Oneness, Unity, and Josephus's Theological Politics

For Josephus, unity is a virtue. But this essay argues it is a virtue that he deploys in characteristically pragmatic fashion, frequently serving a rhetorical purpose in his presentation of Jewish groups in the passages in which it appears. Unity is central to his positive portrayal of the Jewish people and their law in Against Apion and the Jewish Antiquities, arising from both the practice of the law and a similar oneness of both God and temple, whereas its absence is central to his explanation of defeat in the Jewish War. Similarly, concord features in his descriptions of the Jewish sects, as characteristic of the groups that attract Josephus’s praise and lacking in those that he censures.

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