More on the Fate of Agrippa in the Yosippon

The Hebrew only says Agrippa I died in the reign of Claudius after reigning for twenty-three years and his son Agrippa II succeeded him immediately, with the implication being that he ruled over exactly the same territory as his father. A word for word translation would read pretty well the same as this summary.This version is the same as in Hegesippus.

The form Hegesippus is an adaptation to the phonetics of Greek, to make the name sound Greek (not Latin). It is an artificial name made up by whoever edited this version of Josephus called Hegesippus.

You might be interested to know that the Hebrew text is not very convicing in its linkage of “Yosef”, Josephus, with the events concerning Agrippa. I get the impression that some other history (Justus of Tiberias?) has been cobined with Josephus to make a new book, the ancestor of both Yosippon and Hegesippus. Notice the great length of Agrippa’s exhortation to make peace, which is suspiciously similar to what someone called Yosef attributes to himself later on. The passage where this Yosef speaks of his own schemes are obtrusive and don’t harmonise with the rest, or contradict the rest in matters of detail. I think this is important. Have we actually got access to the history by Justus after all?