Expert Witnesses: Autobiography as Rhetorical Strategy in the Writings of Paul and Josephus

Perhaps no two writers shed more light on Judean life in the first century than Paul and Josephus. Josephus was a late first century Jewish historian who recounts the Jewish War of 66–70 CE in great detail, and Paul was a self-appointed apostle of Jesus who taught Gentiles throughout the Roman empire about Jesus’ life and teachings. Paul and Josephus share similar approaches towards events that affected their Jewish communities. Both see political changes as reflections of divine providence, and both interpret Israel’s suffering at the hands of their enemies as a divine punishment for the Jews’ sins. Moreover, both Paul and Josephus believe that they are recipients of divine inspiration, experience personal struggles that they believe are integrally related to the stories they are retelling, and critique the Pharisees for misguiding other Jews.

While they have different goals –Paul seeks to open the covenant between Israel and God to all of humankind, and Josephus wants to retell Jewish history in a way that preserves its integrity and yet reminds Jews to stay loyal to the Roman Empire– Paul and Josephus imbue themselves with authority in similar ways. This paper will explore the rhetorical similarities in the writings of Paul and Josephus, and argue that in the first century, inserting autobiographical detail into didactic material was a known technique that was used as a strategy to connect a speaker to his subject in a way that gave him authority over his subject.