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(joh ssee' fuhss, flay' vee uhss) Early historian of Jewish life and
our most important source for the history of the Jews in the Roman
period. His four surviving works are The Jewish War (composed about
A.D. 73), The Antiquities of the Jews (about A.D. 93), Life (an
autobiographical appendix to The Antiquities), and Against Apion,
penned shortly after The Antiquities. The date of Josephus' death is
unknown but was probably after A.D. 100. Following the conflict
between Rome and the Jews of Palestine (A.D. 66-73), Flavius
Josephus gave an account of the struggle in his seven books of The
Jewish War, which include a prehistory reaching back to the second
century B.C. Josephus came to Rome in 73 and lived in a house
provided by Vespasian, who also gave him a yearly pension. The
Antiquities, Life, and Against Apion were all written in Rome. In
The Antiquities Josephus paraphrased the Septuagint (earliest Greek
translation of the Bible) to tell the story of the Hebrews through
the time of Cyrus and then employed other sources to complete the
account through the first century. The account of the revolt against
Rome is in many respects quite different in the The Antiquities than
it is in the earlier War. Against Apion defends the Jews against
charges of the grammarian Apion as well as against other common
assaults on the antiquity and moral virtue of the Jews. Josephus'
Life focuses primarily upon the six-month period in which he was
commander of Jewish forces in the Galilee and refutes the charge
made by Justus of Tiberias that Josephus had organized the revolt in
the Galilee.
Fred L. Horton, Jr.
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