meeting during which Duke offered to sell Wilkinson his membership lists for $35,000. Duke denied the allegation but nonetheless left the Klan and established the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), which he described as “primarily a white rights lobby organization, a racialist movement, mainly middle class people.”

In a letter to his followers, he wrote that the NAAWP “avoids the Hollywood stereotypes and misconceptions about the Klan” and maintained that the messages of the two groups were “essentially the same.” Indeed, the NAAWP was housed in the former headquarters of the Knights of the KKK, and Duke used the facilities to produce the NAAWP newsletter. From that office, he also produced the Louisiana edition of The White Patriot, a periodical of the Knights of the KKK, while Don Black, his successor as the Klan’s leader (and later founder of the pioneering racist Web site Stormfront.org), served a three-year federal prison term for conspiring to overthrow the government of the Caribbean island of Dominica. Although he no longer has an official role in the NAAWP, Duke maintains close ties with many in the group, and its agenda closely parallels his. Furthermore, he has often been a guest speaker at NAAWP events, such as a 1996 rally in Baton Rouge.

Chasing the Kingfish

By the late 1980s, Duke had become “America’s most renowned ‘white rights’ advocate,” according to The Spotlight, the nation’s leading far-right publication

In 1988, he ran for the Presidency, first as a Democrat, and then as a third-party candidate on the ticket of the Populist Party, founded four years earlier by Willis Carto to provide far-right radicals with a platform for political office.

Duke eventually appeared on the ballot in 11 states and received 47,047 votes – one-twentieth of one percent of those cast. Undaunted by the low totals, in January 1989 he joined a field of seven Republicans contesting a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature in Metairie. Despite the opposition to Duke expressed by national Republican leaders, including then-President Bush, voters elected him by a narrow margin. Until the middle of that year, when the practice was publicly exposed, Duke sold extremist literature (including Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries) from his Metairie legislative office.

The following year, Duke aimed significantly higher, running against Democratic incumbent J. Bennett Johnston for a United States Senate seat. In a state wracked by the depressed oil and gas industries, Duke’s politics of resentment achieved some resonance. Decrying “welfare systems that encourage illegitimate births” and “set-asides to promote the incompetent,” Duke’s chances appeared sufficiently favorable to prompt eight Republican United States senators to endorse Johnston and to urge the repudiation of Duke, who was running as a Republican. Johnston won with 53.9 percent of the vote to Duke’s 43.5 percent, but Duke gained a surprising 60 percent of the white vote.

On March 13, 1991, Duke launched a campaign for the governorship of Louisiana. Because of his more-than-respectable finish in the previous year’s Senate race, his bid attracted enormous publicity, and his long record of bigotry came under heightened scrutiny. In response, Duke claimed to have discarded his racist beliefs and to have undergone a religious rebirth. His claim was belied, however, by a number of recent statements. During his senatorial campaign, for instance, he had said, “Jews are trying to destroy all other cultures…as a survival mechanism.” Moreover, during the last week of the race his state campaign coordinator, Bob Hawkes, resigned, saying that the candidate’s recent professions of faith were a political ploy. Hawkes subsequently noted that an adjoining room in Duke’s campaign office remained the headquarters of the NAAWP. Duke lost the election but again won nearly 700,000 votes. The following day, Duke, by now something of a professional campaigner, formed a presidential exploratory committee and eventually mounted an uninspired and short-lived campaign; in this fourth campaign in four years, both his supporters and the media had probably begun to suffer from “Duke fatigue.”

Consequently, his surprisingly candid January 17, 1992, interview with The Dallas Morning News may have been more of a public relations stunt than a scoop — among other things, he told the paper that, with regard to his Klan career, “the things that I accomplished under that motif were pretty substantial,” and that “fundamentally, yes, I haven’t changed.”

By mid-1992, with his gubernatorial loss and collapsed presidential campaign starting to erode his support base, Duke began to retreat from the political arena. He concentrated instead on raising money, with a brief stint as a co-owner of an Irish pub in Metairie and a failed attempt at securing a job as an insurance agent. He also tried to raise money by starting up a new publication, the David Duke Report, and, in 1993 and 1994, he hosted a radio talk show – “David Duke Conservative hotline” – on WASO AM 730 in Covington, near New Orleans.

Clearly happiest in the spotlight, in September 1996, Duke again competed in Louisiana’s United States Senate “open” primary, placing fourth among 15 candidates, with 140,910 votes, and carrying several rural parishes.

Coming Out (Again)

Even though Duke’s ability to win office seemed to have waned, he still found himself able to create political turmoil. For the second time in his career, he became embroiled in a scandal concerning the sale of a mailing list – this time to Louisiana Governor Mike Foster. Foster was found by the state Board of Ethics to have failed to report a $103,000 payment to Duke during the 1995 governor’s race, and again in 1997 when he paid $52,000 for the right to continue to use the list. Foster said that he tried to keep the purchase secret, because “it ain’t real cool to put out there that you’re buying something from David Duke.”

Although the political scandal left Duke twisting in the wind, uncertain as to whether any investigations would affect him personally, he soldiered on. He essentially ended his dalliance with “moderation” in late 1998 with the self-publication of a 700-page autobiography, My Awakening. In this magnum opus, Duke attempted to prove that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, while devoting almost 250 pages to anti-Jewish themes. Duke wrote that Jews “thoroughly dominate the news and entertainment media in almost every civilized nation; they control the international markets and stock exchanges; and no government can resist doing their bidding on any issue of importance,” and he noted that Jews and Gentiles are “in a state of ethnic war,” predicting that “the ultimate clash between these two diametrically opposed genotypes and cultures fast approaches with the new millenium.” In its unabashed racist animosity, the book seemed to represent a conscious decision by Duke to abandon his two-decade long attempts to obfuscate, repackage, intellectualize and dress up his opinions and ideas. The volume sold out a second edition and was republished in May 2000, while Duke allegedly began work on a second book, The Ultimate Supremacism: An Examination of the Jewish Question, to be followed by a third effort focusing on the “spiritual aspect of the struggle to preserve and protect our heritage,” entitled For the Love of My People. Duke also returned to speaking at white supremacist rallies and conferences.

Yet his reversion to overt, as opposed to veiled, racism did not douse his political hopes. In December 1998, Duke announced that he would run for the Congressional seat being vacated by Robert L. Livingston, in Louisiana’s First Congressional District. Achieving this goal was not wholly implausible; Duke had carried this district in his campaigns for United States Senate and governor in 1990 and 1991. Once again, he positioned himself as an anti-government conservative who stood up for the little man against programs such as affirmative action, minority set-asides and welfare. And once again, Duke’s message seemed to hit a nerve among some frustrated white voters who were willing to overlook his past. He received one out of every five ballots cast in the district and placed third in the election. These results apparently validated his assertion that he would fly under the radar of public opinion research, which projected him winning a far smaller percentage of the vote. Indeed, despite the pre-election polling numbers, both mainstream G.O.P. and local business leaders feared a potential Duke victory. “We were sweating bullets,” said Ken Johnson, an aide to Representative W.J. Tauzin, the Republican dean of Louisiana’s Congressional delegation. On the other hand, Duke’s showing seemed to indicate that, while he could still stir contention and anxiety and had a reliable constituency, this constituency was modest and unlikely ever to expand. Moreover, Duke had increasingly come to be seen as both enamored with the publicity and money of campaigns and disinclined actually to win and serve.

Following his defeat, Duke stated that while he had no immediate plans to stage another political candidacy, he was “absolutely committed to spending the rest of my life as a spokesman for the rights of European Americans.” He turned to a strategy that several other racist organizations have also adopted, focusing on ethnic themes designed to appeal to alienated whites, especially minority crime rates, immigration and so-called “Confederate heritage” issues such as flying the Confederate flag on state property.

NOFEAR

Now a self-styled “civil rights activist,” in January 2000, Duke announced the formation of a new organization, the National Organization for European American Rights. Aping contemporary civil rights groups, NOFEAR addressed “European American” concerns. “Just as African Americans have the NAACP and Mexican Americans have La Raza,” Duke said, “European-Americans now have the National Organization for European American Rights, to actively defend their rights and heritage in the United States.”

NOFEAR was intended to be an antidote to the alleged “massive discrimination” faced by whites from the nation’s growing population of minorities. According to Duke, “European Americans face a situation where we’re going to be outnumbered and outvoted in our own country.” Low birthrates, interracial marriages and immigration rates were cited by Duke as key factors reducing the white share of the population. The NOFEAR home pages on the davidduke.com Web site maintain that “the civil rights of European Americans are being violated by affirmative action, forced integration and anti-European immigration policies.…We face cultural discrimination in the media and education.…An example is the media hate crime hysteria that highlights and publicizes any white crime against minorities.”

At the launching of NOFEAR, Duke told reporters at the National Press Club that the alleged ongoing destruction of white people was a “genocide.” In a January 26, 2000, letter to the Shreveport Times rebutting a critical editorial, Duke described European Americans as “internally displaced people” entitled to the same consideration as refugees. In June 2001, threatened by a trademark lawsuit, Duke renamed his group the European-American Rights Organization.

Recent Themes:
Call to Arms

Duke repeatedly stresses the need for white Southerners and European Americans generally to organize to preserve their rights and heritage. “These minority activists are not only after Southern heritage,” he warns, “Eventually they plan to erase the heritage and history of European Americans in the United States and ... [we plan] to stop them.” As evidence, Duke has cited black school board members in New Orleans who called George Washington an “immoral example” for children and voted to remove his name from a public school, as well as the Richmond, Virginia, City Council that removed a mural of General Robert E. Lee from a flood wall in 1999.

Immigration

Another major focus for Duke has been nonwhite immigration to the United States, both legal and illegal. In a well-known episode, Duke was invited to Siler City, North Carolina, in February 2000, by residents who claimed that their town was being overrun by illegal immigrants from Mexico, thereby lowering wages, increasing crime and destroying the quality of life. Hundreds of white parents, and some blacks, packed school board meetings to protest the new immigrant children’s effect on classrooms (there were also unpleasant racist incidents, including the vandalism of a Hispanic church). “Why should the people of Siler City, whose families established the town and who have lived there for generations, now have to live in a town that looks more like Mexico than America?” asked Duke. He spoke at a rally and met with local residents and community officials. Purportedly taking action on behalf of residents, he castigated the local poultry plants for hiring illegal immigrant labor at a huge cost to community services and wrote to the North Carolina Immigration and Naturalization Service requesting a full-scale investigation. He also campaigned against local politicians who allegedly supported the illegal immigrants, arguing for the removal of “politicians who have sold out the heritage and interests of European Americans in favor of illegal aliens.”

Hate Crimes

Duke has also focused on alleged hate crimes against whites. Although hate crimes against whites actually do form a substantial percentage of the country’s overall total, Duke’s twist was to label all black-on-white crime as falling into the “hate” category. Though initially Duke and his associates stated that they were opposed to hate crime laws and to the very concept of hate crimes, which they considered discriminatory to whites, the advantages of claiming victimhood led them to shift their position. Thus, in May 2000, Duke attempted to call attention “to an epidemic of hate crimes committed against white Americans…and to expose the lack of coverage that exists on this issue.”

“I don’t call myself a white supremacist,” said Duke. “I’m a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights.”

Prophet Away from Home

The most recent and interesting development in Duke’s career as a professional racist has been his growing infatuation with Russia. In September 2000 Duke traveled to the country at the invitation of Alexander Prokhanov, the editor in chief of Zavtra, an ultranationalist newspaper, and Konstantin Kasimovsky, the head of an anti-Semitic organization called Russian Action. Duke reportedly made an impassioned speech in Moscow, telling a crowd that they should take action against “the Aryan race’s main enemy — world Zionism” and calling for all “dark-skinned people to be forced out of Moscow.” The crowd responded with cries of “glory to Russia” and “white power.”

After spending three months in Russia in 2000, he returned again in 2001, ostensibly to build further connections with right-wing nationalists. He held a rally at a respected literary museum; signed autographs at the Russian Writers Union; and met with members of Parliament, including a retired Soviet general, Albert Makashov, who is known for anti-Semitic remarks. While thoroughgoing anti-Semites apparently constitute only three or four percent of the Russian population, the history of Jew-hatred in the country is centuries old, violent and deeply rooted, and there appears to be increasing cooperation between Russian extremists and their ideological counterparts abroad. Duke seeks to promote that relationship even if, as some observers speculate, his visits have been related to the ongoing investigation of his activities in the United States, where his home was searched in November 2000 by federal agents looking for evidence of tax fraud, tax evasion and money laundering.

The above is from the ADL website.

http://www.adl.org/Learn/Ext_US/duke.asp

 Hello Friends,

When a person writes something as a fact and then disproves something with his own statement then one can only assume that something is quite wrong. Is it allusions of grandeur that drive a person like that or simply looking for anything to prove his original statement?

When you use a damaged source in order to prove the right or wrong of a theory or belief then the foundation isn't very stable to begin with. Using Flavius Josephus a Romanized Jew as a source is problematic. Most scholars are skeptical of his works even though he is one of the main sources for much in the Roman period in Israel and the New Testament. The skepticism is based on the fact that he wrote in order to find favor with the Roman rulers and to establish himself as a citizen of Rome. His initial works were written in Aramaic and also in Greek. The belief is that the Aramaic version was truer to the real facts but they were never found and the only source remaining was the Greek version. Much of his historical books aren't considered to be factual but do give a basis for the period he wrote about.

Consequently using him as a source and then saying not true is a bit of a farce since when you consider that he is not a totally reliable source to begin with.

Josephus was held in contempt by the Jews in Israel and considered to be a traitor which can also be found in his books. In his first works he wrote as if he was true to the cause of the rebellion against Rome and in later works he wrote that he was a spy for the Romans from the beginning.

Below please find a short history of Flavius Josephus (source wikipedia).

Shalom,

Peter

Josephus   · Classical Studies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Roman portrait bust said to be of Josephus^[1]

Josephus (AD 37 – c. 100),^[2] also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu (Joseph, son of Matthias) and, after he became a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus,^[3] was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. His works give an important insight into first-century Judaism.

Josephus's two most important works are The Jewish War (c. 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94).^[4] The Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Rome (66–70). Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective. These works provide valuable insight into first century Judaism and the background of early Christianity.^[4]

Life

The Galilee, site of Josephus' governorship, in late antiquity.

Josephus, who introduced himself in Greek as "Iosepos (Ιώσηπος), son of Matthias, an ethnic Jew, a priest from Jerusalem",^[5] fought the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War of 66–73 as a Jewish military leader in Galilee. After the Jewish garrison of Yodfat was taken under siege, the Romans invaded, killing thousands; the survivors committed suicide.

According to Josephus, however, in circumstances that are somewhat unclear, Josephus found himself trapped in a cave with forty of his companions. The Romans asked him to surrender once they discovered where he was, but his companions refused to allow this. He therefore suggested a method of collective suicide: they draw lots and killed each other, one by one, counting to every third person. The sole survivor of this process was Josephus (this method as a mathematical problem is referred to as the Josephus problem, or Roman Roulette ^[6]) Josephus and one of his soldiers then surrendered to the Roman forces invading Galilee in July 67 and became prisoners. The Roman forces were led by Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus, both subsequently Roman emperors. In 69, Josephus was released (cf. War IV.622–629) and according to Josephus's own account, he appears to have played a role as a negotiator with the defenders during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70.

In 71, he arrived in Rome in the entourage of Titus, becoming a Roman citizen and client of the ruling Flavian dynasty (hence he is often referred to as Flavius Josephus — see below). In addition to Roman citizenship he was granted accommodation in conquered Judaea, and a decent, if not extravagant, pension. It was while in Rome, and under Flavian patronage, that Josephus wrote all of his known works. Although he only ever calls himself "Josephus", he appears to have taken the Roman praenomen Titus and nomen Flavius from his patrons.^[7] This was standard practice for 'new' Roman citizens.

Josephus's first wife perished, together with his parents, in Jerusalem during the siege and Vespasian arranged for him to marry a Jewish woman who had been captured. This woman left Josephus, and around 70, he married a Jewish woman from Alexandria by whom he had three male children. Only one, Flavius Hyrcanus, survived childhood. Josephus later divorced his third wife and around 75, married his fourth wife, a Jewish woman from Crete, member of a distinguished family. This last marriage produced two sons, Flavius Justus and Flavius Simonides Agrippa.

Josephus's life is beset with ambiguity. For his critics, he never satisfactorily explained his actions during the Jewish war — why he failed to commit suicide in Galilee in 67 with some of his compatriots, and why, after his capture, he accepted patronage from the Romans. Historian E. Mary Smallwood wrote:

(Josephus) was conceited, not only about his own learning but also about the opinions held of him as commander both by the Galileans and by the Romans; he was guilty of shocking duplicity at Jotapata, saving himself by sacrifice of his companions; he was too naive to see how he stood condemned out of his own mouth for his conduct, and yet no words were too harsh when he was blackening his opponents; and after landing, however involuntarily, in the Roman camp, he turned his captivity to his own advantage, and benefitted for the rest of his days from his change of side.^[8]

Those who have viewed Josephus as a traitor and informer have also questioned his credibility as a historian — dismissing his works as Roman propaganda or as a personal apologetic, aimed at rehabilitating his reputation in history. More recently, commentators have reassessed previously-held views of Josephus. As P.J. O'Rourke quipped:

Reason dictates we should hate this man. But it's hard to get angry at Josephus. What, after all, did he do? A few soldiers were tricked into suicide. Some demoralizing claptrap was shouted at a beleaguered army. A wife was distressed... all of which pale by comparison to what the good men did. For it was the loyal, the idealistic and the brave who did the real damage. The devout and patriotic leaders of Jerusalem sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to the cause of freedom. Vespasian and Titus sacrificed tens of thousands of more to the cause of civil order. Even Agrippa II, the Roman client king of Judea who did all he could to prevent the war, ended by supervising the destruction of half a dozen of his cities and the sale of their inhabitants into slavery. How much better for everyone if all the principal figures of the region had been slithering filth like Josephus.^[9]

Josephus was an important apologist in the Roman world for the Jewish people and culture, particularly at a time of conflict and tension. He always remained, in his own eyes, a loyal and law-observant Jew. He went out of his way both to commend Judaism to educated Gentiles, and to insist on its compatibility with cultured Graeco-Roman thought. He constantly contended for the antiquity of Jewish culture, presenting its people as civilised, devout and philosophical. Eusebius reports that a statue of Josephus was erected in Rome.^[10]

Significance to scholarship

A fanciful representation of Flavius Josephus, in an engraving in William Whiston's translation of his works

The works of Josephus provide crucial information about the First Jewish-Roman War and are also important literary source material for understanding the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls and post-Second Temple Judaism. Josephan scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century became focused on Josephus' relationship to the sect of the Pharisees. He was consistently portrayed as a member of the sect, but nevertheless viewed as a villainous traitor to his own nation — a view which became known as the classical concept of Josephus. In the mid 20th century, this view was challenged by a new generation of scholars who formulated the modern concept of Josephus, still considering him a Pharisee but restoring his reputation in part as patriot and a historian of some standing. Scholarship post-1990 sought to move scholarly perceptions forward by demonstrating that Josephus was not a Pharisee but an orthodox Aristocrat-Priest who became part of the Temple Establishment as a matter of deference, and not willing association (cf. Steve Mason 1991).

Josephus includes information about individuals, groups, customs and geographical places. His writings provide a significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of Herod the Great. He makes references to the Sadducees, Jewish High Priests of the time, Pharisees and Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius' census and the Zealots, and to such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and a disputed reference to Jesus. He is an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism (and, thus, the context of early Christianity).

A careful reading of Josephus' writings allowed Ehud Netzer, an archaeologist from Hebrew University, to discover the location of Herod's Tomb, after a search of 35 years — above aqueducts and pools, at a flattened, desert site, halfway up the hill to the Herodium, 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem — exactly where it should have been, according to Josephus's writings.^{[citation needed]}

For many years, the works of Josephus were printed only in an imperfect Latin translation from the original Greek. It was only in 1544 that a version of the Greek text was made available, edited by the Dutch humanist Arnoldus Arlenius. The first English translation, by Thomas Lodge, appeared in 1602, with subsequent editions appearing throughout the 17th century. However, the 1544 Greek edition formed the basis of the 1732 English translation by William Whiston which achieved enormous popularity in the English speaking world (and which is currently available online for free download by Project Gutenberg). Later editions of the Greek text include that of Benedikt Niese, who made a detailed examination of all the available manuscripts, mainly from France and Spain. This was the version used by H. St J. Thackeray for the Loeb Classical Library edition widely used today.