6. Jewish War Preparations, Preliminary Skirmishes
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bit too shrewd to be believed. I will rely on Gary Goldberg’s (webmaster of the Flavius Josephus Homepage) chronological reconstruction of the somewhat convoluted sequence of events. Goldberg has conveniently divided this confusing period into five phases. Phase I deals with the period of the “three commanders of Galilee” and lasted three or four weeks. Phase II concerns the two to three weeks when Josephus was left in sole command. Phase III relates the six or more weeks when Josephus attempted to deal with opposition to his command in the major cities of Galilee. Phase IV, lasting four to five weeks, recites the episode wherein the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem sent envoys that attempted to relieve Josephus of his command. Phase V at last deals with expanding military activity against the Roman allies, occupying about three to four weeks. When I first encountered this episode in Life (War has a very truncated accounting of this period), I was tempted to simply disregard it and use the succinct chronicle laid out in War, that omits all the strutting and pretence Josephus deploys in Life to justify his methods. It’s true that this section diverges somewhat from the narrative of the combat operations proper. But it is important in explaining just why Josephus’s sector was so ill prepared for the Roman onslaught. And it is no less germane to the subsequent course of War than is the squabbling among the revolutionary cadres in Jerusalem during the lull in hostilities when there was a succession of four claimants to the Roman throne within the period of a year. Initially, Josephus was sent to Galilee by the revolutionary war council in Jerusalem to reconnoiter the situation, always with the objective of coordinating the diffuse warlike parties and if possible disarming these unpredictable wildmen for the ostensible purpose of establishing a central arms depot for his army-in-the-making. His secret agenda was to keep these hotheads from provoking a Roman attack if at all possible. But that was not Josephus’s main problem. Given the nature of fractious Galilee, some of the cities were already conducting their own mini-campaigns, somewhat against Roman outposts and surrogates, but in the main attacking other Jewish cities in the rivalry for regional influence. Rather taken aback at this tumultuous situation, Josephus wrote to the Jerusalem council for instructions. Their less than helpful advice was to stay put in Galilee and keep a lid on things. Meanwhile, Josephus saw that his writ from the Jerusalem authorities was far from certain; there were other rival commanders that did not believe Josephus’s authority extended to their enclaves.