Josippon ספר יוסיפון
An anonymous chronicle written in Italy in the tenth century. The author called himself Joseph ben Gorion—and for centuries the book was read as Josephus himself.
Written in the tenth century in Byzantine southern Italy—in the Greek-speaking Jewish community there. The author is unknown; he called himself Joseph ben Gorion and presented the book as a copy of Josephus.
In fact it is not a translation. The compiler worked from various sources: the books of Maccabees, Eusebius in Jerome's rendering, the Aeneid, Livy, the Latin Pseudo-Hegesippus. Out of them he made a connected account of the Second Temple and the war with Rome—in Hebrew and for a Hebrew reader.
What it meant. In the Middle Ages the Josippon was among the most respected sources on Jewish history and was printed again and again. The enlarged recension of Judah ibn Moskoni, in the fourteenth century, became the most widely read book about Jews among non-Jews as well—and remained so into the twentieth century.
How to read it. As a medieval book, not an ancient one. Between the Josippon and Josephus lie a thousand years and a different purpose; where they differ, it is not the Josippon that answers for antiquity.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Josippon — the chronicle itself
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Josippon” — the tenth century, southern Italy, the sources and the Ibn Moskoni recension
Basis: documents and evidence.