Josephus

For his account of the Maccabean struggle he depends here primarily upon the First Book of the Maccabees, which in many parts he does little more than paraphrase. Neither the Se...

The last extant work of Josephus was the _Life_, of which we have already treated, and it were better to say little more. It was provoked by the publication of the History of Ju...

In the Diaspora, on the other hand, and especially at Alexandria, which was the center of Hellenistic Jewry, history was made to serve a practical purpose. It was a weapon in th...

It may be that Josephus really believed he had prophetic powers, and thought he was imitating the great prophets of Israel and Judah who had proclaimed the uselessness of resist...

Josephus deals summarily with the Mosaic Code in the _Antiquities_, but announces his intention to compose "another work concerning our laws." This work is, perhaps, represented...

The story of dynastic struggles and foreign wars is varied with a short summary of the life of Jonah, introduced at what, according to the Bible, is its proper chronological pla...

It is not certain whether he accompanied "the gentle Titus" through Syria after the fall of the city and the razing of its walls. The victor's progress was marked at each stoppi...

Josephus then sets out some very eulogistic passages about his people, purporting to be from Hecataeus of Abdera, which are very much to his taste and his purpose. Unfortunately...

The works of Josephus early passed into the category of standard literature. It is recorded that they were placed by order of the Flavian Emperors in the public library of Rome;...

Josephus hardly merits a place on his own account in a series of Jewish Worthies, since neither as man of action nor as man of letters did he deserve particularly well of his na...

The Romans, on their side, accustomed to the ready submission of all the peoples under their sway, could not understand or tolerate the Jews. To them this people with its dour m...

"'And as for those who have died in the war, we should deem them blessed, for they are dead in defending, and not in betraying, their liberty: but as to the multitude of those t...

The later poets of the Augustan age, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid, expressed a supercilious disdain for the Jewish customs of Sabbath-keeping, etc., which were spreading even in t...

Elsewhere he describes the teaching of these sects for the benefit of his Roman readers according to a technical classification borrowed from his environment, i.e. he represents...

The last three books of the _Antiquities_ reveal the weaknesses of Josephus as an historian: his disregard of accuracy, his tendency to exaggeration, his lack of proportion, and...

After the brief interlude of Agrippa's happy reign, the irritation of Roman procurators is renewed, and under Comanus tumult follows tumult, as one outrage after another upon th...

It is true that he brings before us, for the most part, but the external facts and the court scandals in place of the vital movements and the underlying principles; and in deali...