JOSEPHUS - HISTORIAN - NYOBS 22.03

RABBIT TRAIL FROM NYOBS 22 - ARMAGEDDON

Flavius Josephus - Rabbit Trail

• Most scholars quote Josephus writings like everybody knows who he is – Well, I didn’t.
• Josephus (37 A.D. to 100 A.D) was born Josephus ben Matthias (son of Matthias) and for some time lived with the Essenes who gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls; he studied with the Sadducees and as well as the Pharisees to determine which sect was best; he became a Pharisee at the age of 19 and later became a high priest in Israel as well as the governor of the province of Galilee.
• He fought against the Romans and was taken prisoner.  His life was spared when he predicted that Vespasian would become governor and two years later he did.
• The Romans gave him all the writings of the Prophets and Scribes that were found in the Temple for him to write the history of Israel.
• Antiquities of the Jews is a twenty-volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Flavius Domitian, the Roman emperor, which was around 93 or 94 AD. Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of the history of the Jewish people.
• Josephus took on Flavius’s name as his middle name and became a Roman citizen, however most Jews considered him an unforgivable traitor.
• Josephus’s texts were written in Hebrew and later translated into Greek.
• He had the common knowledge of the people as well as the physical documents that were needed to be considered a legitimate historian.
• Josephus was born into a family of Priest about four years after the death of Jesus Christ.   
• When you read his writings, it’s just like he had the Book of the Law in front of him as he wrote and I’m sure he did.