BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The Histories of Flavius Josephus

Imagined portrait of Flavius Josephus. Scan by NYPL, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian personally involved in the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome. A former political leader and priest, he is our most important witness to Jewish life and history at the close of the biblical period (first century CE).

Josephus was born Yosef ben Mattityahu in 37 or 38 CE. He came from an aristocratic, priestly family in Jerusalem, receiving a largely Pharisaic education in Jewish law and the Bible. Following his official visit to Rome in 64, Josephus played a controversial role in the Jewish resistance movement and the ensuing war. He first was a commander of Judean forces in the Galilee, then surrendered to the Romans during their siege of Yodfat, and finally advised the Romans while trying to convince Jerusalem’s defenders of the impracticality of resistance. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70, he moved to Rome, where he was granted citizenship and the emperor’s former residence, taking the imperial family name Flavius. He died sometime after 100.

During his new life under imperial patronage, Josephus wrote extensively about his firsthand experience of the Great Revolt and on the history and culture of the Jews. Four of his works survive: Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, Life, and Against Apion.

Drawing on his own experience and firsthand reports, Josephus wrote Jewish War in the late 70s. An earlier version of the tragic history, in Josephus’s native Aramaic, was sent to the Jews of Mesopotamia to dissuade them from revolting against Rome, but only the Greek version survives. In seven volumes, it first recounts the Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE) and Judean history up to the Great Revolt (66–70 CE), which Josephus then chronicles in detail, ending with the Masada story and a Jewish revolt in North Africa. Josephus generally blames Jewish fanatics (Zealots and Sicarii) for the war and its tragic consequences, even suggesting that Israel’s God Yahweh was on Rome’s side.

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Jewish Antiquities, published in 93 or 94, is Josephus’s magnum opus. In 20 volumes, the work provides a sweeping account of the history and culture of his people from creation to just before the revolt. For the first 11 books, Josephus depended on the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, while for later periods (Persian through Herodian), he cites works of Hellenistic literature, including 1 Maccabees and the Letter of Aristeas.

Life, published in three volumes as an appendix to Jewish Antiquities, is Josephus’s autobiography. In it, he defends his dishonorable conduct in Galilee at the very beginning of the revolt but also provides context for the preceding and following periods of his life. Unlike in Jewish War, where Josephus claims he was appointed to command Judean forces from the beginning, here he portrays himself as an advocate of reason trying to dissuade his more bellicose compatriots.

In Against Apion, Josephus offers a defense of his people against anti-Semitic Greek and Roman writers, including his contemporary, the Egyptian scholar Apion. Known also as On the Antiquity of the Jews, the work seeks to demonstrate, in two volumes, the antiquity and superiority of the Judean constitution in comparison with Greek culture.

Although Josephus wrote his surviving works in Greek, his mother tongue was Aramaic. In Jewish War (1.3), he explicitly says the work was translated from an earlier version composed in his vernacular (i.e., Aramaic). Josephus used literary assistants also for his later works but claims he had become well versed in Greek by the time he wrote Jewish Antiquities (20.263). His imperfect command of Greek and the involvement of multiple assistants resulted in difficult and often obscure language. Other textual problems might be the result of transcription errors and later editorial changes or of inconsistent use of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint.

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The works of Josephus substantially aid our understanding of the beginnings of both Judaism and Christianity. Josephus’s descriptions of the Temple, priesthood, religious groups, political machinations, Jewish-Roman relations, Samaritan-Jewish hostility, and Judean topography have all become indispensable for the study of early Judaism and Christian origins. In particular, we learn about the three major sects of early Judaism, namely the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees (Jewish War 2.119–166), along with figures such as John the Baptist (Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119) and Jesus (Jewish Antiquities 18.63–64).

Arguably the most consequential ancient writings in the West after the Bible, Josephus’s work was preserved by the Christian church. It circulated in original Greek versions and in Latin translations and several other languages of medieval Europe. In the tenth century, an eclectic work called Sefer Yosippon eventually mediated Josephus in Hebrew.

A good introduction to the life and writings of Josephus is H. St. J. Thackeray’s book Josephus: The Man and the Historian (Jewish Institute of Religion Press, 1929). Josephus’s complete works, in original Greek with English translation, appeared in the Loeb Classical Library series (Harvard Univ. Press, 1926–1965). An international team has been producing a fresh translation, with comprehensive literary-historical commentary, under the title Flavius Josephus, Translation and Commentary (Brill, 1999). So far, nine out of the projected 19 volumes have appeared.

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