34 Facts About Josephus

Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship.

Josephus became an advisor and close associate of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator during Titus's protracted siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, which resulted in the near-total razing of the city and the destruction of the Second Temple.

Josephus recorded the Great Jewish Revolt, including the siege of Masada.

Josephus's works are the chief source next to the Bible for the history and antiquity of ancient Israel, and provide an independent extra-biblical account of such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, John the Baptist, James, brother of Jesus, and Jesus of Nazareth.

Josephus was the second-born son of Matthias, a Jewish priest.

Josephus's older full-blooded brother was, like his father, called Matthias.

Josephus descended through his father from the priestly order of the Jehoiarib, which was the first of the 24 orders of priests in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Josephus calls himself a fourth-generation descendant of "High Priest Jonathan", referring to either Jonathan Apphus or Alexander Jannaeus.

Josephus was raised in Jerusalem and educated alongside his brother.

Josephus contended with John of Gischala who had set his sight over the control of Galilee.

Meanwhile, Josephus fortified several towns and villages in Lower Galilee, among which were Tiberias, Bersabe, Selamin, Japha, and Tarichaea, in anticipation of a Roman onslaught.

Josephus first engaged the Roman army at a village called Garis, where he launched an attack against Sepphoris a second time, before being repulsed.

Josephus interpreted the destruction of the Temple as a sign that God had turned to the Romans due to Jewish sins, urging submission to Roman authority.

Vespasian arranged for Josephus to marry a captured Jewish woman, whom he later divorced.

Around the year 71, Josephus married an Alexandrian Jewish woman as his third wife.

Josephus was described by Harris in 1985 as a law-observant Jew who believed in the compatibility of Judaism and Graeco-Roman thought, commonly referred to as Hellenistic Judaism.

Josephus's critics were never satisfied as to why his suicide attempt did not kill him in Galilee, and after his capture, accepted the patronage of Romans.

The works of Josephus include useful material for historians about individuals, groups, customs, and geographical places.

Outside of the Scriptures, Josephus holds the first and the only place among the native authors of Judaea; for Philo of Alexandria, the later Talmud, and other authorities, are of little service in understanding the geography of the country.

Josephus's works are the primary source for the chain of Jewish high priests during the Second Temple period.

Josephus's writings provide a significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of Herod the Great.

Josephus represents an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism and the context of early Christianity.

Josephus's writings provide the first-known source for many stories considered as Biblical history, despite not being found in the Bible or related material.

Josephus was a very popular writer with Christians in the 4th century and beyond as an independent source to the events before, during, and after the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Josephus's works were translated into Latin, but often in abbreviated form such as Pseudo-Hegesippus's 4th century Latin version of The Jewish War.

Whiston claimed that certain works by Josephus had a similar style to the Epistles of St Paul.

In both works, Josephus emphasizes that accuracy is crucial to historiography.

Louis H Feldman notes that in Wars, Josephus commits himself to critical historiography, but in Antiquities, Josephus shifts to rhetorical historiography, which was the norm of his time.

The works of Josephus are major sources of our understanding of Jewish life and history during the first century.

Josephus blames the Jewish War on what he calls "unrepresentative and over-zealous fanatics" among the Jews, who led the masses away from their traditional aristocratic leaders, with disastrous results.

The next work by Josephus is his 21-volume Antiquities of the Jews, completed during the last year of the reign of the Emperor Flavius Domitian, around 93 or 94 AD.

In terms of some of his sources for the project, Josephus says that he drew from and "interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures" and that he was an eyewitness to the wars between the Jews and the Romans, which were earlier recounted in Jewish Wars.

Josephus includes an autobiographical appendix defending his conduct at the end of the war when he cooperated with the Roman forces.

Josephus's Against Apion is a two-volume defence of Judaism as classical religion and philosophy, stressing its antiquity, as opposed to what Josephus claimed was the relatively more recent tradition of the Greeks.