“When I Die, Kill Those Elders”: The Twice-Told Tale of a Despot’s Death

Ancient Jewish history and literature relate many twice-told tales often with marked differences between the tales’ versions. In the case of the chilling story of a despot’s death—starring Herod in Josephus’s writings and King Yannai, that is, the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus, in rabbinic literature—scholars have long pondered the relationship between the tale’s two versions, questioning how these variations on a theme were formed. Recently, Tal Ilan and Vered Noam have argued that the tale’s two versions are independent narratives which by chance enlisted the very same conventional plot. In contrast, I hope to show that an originally Herodian tale preserved by Josephus was subsequently transformed into the parallel Hasmonean tale preserved in rabbinic literature.