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JOSEPH US
JOSEPHUS
and interpreter in the headquarters of Titus. Thereafter he accompanied the victorious Titus to Rome, and settled down as a litterateur, enjoy- ing the esteem and the hounty of the Flavian Emperors, and devoting himself to the task of doing battle with spiritual weapons for the now politically shattered cause of his nation. As Josephus mentions the death of Agripjm II. (a.d. 100 : Photius, Cod. 33), he must have survived till the reign of Trajan. He was four times married, and had five sons. According to Ens. HE iii. ix. 2, a statue was raised in iiis honour, and his works were placed in the public library.
In personal character, as even the above brief out- line of his career suffices to show, Josephus was not free from decidedly sinister traits. A thoroii-ih Jew, he was always able to make the most of his opportunities, and was not over-scrupulous as to the means he employed. Even his vanity serves to bring him into clearer light. As a man he was far from gi-eat. It is not, however, the man that concerns us here, but the historian ; and if, even in that capacity, his talent Avas of a distinctly mediocre order, yet, in virtue of our interest in his subject, he is for us one of the most important historical authors we have.
2. Works.— (a) The Jewish PF«?-.— Josephus de- voted his powers first of all to a work of the most vital moment for us, viz. a history of the Jewish war against Rome (Bellum Judaicmn [referred to as BJ]). Although he had doubtless learned Greek in his youth, he felt that he could not yet write as a Greek author. He therefore composed his first work in his native language, i.e. Aramaic, and afterwards, with the help of literary collaborators, reproduced it in a Greek form, which, however, was not a mere translation, but rather a recast of the original. This Greek edition was published in the closing years of Vespasian's reign, between A.D. 75 and 79. As against the many unreliable and merely hearsay reports of the war, and the misclnevous distortions of fact emanating from anti-Jewish feeling, Josephus proposed, as an eye- witness, to give an unbiased and veracious chron- icle, which, by means of a just estimate of the Jewish people, of their good qualities and their military achievements, should not only exhibit in a clearer light the tragic element in the catastrophe they had brought upon themselves, but should also make manifest the real greatness of the Roman triumph. Accordingly, in the seven books of this work, after a survey of Jewish history from the Maccabsean revolt to the death of Herod the Great (bk. I.), he shows how events moved swiftly to- wards the rebellion : the mismanagement of aitiairs under the sons of Herod, the growing maladminis- tration of the Roman procurators, and more particularly— after a short interlude of national Pharisaic ascendancy in the reign of Agrippa I.— of the incompetent Albinus and Gessius Elorus (bk. II.). The history proper begins with the expedition of Vespasian to Judaea at a time when the whole land was already in arms : bk. III. de- scribes the conquest of Galilee, with its two cul- minating points, the capture of Jotapata and that of Taricliei>3 ; bk. IV. narrates thesomewiiat dilatory prosecution of the war to the time of Vespasian's lieing proclaimed Emperor, and his withdrawal to Egypt, and tells also of the anarchical state of Jerusalem ; bks. V. and VI., starting from the return of Titus from Alexandria, describe the siege of the capital, and the internecine strife of tlie besieged, and close with the biirning of the Temple (10th of the month Ab = July-August A.D. 70) ; and bk. VII. serves as an ej)ilogue to the wliole, recording the triumph of Titus and the long- protracted subjugation of the southern part of the country till the Fall of Masada (April 73). In bk
III. (ch. 111.) Josephus gives a description of Galilee, and in bk. V. (chs. iv. and v.) an account of Jeru- salem, and of the Temjde and its services. At the end of ch. v. he indicates his intention of dealing with the city more exhaustively in a later work.
{b) The Antiquities.— He fulfilled this design in his Antiquities of the Jeivs, which he complet'ed in A.D. 93-94. The work was probably composed on the plan of the Roman Archwology of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, published almost exactly a century before (8 B.C.). In the Antiquities 3 om\A\\\ii recounts in twenty books the history of his people from the creation of the world. His principal source was the OT, with which, however, he deals very freely, and he does not scruple to introduce Haggadic elements. In bk. I. he carries the narrative to the death of Isaac, and in ll. to the exodus from Egypt ; III. describes the giving of the Law ; iv. the wander- ings in the desert, and Moses' directions for the organization of the future commonwealth ; V. the conquest of Canaan under Joshua and the Judges ; VI. and VII. the reigns of Saul and David respec- tively ; viii.-x. the reign of Solomon, and the period of the kings until the Exile ; xi. the restora- tion of the nation under C>:as, and its history till Alexander the Great ; XII. Judaja under the Seleucids; XIII. the Maccabiean revolt, and the Hasmonrean rule till Alexandra's death (67 B.C.); XIV. the intervention of the Romans under Pompey, consequent upon the wars between the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus ; xv. Herod's winning the crown, and his reign till tlie building of the Temple ; XVI. the tragedy of Herod's family till the execution of Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of Mariamne ; XVII. the period from the execution of Antipater and the death of Herod till the deposition of Archelaus (a.d. 6); XVIII. the Roman administration ; XIX. the period of the Emperors Gains and Claudius— otherwise the reign of Agrippa I. (t A.D. 44) ; XX. the last Roman pro- curators till the outbreak of the rebellion (A.D. 66). Tims bks. xill.-xx. of the Antiquities run parallel Avith bks I. and II. of the BJ.