JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS (37/8–c. 100 CE), born Yosef ben Mattityahu, was a Jewish general, historian, and apologist. Josephus was perhaps the most prolific, significant, and controversial of Jewish writers in Judaea during the Hellenistic-Roman era. Born in Jerusalem, he traced his paternal lineage from the priesthood and his maternal descent to the Hasmonean dynasty, and he claimed to have been educated not only within the priestly circles but also among the various Judaic sectarian movements of his day. In 64 he went to Rome and obtained the release of imprisoned Jewish priests, returning to Judaea on the eve of the Great Revolt, a Jewish uprising against Rome. Although he was a moderate, he was appointed to command the Galilean forces, and upon their defeat by Vespasian in 67 he surrendered after his comrades committed suicide. Josephus claims that while in captivity he predicted the accession of Vespasian to emperor, and two years later he was freed by the newly acclaimed ruler of Rome. Josephus accompanied Vespasian's son Titus during the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. After the war, Josephus lived under imperial patronage in Rome, where he wrote four major works that survive thanks to their preservation by the Christian church.
Less than a decade after Jerusalem fell in 70, Josephus completed The Jewish War, a seven-book narrative of Judean history from the accession of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (175 BCE) to the fall of Masada in 74 CE. This work was written first in Aramaic and later translated into Greek in order that readers in both the Parthian kingdom and the Roman empire would learn why the revolt occurred and how it failed. With Flavian approval, Josephus portrayed a Jewish nation tragically swept by a small band of fanatics into a war that could only demonstrate Rome's invincibility.
Jewish Antiquities, published in 93/4, recounts in twenty books the Jewish experience from earliest times until 66 CE. Josephus drew heavily from biblical and later Jewish and non-Jewish sources, which he carefully reworked and edited into a treatise modeled on the Roman Antiquities of Dionysios of Halikarnassos. The result is a highly creative apologia that within its Greek historiographic form emphasizes the antiquity and philanthropy of the Jews and Judaism even as it underscores biblical concepts of divine justice and providence. Josephus subsequently made these apologetic arguments more explicit in the two books collectively titled Against Apion, which quote and refute many anti-Semitic works from the Hellenistic age.
Finally, Josephus appended to Jewish Antiquities an autobiographical book that is almost entirely devoted to defending his conduct of the Galilean campaign. While in The Jewish War he portrayed himself as a committed, efficient general, in his autobiographical work, The Life, he emphasizes that he went to Galilee as a moderate who unsuccessfully attempted to restrain his countrymen.
Josephus and his works are no less controversial in modern scholarship than they were in their day. The literature is without equal in breadth and detail; therefore, paradoxically, questions about its reliability often cannot be resolved. Principal foci of contemporary analysis of Josephus include: (1) modes of Hellenization within Palestinian Judaism; (2) the nature of the Pharisaic, Sadducean, and Essene movements, among others; (3) Jewish and Roman political dynamics prior to and in the aftermath of the revolt; (4) Josephus's own motives and conduct, particularly during the revolt and then in light of his Flavian patronage; and (5) the brief, but extraordinary, passage in Jewish Antiquities that refers to Jesus but generally has been judged to be at least in part a forgery.
In sum, Josephus emerges as a crucial source for the reconstruction of Judaism and Jewish history in late antiquity. Many contemporary scholars eschew Jerome's claim that Josephus was the "Greek Livy," yet few would deny his contribution to current understanding of his era or his skill and passion in explaining and defending his people to their neighbors.
Bibliography
The standard text and translation of Josephus's complete works is that of the "Loeb Classical Library," edited by Henry St. John Thackeray, Ralph Marcus, Allen Wikgren, and Louis H. Feldman in ten volumes (Cambridge, Mass., 1926–1965). A classic introduction is Josephus: The Man and the Historian by Henry St. John Thackeray (New York, 1929), republished with a new introduction (New York, 1967); and a fine, more recent overview is Tessa Rajak's Josephus: The Historian and His Society (London, 1983). The most complete annotated bibliography is Louis H. Feldman's Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937–1980 (Hawthorne, N.Y., 1984).
This is the complete article, containing 739 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
