Josippon
Josippon (Hebrew: ספר יוסיפון Sefer Yosipon) is a chronicle of Jewish history from Adam to the age of Titus.
Trieber held the singular view that the author lived in the fourth century and derived much of his material from Hegesippus.
[3] The version edited and expanded by Yehudah ibn Moskoni (1328-1377), a Romaniote from Ohrid, in the Balkan region, was printed in Constantinople in 1510 and translated to English in 1558.
[4][5] Moskoni was part of a Byzantine Greek-Jewish milieu that produced a number of philosophical works in Hebrew and a common intellectual community of Jews in the Mediterranean.
[1] As the Muslim writer ibn Hazm (d. 1063) was acquainted with the Arabic translation by a Yemenite Jew, Daniel Chwolson proposes that the author lived at the beginning of the ninth century.
[8][9] Saskia Dönitz has analyzed an earlier Egyptian version older than the version reconstructed by David Flusser, drawing on the work of a parallel Judaeo-Arabic Josippon by Shulamit Sela and fragments in the Cairo Geniza, which indicate that Josippon is a composite text written by multiple authors over time.
[10][11][12][13][14] Josippon was also a popular work or a volksbuch, and had further influence such as its Latin translation by Christian Hebraist Sebastian Münster which was translated into English by Peter Morvyn, a fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford and a Canon of Lichfield, printed by Richard Jugge, printer to the Queen in England, and according to Lucien Wolf may have played a role in the resettlement of the Jews in England.
"Yosippon" was one of the most highly respected historical sources on Jewish history in the Middle Ages, and was frequently reprinted.
[23] Joseph Justus Scaliger in his "Elenchus Trihæresii Nicolai Serarii" was the first to doubt its worth; Jan Drusius (d. 1609) held it to be historically valueless on account of its many chronological mistakes; Zunz and Delitzsch have branded the author as an impostor.
Both the manuscripts and printed editions contain a number of historical errors, discrepancies or misinterpretations when compared to the original Josephus and other sources it drew upon, and subjective commentary from the author.
[16] Josippon is considered a valuable source for certain topics, such as the Hasmonean dynasty and Jewish history in Italy and the Byzantine Empire, and it paraphrases much of Josephus.
[24] David Flusser and Steven Bowman wrote modern critical editions, and the latter considers it a mix of history and midrash.
Azariah dei Rossi also recognized that the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes in a Hebrew translation had been smuggled into the first edition; and, following David Kimchi, Rapoport showed that the last chapter belonged to Abraham ibn Daud.
Trieber contends that the author did not draw his information directly from Josephus or from the Second Book of Maccabees, as is usually believed, and as Wellhausen maintains.
[35] Another abstract, made in 1161 by Abraham ibn Daud and used as the third book of his Sefer Seder ha-Qabbalah was published (Mantua, 1513; Venice, 1545; Basel, 1580, etc.
A Yiddish compendium by Edel bat Moses was published in Kraków in 1670; the oldest German extract, under the title "Joseppi Jüdische Historien" (author not known) is described in Wolf, "Bibl.
