1 Introduction: A Tale of Two Texts

It is a commonplace in the modern reception of Benjamin of Tudela’s Sefer Masaʿot that Sefer Yosippon served as one of its major sources.¹ Numerous scholars over the course of the past two centuries have turned to this early medieval chronicle of Jewish history in seeking to account for some of the twelfth-century travel narrative’s more puzzling statements. Most recently, Giancarlo Lacerenza has described Yosippon as “the direct source of the Tudelan itinerary in various passages” and, indeed, as the “Hebrew source most used”² by the presumed redactor of the Book of Travels.³ To date, however, I am aware of no sustained examination of either the textual relationship between these two classics of medieval Jewish literature or of the scholarly context in which the claims of this relationship emerged. In what follows, I aim to address these two significant lacunae.

After first briefly reviewing the passages in Sefer Masaʿot that have been ascribed to, or linked with, Benjamin’s Italian predecessor, I shall assess the legitimacy of these claims, arguing that while in some instances the attributions may well be correct, in certain other, more critical cases they are downright erroneous or have been greatly exaggerated. Where they do appear to be legitimate or at least highly plausible, I shall clarify both how Sefer Yosippon was employed and the significance of that use. Thereafter, in order to pinpoint the origin of the over-emphasis on Yosippon, I shall turn to the internal Jewish scholarly polemics of the nineteenth century, in particular the vehement critique directed against Isaak Markus Jost by Adolf Asher in his 1840–41 edition and English translation of Sefer Masaʿot. I shall show how the latter’s commitment to defending the value and reliability of Benjamin’s Book of Travels led him to inflate its dependence upon Yosippon, with important consequences for how the text has been interpreted down to the present. Indeed, through close readings of two relevant sections from the Itinerary, I shall demonstrate that by deflecting scholarly attention away from fascinating passages worthy of closer investigation, Asher’s strategy has had the ironic consequence of actually undermining the Itinerary it sought to enhance.

While the relevance of this topic for a volume devoted in part to the legacy of Sefer Yosippon is clear, in revealing how unquestioned traditions of interpretation can unwittingly guide—or rather misguide—analysis across generations, this study should be of interest to all students and scholars concerned with the reception and analysis of foundational texts.

2 The Passages

From the beginning of the text it is five pages to Rome,⁴ where Benjamin refers to the eighty palaces belonging to the eighty emperors who had reigned there, noting in particular that

the palace of Titus is [located] outside of Rome, since the consul and his three hundred senators did not receive him [back in the city]. For in taking three years to conquer Jerusalem, [Titus] did not fulfill their command to do so in two.⁵

In his above-mentioned edition, Asher somewhat cautiously claims that “the traditions respecting the eighty halls [and] the palace of Titus” are “mostly copied from [Yosippon];”⁶ by contrast, in his edition, from 1907, Marcus Nathan Adler pithily asserts “this is Yosippon’s story,” referring specifically to the location of Titus’ palace and the explanation presented for it.⁷ Giulio Busi cites Adler in his 1988 edition to make the same point;⁸ one year later, Laura Minervini in general connects the Roman ruins encountered by Benjamin to legends taken from Sefer Yosippon;⁹ in his 1998 German rendering, Stefan Schreiner was likewise convinced that “die hier überlieferte Legende hat der Autor dem … Buch ‘Yosippon,’ … entnommen;”¹⁰ the 2015 bilingual Spanish-Basque edition of Sefer Masaʿot once again refers to Adler in linking this passage to Yosippon;¹¹ and—finally—for Lacerenza, writing in 2019, “questa parte della descrizione echeggi in più punti elementi tratti direttamente” from Yosippon.¹²

From Rome it is one page to Pozzuoli

which is called Sorrento the Great, built by Zur,¹³ son of Hadadezer, who fled from David the king (may he rest in peace). The sea has risen and covered the city from its two sides, and unto today one can still see the markets and towers which stood in the midst of the city. And a spring there issues forth from the deep and the oil is found there which is called petroleum. People collect it from the surface of the water and use it for various creams and treatments. There are also hot-water springs to the number of about twenty, which issue from beneath the ground and are situated near the sea, and every man who has any sickness can go and bathe in them and get cured. All the afflicted of Lombardy visit it in the summertime for that purpose. From this place a man can travel fifteen miles along a road under the mountains, a work executed by King Romulus who built the city of Rome. He was prompted to this by fear of King David and Joab his general. He built fortifications both upon the mountains and below the mountains reaching as far as the city of Naples.¹⁴

Asher again insists that “[this whole passage] and all the mistakes which occur therein, are copied either by our author or by a later scribe from Josephus Gorionides [i.e. Sefer Yosippon], who also speaks of the petroleum which is gather’d [sic] in the Vicinity [sic], and of the causeway under the mountains ‘constructed by Romulus who feared David.’”¹⁵ For Adler, similarly, “Yosippon gives these legends … when speaking of Zur, whom he associates with Sorrento. Benjamin had few other sources of information.”¹⁶ Likewise, for Lacerenza, in this passage Yosippon is “taken up” (“ripreso”) by, or served as the mold or matrix (“la matrice”) for, Sefer Masaʿot.¹⁷

From Naples, it is two pages to Patras, described as “the city which Antipater, King of the Greeks, built. He was one of the four successors of King Alexander.”¹⁸ Here, too, many of the usual suspects are in agreement that Yosippon lies at the root of this historically incorrect claim.¹⁹

From Patras it is one page to Salonika, described in the Book of Travels as having been founded by King Seleucus, “one of the four branches of Greece that arose after Alexander.”²⁰ David Flusser suggested that Benjamin here draws upon Sefer Yosippon since a virtually identical Hebrew phrase (“ארבעת שריגי יון”) appears in both texts.²¹ Finally, from Salonika it is eleven pages to Jerusalem, where—it has been suggested—the anachronistic description of the city as “fortified by three walls” was taken from Yosippon.²²

These are the five passages known to me for which Sefer Yosippon has been invoked as the source for Sefer Masaʿot.²³

Of these, direct dependence upon Sefer Yosippon in the cases involving Patras, Salonika, and Jerusalem seems quite likely, though by no means definite. Alternatively, it is not impossible that Benjamin encountered the traditions reported by Yosippon via oral intermediaries, including in the locales visited by him. These intermediaries, in turn, could certainly have received their information from Yosippon: indeed, in the preface to his fourteenth-century “edition” thereof, Judah ibn Mosconi refers to the “fragments and excepts [of the work he encountered] in the libraries of Aegean Jews,” i.e. Jews in the region of Patras and Salonika.²⁴ But, by the same token, the independent exposure of these potential intermediaries to the same traditions that had made their way into Sefer Yosippon can also not be excluded.

Thus, like Benjamin, Sefer Yosippon—or, more precisely, the “Alexander Tale” included in the later recensions of Yosippon²⁵ —erroneously mentions Antipater as the founder of Patras. Because this statement in Yosippon follows directly upon Alexander’s death and introduces—alongside Antipater— Ptolomaeus, Seleucus, and an Alexander “Junior” as his other apparent heirs,²⁶ Benjamin’s reference to “the Great’s” four successors seems to summarize this passage as a whole.

With regard to Salonika, for all the similarity between the two texts, it should be noted that—in contrast to Patras—Flusser’s edition of Sefer Yosippon makes no mention of the city of Salonika in connection with Seleucus. Thus, while Sefer Masaʿot’s dependence here upon Yosippon appears likely, it seems not to account for his claim concerning the city’s name, which perhaps reflects a local tradition encountered on site.²⁷

As for Jerusalem, Sefer Yosippon does indeed refer to it as a three-walled city²⁸ and so Benjamin may well have obtained this notion from him.²⁹ Nonetheless, this attribution hardly settles matters, for while the former text mentions these walls as they are felled one after the other by Roman battering rams during the siege of the city,³⁰ the latter evokes them as still standing more than a millennium later. Benjamin’s borrowing from Yosippon, if such is indeed the case, therefore constitutes abuse as much as use. The walls whose destruction Yosippon recounts in detail testify in the Itinerary, instead, to Jerusalem’s endurance.³¹

3 Blame It on Yosippon

The other two instances referenced above are both more significant with regard to our overall interpretation of Sefer Masaʿot and more complex as concerns their relationship with Sefer Yosippon. Benjamin’s fascinating account of the region around Naples overlaps to a large degree with that of Yosippon, but also features substantial differences and therefore requires careful analysis, shortly to follow. As for Benjamin’s description of Roman imperial palaces, and specifically the alleged location external to Rome of that of Titus, I am aware of no such passage in any known edition or manuscript variant of Yosippon. The closest parallel in that text known to me refers to Romulus’ construction of

a wall encompassing all the buildings of the kings (בניני המלכים) who ruled before him, [in which] he included all the surrounding palaces (ההיכלות) and hills within the wall, and the length of the wall was forty-five miles and he called the name of the city Rome after Romulus.³²

This passage does, to be sure, mention “the buildings of the kings,” i.e. presumably their palaces, but refers solely and explicitly to monarchs who ruled prior to Romulus.³³ By contrast, Benjamin makes no mention whatsoever of Romulus anywhere in his description of Rome³⁴ and writes solely of later emperors (i.e. post-Romulus) from the “kingship of Tarquinius down to the kingship of Nero and Tiberius … until the kingdom of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne.”³⁵ Indeed, while Tarquinius is implicitly presented in the Book of Travels as the first or at least an early emperor of Rome, according to Sefer Yosippon it is Tarquinius’ reprehensible behavior in lusting after and seizing a married woman that brought the Romans to swear “that no king will rule over them” there. Instead, they appointed “from among the city’s elders a consul and three hundred and twenty senators (lit. advisors.)”³⁶ A consul and three hundred senators are, to be sure, referenced by Benjamin, but from the Titus passage cited above it is clear that he conceives of them as coexisting with, rather than replacing, the kings/emperors.³⁷ To summarize, there appears to be no sound basis for regarding Yosippon’s treatment of Roman imperial palaces as the basis for that of Sefer Masaʿot. The common elements between them are restricted to the overarching subject matter and a small number of overlapping terms (e.g. Rome, palaces, Tarquinius, the consul, three hundred or three hundred and twenty advisors or senators).

But if there is no direct antecedent in Sefer Yosippon for Benjamin’s discussion of the imperial palaces, why then have so many modern scholars been convinced otherwise? The fact that none of the above-cited scholars identify where precisely in Yosippon the relevant passage is to be found³⁸ or engage in any detailed discussion of the relationship between that passage and the description in Sefer Masaʿot strongly suggests that they have simply relied upon earlier scholarship without double-checking the attribution for themselves. This impression is strengthened by the increasing specificity with which they nonetheless reference Yosippon as the Tudelan’s source.³⁹ When, then, was the notion of Benjamin’s borrowing first raised? So far as I can tell, this occurred in Asher’s above-mentioned edition. Confirmation of this assessment can be discerned in the vehemence—unrivaled since—with which Asher advances this claim in the context of his scholarly polemic against Isaak Marcus Jost, the pioneering nineteenth-century German-Jewish historian.⁴⁰

In his Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabaer, Jost had compiled a list of Benjamin’s errors, prefaced by the suggestion of his general unreliability and of his text’s status as a mere compilation.⁴¹ This approach perfectly suited Jost’s combative stance vis-à-vis Jewish tradition, the irreverent style of his writing, and his commitment to deploying historical research in the service of emancipatory politics.⁴² Asher and his collaborators, who included such Wissenschaft des Judentums luminaries as Leopold Zunz and Salomon Munk, were by contrast eager to defend Benjamin from these charges. For Asher, in particular, preparation of a modern edition of Sefer Masaʿot constituted a central plank of his scholarly endeavor to enhance knowledge of medieval geography.⁴³ Given his interest in enhancing the value and dependability of the Itinerary—at one point he even calls upon the great Gibbon of Decline and Fall-fame in Benjamin’s defense⁴⁴ —it is not surprising that Asher frequently takes delight in undermining the reliability of contemporary scholars and their critiques of Sefer Masaʿot.⁴⁵ Since Jost’s brief discussion had been one of the most recent and prominent such examples, it was subjected to particular ire on the part of Asher and at least part of his team.⁴⁶

Thus, for example, in one passage Asher expresses his “astonishment” at Jost, concluding that a historian “guilty of such mistakes … ought not to be taken bona fide.”⁴⁷ Elsewhere, Asher accuses him of “expressions, rather strange in an historian,”⁴⁸ and, on a third occasion, while acknowledging Benjamin’s occasional errors, nevertheless insists “that the learned Dr. Jost … should have abstained from making these mistakes a point of accusation against the author, who, we contend, is comparatively more exempt from mistakes than his reviewer.”⁴⁹ Indeed, a key element of Asher’s strategy for defending Benjamin’s reliability involved ascribing his occasional lapses to texts such as Sefer Yosippon.⁵⁰ This had the benefit of attesting to both Benjamin and Asher’s wide learning, while at the same time undermining the likes of Jost for failing to have detected his sources.⁵¹ But it also led Asher to exaggerate the Book of Travels’ dependence upon Yosippon in passages that, for a nineteenth-century historian, risked casting the author of the Book of Travels in an especially unfavorable light. Subsequent scholars, unaware of the context that had conditioned Asher’s linkage between the two books, uncritically repeated—and indeed intensified—his conclusions, such that Yosippon today can be described as an “open text,” not only in terms of what was actually added to its folios, but also with regard to what was believed (or at least alleged) to be found therein.⁵²

Of course, if the report concerning Titus and his palace is simply “Yosippon’s story,” then there is little need or inducement for scholars to examine it in detail; indeed, I am aware of no careful analysis thereof prior to a recent study of mine.⁵³ But if, as appears virtually certain, this is not at all the case, then the claim that Titus was punished upon his return to Rome for having conquered Jerusalem too slowly becomes quite interesting, especially as this notion—to the best of my knowledge—is not found in any other known source.

In my study, I argued that this passage reflects a unique Roman-Jewish response to the increasing challenge posed by the Arch of Titus. For this monument that celebrated Titus’s defeat of the Jewish revolt and destruction of Jerusalem on behalf of Senatus Populusque Romanus (“the Senate and people of Rome,” as its famous inscription proclaims) assumed unprecedented textual and liturgical prominence in the life of twelfth-century Rome.⁵⁴ In thus instead highlighting a Titus who was not welcomed back to the Eternal City, this source presents a Jewish counter-history to a central plank of medieval Roman-Christian identity. Along the same lines, it is noteworthy that the arch itself goes unmentioned in Benjamin’s otherwise detailed description of sites of Jewish interest in Rome.

In addition, in the placement of Titus’ palace outside of the city, I detect an echo of the tensions that prevailed in Rome at the time between the papacy and commune (which refounded the Senate), as a result of which numerous popes were in fact obliged to reside for substantial periods of time beyond its walls. In short, this tradition inscribes the turmoil of twelfth-century Rome onto the ancient story of Titus, its political and spatial specificity testifying, in my estimation, to its emergence in a Roman environment.

If my argument concerning this tradition holds, then the false ascription to Sefer Yosippon originating with Asher has actually had quite ironic implications. Far from enhancing the value and dependability of the Itinerary, Asher here undermined it, providing unwitting support for those contemporary scholars who wish to de-emphasize the extent or significance of what Benjamin actually encountered en route and instead present his Book of Travels as substantially a redacted compilation from other sources—in essence what Jost had argued and the dominant approach today in scholarship on this text.⁵⁵ Thus, the uncritical acceptance of long-standing scholarly claims concerning the Itinerary’s sources has paradoxically fed skepticism as to its overarching uniqueness and reliability as a window into its time.⁵⁶ By contrast, I claim that by liberating Sefer Masaʿot from its alleged dependence upon Yosippon, we are better positioned to tap into its riches, including rare and invaluable insight into the perspective of mid twelfth-century Roman Jews.

4 The Submersion of Sorrento

If the passage concerning Titus’ palace presents us with a rather clear instance of erroneous ascription to Sefer Yosippon, that involving Benjamin’s report regarding the region around Naples is far more ambiguous and complex. While there is no doubt, as has long been known,⁵⁷ that Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot overlap to a substantial degree on this front, it is insufficient simply to allege, as has typically been the case, that the latter source is merely dependent upon the former. Instead, I shall argue both that Benjamin arrived at his account largely, if not entirely, independently of Yosippon, and that appreciation of this fact better positions to appreciate the author of Yosippon’s literary artistry. What follows is admittedly speculative; if my readers are left unpersuaded, I at least hope that they find the discussion engaging and suggestive.

Let us being by comparing the two sources’ respective reports.

Romulus reigned … thirty-eight years. In his days, David smote Aram and Edom, and Hadarezer and his sons fled and came to the land of the Kittim [i.e. Italy]. Romulus gave them a place on the sea and a place in the mountains, and they built there a city and called its name Tsorrento [i.e. Sorrento], after the name of the man who escaped from David, namely Tsur, from the family of Hadarezer. They built for themselves the city of ancient Albano and they have resided there unto today. But in the midst of the city of Sorrento a spring of oil emerged and over the course of many years the city sank beneath it and the sea has covered the city, now between Naples and New Sorrento. Nonetheless, the spring has not ceased [its flow], for until now oil flows forth and rises atop the sea water, and the residents of Naples continually collect it. Romulus greatly feared David and built a wall encompassing all the buildings of the kings who ruled before him, and he included all the surrounding palaces and hills within the wall, and the length of the wall was forty-five miles, and he called the name of the city Rome after Romulus. They were greatly afraid all the days of David. [Romulus] magnified the name of the sons of Kittim and they were called Romans after the name of the city until today … Romulus carried out many wars and there was a treaty between him and David.⁵⁸

Sefer Yosippon

From [Capua] one goes to Pozzuoli which is called Sorrento the Great, built by Zur,⁵⁹ son of Hadadezer, who fled from David the king (may he rest in peace). The sea has risen and covered the city from its two sides, and unto today one can still see the markets and towers that stood in the midst of the city. And a spring there issues forth from the deep and the oil is found there which is called petroleum. People collect it from the surface of the water and use it for various creams and treatments. There are also hot-water baths to the number of about twenty, which issue from beneath the ground and are situated near the sea, and every man who has any sickness can go and bathe in them and get cured. All the afflicted of Lombardy visit it in the summertime for that purpose. From this place a man can travel fifteen miles along a road under the mountains, a work executed by King Romulus who built the city of Rome. He was prompted to this by fear of King David and Joab his general. He built fortifications both upon the mountains and below the mountains reaching as far as the city of Naples.⁶⁰

BENJAMIN OF TUDELA, Sefer Masaʿot

The similarities between these accounts are of course obvious and striking. The two passages share a common geographical focus on the Italian city of Sorrento, located near Naples, and agree in associating the name of this city with a certain Tsur (or some variant thereof) from the family of Hadadezer, who fled in fear of King David.⁶¹ Both texts report a strange, if not downright miraculous, oil well that emerged in the midst of the city—and that city’s ultimate fate of ending up at least in part submerged by the sea. They also feature Romulus, identify him as the founder or builder of Rome, and likewise link an important building project of his to fear of David. Here it is perhaps worth briefly observing, in light of our earlier discussion, that Jost was particularly disturbed by Benjamin’s notion of the founder of Rome in flight from the Israelite king: “Romulus feared David!” he exclaims in utter disbelief, adding that “a man (i.e. Benjamin) who claims to have undertaken such a journey, cannot write such nonsense, alone owing to the geography.”⁶²

Notwithstanding these similarities, the differences between Sefer Yosippon and Benjamin are also not insubstantial:

1. While each text mentions Sorrento, the precise terminology used with regard to the city varies. Benjamin refers to “Sorrento the Great,” which he also identifies as Pozzuoli, whereas Yosippon distinguishes between Sorrento and what it calls “New Sorrento.”

2. Hadadezer and Tsur appear in both works, but whereas Benjamin seems to present only the latter as having fled to Italy and identifies him clearly as the son of Hadadezer,⁶³ according to Yosippon Hadadezer and his sons all came to the peninsula, and the exact familial relationship of Tsur to Hadadezer is left ambiguous.

3. Romulus is depicted quite differently in the two texts. According to Benjamin, in addition to fortifications above and below mountains, Romulus constructed a fifteen-mile-long subterranean road near Naples. By contrast, Yosippon focuses on Romulus as the founder of Rome through the construction of a vast wall encompassing the palaces of his predecessors. In addition, whereas for Benjamin the report concerning Romulus is parallel to—and juxtaposed with—that involving Tsur, in Yosippon the tale of Hadarezer and his sons is located within—and thus subordinate to—the overarching Romulus narrative. Finally, while Yosippon explains Romulus’ actions by recourse to his fear of David—which ultimately led him to enter into a treaty with the Israelite monarch, Benjamin references his fear of both David and “Joab his general,” and does not mention any such accord between the Roman and Israelite kings.⁶⁴

4. When subjected to careful examination, the accounts of Sorrento’s submersion beneath oil and water also reveal striking differences. In the case of Yosippon, oil represents the primary element: the well (or spring) emerged in the midst of the city and was initially responsible for covering it, followed thereafter by the sea. For Sefer Masaʿot, instead, it was the sea that on its own covered up the city, of which remnants remain visible in his time (Yosippon, for its part, makes no explicit mention of the enduring visibility of the submerged city). Here the well, supplemented by hot baths, bears no clear relation to the fate of the city. And while, according to Yosippon, the residents of Naples continually collect the oil for an unspecified purpose, in Benjamin’s account undisclosed individuals employ it on medicinal grounds; in addition, people come from as far away as Lombardy to enjoy the benefits of the baths.

The cumulative weight of all these contrasts is to raise serious questions as to what degree, if at all, Benjamin drew from or depended upon Sefer Yosippon in his description of Sorrento and environs. Alone the mention of Joab and reference to Romulus’ tunnel near Naples as opposed to his wall surrounding Rome demonstrate the insufficiency of Yosippon on its own to account for this section of the Book of Travels. And the various other differences in detail and emphasis render it entirely plausible that Benjamin independently encountered the same general set of traditions. The addition of Pozzuoli as the equivalent of Sorrento is particularly significant, as it strongly suggests an actual visit to the site by Benjamin or his source.⁶⁵ For nearby to this town are both the fumaroles and mud pools of the now dormant volcano Solfatara (which last erupted in 1198) and Bagnoli,⁶⁶ site of numerous hot springs, not to mention structures that are at times (or now always) underwater, owing to the phenomenon known as bradyseism, namely “the gradual uplift (positive bradyseism) or descent (negative bradyseism) of part of the Earth’s surface caused by the filling or emptying of an underground magma chamber.”⁶⁷ Indeed, the lower half of adjacent Baiae—where entire Roman villas have been discovered underwater—“[sank] beneath the sea between the third and sixteenth centuries.”⁶⁸

Furthermore, from an examination and comparison of our sources it appears that two independent, albeit related, traditions lie at the root of these accounts: one concerning how the family of Hadadezer, or some portion thereof, fled from King David in the Levant region to Italy in the West, and attempted to reconstitute itself through the founding of one or more new cities; the other involving Romulus and reporting how his fear of David led him to engage in the construction of defensive fortifications. In Sefer Yosippon, these two legends are woven rather elegantly into a single narrative strand, which both opens and closes with, and is therefore dominated by, Romulus.⁶⁹ Note how the author provides his Middle Eastern refugees with a “location on the sea and a location in the mountains” and how Romulus’ fear of David directly follows and is thus implicitly motivated by the demise of [Old] Sorrento. In the Itinerary, by contrast, though juxtaposed to one another and similar in theme, the two stories retain their fundamental independence.⁷⁰ And thus a final difference between the Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot accounts concerns the overarching shape of their respective narrations of this episode, whether as one or two stories.

My suggestion of two originally “independent” traditions and my description of Sefer Yosippon’s crafting of them into one as only “rather elegant” are of a piece. For the notion that it was Romulus who offered Hadarezer land to build Sorrento strikes me as somewhat forced, especially considering that, according to this narrative, Rome itself had yet to be founded! And I also deem it significant that the Book of Travels account bears no trace of the united narrative. It thus appears far more likely that (1) there were initially two strands that Yosippon wove into one, rather than one strand that Benjamin separated into two and (2) that Yosippon and Benjamin encountered these strands independently rather than that Benjamin is here dependent upon Yosippon. Had the Itinerary account really been based on that of Yosippon, one would have expected to encounter some lingering trace of the latter’s interweaving of the two strands.⁷¹

But how likely is it, the reader may now wish to interject, that such local legends persisted for hundreds of years—Sefer Yosippon dating to the late ninth or early tenth centuries,⁷² Sefer Masaʿot to the twelfth? While I possess no independent evidence proving that they did, I am able to demonstrate from three distinct sources the endurance of a Roman-Jewish legend across a substantially longer time span, in this case from at least the twelfth through nineteenth centuries. For in the course of his description of Rome, Benjamin writes of “a cave in a hill on one bank of the River Tiber where the ten righteous men killed by the Empire are buried.”⁷³ While some scholars have questioned whether by this report we are meant to understand the famous ten martyrs of rabbinic legend, I see no reason whatsoever to doubt that they are in fact intended here.⁷⁴ Indeed, in his early sixteenth-century Meshare qitrin, the Kabbalist Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi rejects as nonsense “what the sages of the Great Rome that is in Italy say … [namely that] this [here] is the cave of the Ten Martyrs,” and proceeds to insist that they “are buried in the Land of Israel.”⁷⁵ In addition, a nineteenth-century handwritten list of special practices from the Roman-Jewish rite included a prayer recited at the conclusion of the Friday Maʿariv service “beseeching rest for all ‘the pious and just’ buried in this city,” further commenting that this formula refers to the “ten Hebrew martyrs killed during the Roman Empire.”⁷⁶ If the legend concerning the burial cave of the ten martyrs of Rome endured from the twelfth across the sixteenth and down to the nineteenth century, it seems not unreasonable that that of Tsur, founder of Sorrento, survived between the ninth or tenth, and twelfth. This is especially the case in light of the presence of submerged, but visible structures that cried out for explanation.

Also relevant for our examination of the respective accounts of Sefer Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot is the fact that there is clearly more to the legend of Sorrento than either text explicitly reveals. As noted, both indicate that the city founded by—or at least named after—Tsur ended up submerged under oil and sea; hence Yosippon’s reference to New Sorrento, in implicit contrast with its “Old” counterpart, and Benjamin’s identification of Sorrento with Pozzuoli. The linkage between these two cities is particularly striking, for when one considers their respective locations on a map, one observes something quite interesting, namely that they are located directly opposite from one another in the Gulf of Naples, approximately twenty miles or twenty-six kilometers as the crow flies.

In thus directly associating Pozzuoli with Sorrento, is Benjamin implying that the original Sorrento occupied the entirety of the land between the two (still) extant locales? This would nicely explain the otherwise strange designation “Great Sorrento” (“סוריינטו הגדולה”) and perhaps also the suggestion that “the sea has risen and covered the city from its two sides” (“ויצא הים וכסה אותה בשני חלקים מן העיר”).⁷⁷ It seems likely that this is also the conception of Sefer Yosippon from its statement that “the sea has covered the city, here between Naples and New Sorrento” (“ויכס עליה הים, הנה בין נאפולי ובין צורינטו החדשה”), since Pozzuoli is much closer to Naples than is Sorrento.⁷⁸ Indeed, when one looks at a map of the region as a whole, it appears as if a huge chunk of land has been removed, and this can be discerned at ground level as well, as one gazes across the gulf. So it appears that both of our texts, in attempting to explain the unusual shape of the coastline, present what we might style a “geographical midrash.” The implication is that a tremendous destruction of land, and presumably also life, took place there, perhaps not dissimilar in extent to that meted out upon the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.⁷⁹ But why? Apart from the suggestiveness of the region’s geography, how might we explain the genesis and significance of such a tradition?

View Full Size

The Gulf of Naples

Image: Google Earth

• Download Figure
• Download figure as PowerPoint slide

5 From Sorrento to Tyre (and Tanakh) and Back

In seeking to answer this question, it behooves us first to examine an additional passage from Sefer Masaʿot that bears striking similarities to this one. For ten pages from Pozzuoli one reaches

New Tyre … which is a very fine city, with a harbor in its midst. At nighttime those that levy dues throw iron chains from tower to tower, so that no man can go forth by boat or in any other way to rob the ships by night. There is no harbor like this in the whole world. Tyre is a beautiful city. It contains about 500 Jews, some of them scholars of the Talmud, at their head being R. Ephraim of Tyre, the Dayan; R. Meir from Carcassonne; and R. Abraham, head of the congregation. The Jews own sea-going vessels, and there are glassmakers amongst them who make that fine Tyrian glass-ware which is prized in all countries. In the vicinity is found sugar of a high class, for men plant it here, and people come from all lands to buy it. A man can ascend the walls of New Tyre and see Ancient Tyre, which the sea has now covered, lying at a stone’s throw from the new city. And should one care to go forth by boat, one can see the towers, markets, streets, and palaces in the bed of the sea. New Tyre is a busy place of commerce, to which merchants flock from all quarters.⁸⁰

Of particular interest in this passage is the contrast drawn between New Tyre and Ancient Tyre, especially the fact that the latter has been covered by the sea and that its remains are allegedly still visible in Benjamin’s day. Sound familiar? Indeed, the description of Tyre is quite similar to, and in some respects more expansive than, that of ancient Sorrento,⁸¹ involving not just towers and markets, but also streets and palaces. And, of course, the Hebrew name of Tyre, Tsur, is identical with—or at least, as in some manuscripts, quite similar to—that of the alleged founder or namesake of Sorrento.⁸² Finally, also of note is the geography of Tyre, the historic core of which sticks out like a hitchhiker’s thumb into the Mediterranean Sea.

View Full Size

Tyre

Image: Google Earth

• Download Figure
• Download figure as PowerPoint slide

How to make sense of this unexpected correspondence between the city of Tsur and the city founded by, or in memory of, Tsur? Compounding the difficulty is the fact that whereas Pozzuoli, as noted, does actually feature submerged structures, such is not at all the case with regard to Tyre. Indeed, as Lacerenza has emphasized, aside from the Book of Travels, no medieval description of Tyre refers to an ancient counterpart visible under the sea.⁸³ Lacerenza has therefore argued that Benjamin’s description of Tyre is based directly upon that of “Sorrento” and was first formulated during the redaction of the work, prompted by the “easy confusion” (“facile confusione”) between the two locales’ respective names.⁸⁴ While I do agree that the Itinerary’s account of Tyre was influenced by that of Sorrento, I am not convinced by Lacerenza’s explanation for why this transpired, as it presumes that a high degree of carelessness characterized the creation of Sefer Masaʿot.

More helpful, I argue, is to consider the likely significance, from the perspective of Benjamin and his readership, of a submerged, ancient Tyre. As it happens, numerous passages from the biblical prophets anticipate or call for the city’s destruction. Amos (1:9–10) reports God’s intention not to revoke punishment for the three or four transgressions of Tyre, threatening “fire upon the wall of [the city],” whereas Jeremiah (47:1–5) warns of “waters… rising from the north” that “shall flood the land and its creatures,” including, it seems, Tyre. But most vocal and vivid concerning the fate of Tsur or Tsor (the Bible refers to the city in both manners) are the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah 23 features “The Tyre Pronouncement” (“מסע צר”) and is concerned in its entirety with the coming destruction of both Tyre and neighboring Sidon. Sidon (Isa 23:12), in particular, is advised to “cross over to Kittim” though “even there you shall have no rest.” Of Tyre it is predicted (Isa 23:15, 17–18) that following its destruction and a lapse of seventy years, she shall enjoy a revival, only that henceforth “her profits … shall be consecrated to the Lord. They shall not be treasured or sorted; rather shall her profits go to those who abide before the Lord.” For his part, Ezekiel refers to Tyre broken and in ruins (26:2), quoting God’s intention to (26:19) “bring the deep over you, and [let] its mighty waters cover you” (“בהעלות עליך את־תהום וכסוך המים הרבים”). Likewise, the prophet anticipates Tyre’s downfall via the metaphor of a fully-laden ship that sinks (Ezek 27:27) “into the depths of the sea” and imagines others lamenting in the future (Ezek 27:32): “Who was like Tyre when she was silenced in the midst of the sea?”⁸⁵

My argument, therefore, is that for all its fantasy, the Itinerary’s description of “Ancient Tyre” intentionally represents, or at least evokes, the fulfillment of these biblical prophecies.⁸⁶ Along the same lines, in Benjamin’s rather glowing depiction of the new city, especially of the prominent role played by Jews in its trade as both owners of ships and makers of glass,⁸⁷ I see a reflection of Isaiah’s anticipation of a revived and now redeemed Tyre.

Furthermore, I assert that the biblical prophecies concerning Tsur or Tsor came to be applied to Sorrento (or Surrentum, in Latin),⁸⁸ as reflected in both Sefer Yosippon and the Book of Travels. The similarity in name between the two locales, in conjunction with the actual presence of submerged structures in the latter, would have suggested the transfer, and subsequently led Benjamin (or perhaps a later redactor) to model his account of Tyre after that of Pozzuoli/Sorrento. After all, if the biblical prophecy had been fulfilled in the Italian Tsur, then that should presumably have also been the case in the original locale. Thus, against Lacerenza’s recourse to “easy confusion” between two similar-sounding locations, I submit that the dependency of the description of Tyre upon that of Sorrento reflects a conscious strategy to maximize prophetic plausibility.

Along the same lines, I see in the quasi-biblical figure of Tsur an implicit metaphor for the passage of the notion of a punished, submerged city from the eastern Mediterranean to Italy, and consider that he may even have been invented for precisely this purpose. Reference to the submersion of both Sorrento and Tyre’s towers in Sefer Masaʿot recalls Ezekiel’s anticipation of the destruction of those of the latter (26:4, “מגדליה”); and the respective accounts in Yosippon and the Itinerary of the collection of oil from the site once occupied by Sorrento may further evoke his prediction (26:5) that Tyre shall become spoil for the nations. It is perhaps not surprising that these Levantine and Italian ports would come to be associated with one another in this manner, as both Tyre and Rome were powers that while once allied with Israel, thereafter became her enemy.

Pushing even further, I argue that Tyre implicitly functions for Benjamin as a foil for Jerusalem, with the former’s destruction and subsequent revival a sign that the latter’s restoration will yet transpire. Indeed, there are indications that, for the prophet Isaiah, Tyre served as a kind of stand-in for its holy counterpart;⁸⁹ in addition, these two cities are alone in Scripture described as “perfect in beauty” (“כלילת יפי” or “כליל יפי”).⁹⁰ An alternative possibility attested in rabbinic literature is of Tyre as a stand-in for the Eternal City, with the midrashic compilations Genesis Rabbah and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana both ascribing to R. Eliezer the teaching that wherever in Tanakh Tyre “is written without all of its letters [and so appears identical to the word for enemy, צר as opposed to צור], the reference of Scripture is to Rome.”⁹¹ While it is impossible to determine to what degree Benjamin or a later redactor might have been familiar with this tradition, it is worth noting that with the exception of Ezekiel 27—in which both spellings of Tyre are employed—all the other biblical sources cited above only use the two-letter variant.⁹² The Itinerary’s similar descriptions of both Tyre and Sorrento may thus reflect the imagined fulfillment of biblical prophecies directed against both the Levantine city and (a portion of) Rome. At the very least, we see that the rabbinic tradition definitely applied the biblical prophecies directed against Tyre to Rome.⁹³

Given his prominence in the accounts of Yosippon and Benjamin, close attention to Hadadezer as he appears in the Bible also assists us in making sense of the story of Sorrento.⁹⁴ Both 2 Sam 8 and 10 and 1 Chr 18–19 recount the decisive defeat of Hadadezer, son of Reḥov, the king of the Aramean Zobah, at the hands of David and Joab. In 2 Sam 8 (repeated in 1 Chr 18), David captures and neutralizes many of his troops and weapons; then, in chapter 10 (and again in 1 Chr 19), Israel routs a united force of Arameans under Hadadezer’s command. Since at the close of 10 (19) we learn of the death of his army commander Shobakh as well as of the submission to Israel of all of his erstwhile vassal kings, but of what befell Hadadezer there is nary a word, the notion of his flight to Italy appears likely to have emerged midrashically to fill this lacuna. This outcome seems especially apropos in light of the reference in both 2 Sam 7:23 and 1 Chr 17:21 to God’s driving out of nations before Israel.⁹⁵

Seen against the backdrop of biblical literature, there is also great irony in cities named Tsur, or after Tsur, succumbing to water and oil. The Hebrew term tsur means “large rock,”⁹⁶ the kind upon which one should typically be able to depend, hence the frequent associations of the term with refuge, salvation, and—indeed—God Himself.⁹⁷ In addition, in Tanakh it is frequently at or by striking the tsur that one encounters water in otherwise barren regions.⁹⁸ Also present is the notion that oil can be obtained from the tsur.⁹⁹ So it is a striking inversion to find the “large rock” of Sorrento the site of—or associated with—divinely ordained undoing, submerged under or amid water and/or oil instead of releasing it.¹⁰⁰

To be sure, in proposing this reconstruction of the Tyre/Sorrento legend upon which the descriptions of both Sefer Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot draw, I fully acknowledge that both texts only hint at it obliquely. Why that might be the case is difficult to determine. Did their authors presume that their audiences were already familiar with its general contours? Or did they rather refrain from overtly emphasizing what is truly a far-fetched tale? (Both works tend to reduce the sphere of the fantastic or miraculous to a minimum.) Whatever the reason, the two texts evoke the legend just enough to serve their overarching purposes, namely to salve Jewish insecurities, enhance Jewish honor, and buttress Jewish hopes of ultimate redemption.

Specifically concerning Sorrento, we are witness to a striking instance of Jewish counter-geography, physical as well as symbolic: the Gulf of Naples is revealed as water that had previously been land and Italy—responsible through Rome for Judea’s conquest and the Temple’s destruction—recast as both fearful of Israel’s strength and testimony to God’s punishing power. As for Tyre, it is interesting to observe that the chronicler William of Tyre (ca. 1130–1186) opens his account of the crusader conquest of the city with a panegyric that highlights Isaiah and Ezekiel’s celebratory statements about the city; by contrast, their prophecies of its destruction are elided.¹⁰¹ Might Benjamin’s nearly contemporary description reflect a subtle Jewish counter-history to the triumphalist crusader narrative, alluding for this reason both to its past destruction and prominent contemporary Jewish presence? Certainly, the successful reconstruction of the punished ancient city would have anticipated the ultimate rebuilding of a site far more resonant for Benjamin and his readership, namely Jerusalem.¹⁰²

6 Conclusion: Texts in Tandem

In this reconsideration of Sefer Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot, I have presented, for the first time so far as I am aware, a sustained discussion of the textual relationship between these two texts. While not disputing that the author and/or redactor of Benjamin of Tudela’s Book of Travels may well at times have drawn upon or consulted Yosippon, I have shown that it is insufficient merely to argue in general terms for the Itinerary’s reliance upon Yosippon; rather, the precise relationship between the texts requires clarification in each individual episode. And I have furthermore indicated that in each such case, of ultimate significance is not merely the use of Yosippon—if such there was—but the nature and significance of that use. In particular, I have demonstrated with regard to two especially interesting and insufficiently studied passages that Sefer Yosippon played only a minimal role (if that at all) in the composition of the Book of Travels.¹⁰³

Concerning Sefer Masaʿot’s description of the imperial palaces of Rome— including that of Titus located outside the city—I have shown that generations of previous scholars erred in ascribing this passage to Sefer Yosippon, offering an explanation as to the origin of this misconception—a classic instance of the unwitting propagation of falsehood—rooted in nineteenth-century intra-Jewish scholarly polemic. I have further suggested that this error contributed to neglect on the part of researchers of a particularly fascinating aspect of Benjamin’s text, one that I claim reflects an authentic twelfth century Roman-Jewish tradition. By thus clarifying the Benjamin-Yosippon relationship in the negative, I was able to open a new perspective on Sefer Masaʿot, one that resists recent scholarly denigrations of its originality in favor of renewed emphasis on its value as source of local lore.

In addition, in the case of Pozzuoli/Sorrento, I have tried to show that the significant differences between Sefer Yosippon and Sefer Masaʿot point to each work’s likely independent engagement with the same pair of legends. In then trying to determine how and why the tradition of a submerged Sorrento might have arisen, I noted the striking parallels between Benjamin’s descriptions of Sorrento and Tyre. This led me to the extensive biblical prophecies concerning the destruction of the latter and, in turn, to the suggestion that they had inspired similar expectations with regard to the former; these then needed to have been realized in Tyre as they seemingly had been in Sorrento. Finally, given that only in Sefer Masaʿot are both Sorrento and Tyre described as having been submerged under water, I have suggested that far from Yosippon having influenced the Book of Travels, careful attention to the latter rather proves essential in clarifying an otherwise murky passage in the former. Thus, engagement with each text in the light of the other contributes to our understanding and appreciation of two of the most important—and at times, puzzling—medieval Jewish texts.