Flavius Josephus was a Jewish aristocrat who was initially a general in the Jewish rebellion of 66-71 CE, but soon surrendered to the Romans and became a collaborator during the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem. He famously ingratiated himself with the Romans by sharing a prophecy that their general Vespasian would become emperor of Rome. When his prediction was proved right, he was favored by the new Flavian Dynasty. While living in Rome under the protection of his new patrons, Josephus wrote histories of the Jewish people, which are now some of our most important sources for Jewish history in the first century CE. But what was Josephus’s purpose in writing these texts, and how reliable are they as historical sources?
Why Is Josephus Important?
Josephus is an important historical source because he is one of our only non-Biblical sources for Jewish history, culture, and perspectives in the first century CE, which was a turbulent time in the Jewish world.
The Jews were being brought into closer contact with the Greco-Roman world as Judea became a province of the Roman Empire. Jews had already had significant exposure to Hellenistic culture as a vassal state of the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt since 322 BCE. In 36 BCE, Judea became a Roman client kingdom with the tyrannical King Herod appointed by the Romans. Following his death in 4 BCE, the Romans took more direct control with the kings working in consort with Roman proconsuls to govern the province.
As the Jews became more integrated into Roman society, in Judea and other provinces such as Egypt and Syria, there were clashes between Jews and pagans. Greco-Roman pagans believed that it was important to make sacrifices to the gods on behalf of the Roman emperor to ensure the prosperity of the empire. This was not a Jewish custom, and when they refused to sacrifice, many pagans saw them as traitors putting everyone at risk. This led to several clashes between Jews and pagans.
In response to unrest in Egypt, statues of the emperor Gaius Caligula were set up in Jewish synagogues. Gaius ordered that his statue be placed in the Temple in Jerusalem in 40 CE, but the Syrian governor and Judean client king were able to talk him out of it. The offense to Jews of placing statues of the emperor in their sacred spaces was enough that, in 41 CE, the new emperor Claudius wrote an open letter to the Alexandrians, explicitly refusing a golden statue of himself lest it be considered too offensive.
The temple in Jerusalem was known as the Second Temple because it was built in 516 BCE to replace the ancient First Temple. It was destroyed in 597 BCE after the city was besieged for 30 months by the Babylonians. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE and never rebuilt. This led to a major change in Jewish culture, which had previously been focused on temple rituals. It was during this same period that Christianity evolved and gradually separated from Judaism.
Moreover, many Jews were killed and displaced throughout the century. When the Romans installed Herod as king, he used his power to kill any aristocrats who supported the previous dynasty, including his wife. During the war, zealots killed off more Jewish aristocrats, who tended to be pro-Roman and tolerant of a certain level of “Hellenization.” The Jewish population was decimated by the Romans during the war and left without strong leadership. Josephus himself estimated that over a million Jews were killed in the war, though this is probably an exaggeration.
All this would further fuel the Jewish diaspora, which started with the destruction of the First Temple, causing many displaced Jews to move to areas such as Syria, Babylonia, Egypt, Crete, and even Rome. This came to a head in 132 CE when the Jews revolted against the Roman emperor Hadrian, who wanted to rename Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina. The revolt was suppressed, and the Jews were forbidden access to Jerusalem.
It was against this background that Josephus was writing about the Jewish people and Jewish history, including some contemporary events that he participated in. As a result, Josephus is one of the most important surviving sources for this period in Jewish history, alongside the New Testament of the Bible. He is also important as a second source for events that appear in the Bible, such as the stories of Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and Jesus of Nazareth. While the Bible was probably one of Josephus’s sources for these stories, his retellings confirm that these were considered historical stories by the Jews at the time.
Josephus the Jewish Aristocrat
Josephus, also known as Yosef ben Matityahu, was a Jewish aristocrat born in Jerusalem in around 37 CE. His father Matthias belonged to the Jewish priestly caste, specifically the Jehoiabrib order, which was the first of the 24 groups of priests organized by King David a thousand years earlier. Josephus had an older brother, also called Matthias, who probably followed his father into priestly duties.
His mother was a member of the pre-Herodian royal dynasty, the Hasmonean Dynasty. They came to power in Judea in 140 BCE and tried to limit Hellenistic political and cultural influence, but they were ousted in 37 BCE by the Romans. It was this family who was persecuted by Herod during his period of tyranny. Nevertheless, Josephus was a member of a wealthy, respectable, and traditional Jewish aristocratic family.
That Josephus was part of Jerusalem’s political elite is confirmed by the fact that, in his early 20s around 63 CE, he was sent to Rome as part of a diplomatic mission to ask Nero for the release of some Jewish priests. Not long after he returned to Jerusalem, bubbling issues between Rome and the Jews erupted.
According to Josephus, the final straw came in 66 CE when, in the coastal city of Caesarea, some pagan Greeks sacrificed birds in front of a local synagogue. In response to the affront, one of the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem stopped making sacrifices for the emperor. At the same time, protests were taking place over heavy Roman taxation, resulting in Roman citizens and supporters being attacked in the streets.
In response, the Roman procurator of Judea, Gessius Florus, sent troops into the Temple and took 17 talents of treasure, money he said was owed to the emperor. When the unrest continued, the proconsul had several city leaders, including Roman citizens, crucified. This was the final straw. Nationalists overran the city’s Roman garrison and proceeded to persecute Roman supporters who did not flee.
The Roman garrison on the western border of the city was besieged and their leader Metilius tried to sacrifice the garrison in exchange for safe passage out of the city for his men. This was granted, but then the dissidents killed all the soldiers, except Metilius, who was forced to convert, which required his circumcision.
Later in 66 CE, a new Judean provisional government was established. They appointed Josephus as the rebel commander of the region of Galilee. When he arrived, most cities in the region were on the side of the rebels, but the cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias remained pro-Roman. The first thing Josephus did was train 65,000 troops and bring these two cities in line with the rest of rebel Galilee. He then fortified many cities in preparation for a Roman onslaught.
The legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, initially marched on Jerusalem with the Syrian army. They were ambushed by the rebels and 6,000 Romans were massacred at the Battle of Beth Horon. This inspired a more forceful response from Rome, and the successful Roman general Vespasian was sent to Galilee with four legions.
Arriving in the Fall of 67 CE, Vespasian made short work of the Galilee strongholds and claimed much of the territory within a few months. Josephus and his troops were defeated at the siege of Yodfat. This was a major victory for the Romans who killed thousands, and many of the rest committed suicide. But Josephus and around 40 companions hid in a nearby cave. They decided on suicide, drawing lots to determine the order of deaths. Josephus and one companion were the last two, but rather than commit suicide, they surrendered to Vespasian and were taken prisoner.
By the start of 68 CE, Vespasian was ready to attack Jerusalem. However, many refugees from Galilee had fled to Jerusalem and there was significant infighting between the factions in the city. Vespasian decided to wait and let the Jews weaken themselves.
Flavius Josephus the Imperial Freedman
As the Romans watched and waited, according to Josephus, many Jews defected to the Romans and asked Vespasian to “free Jerusalem from violence.” Josephus seems to have been one of them. But his defection was particularly spectacular.
The Roman historian Tacitus confirms that at this time there was a Jewish prophecy circulating that a man from their nation would become the governor of the habitable world. Josephus told Vespasian that while he was hiding in the cave, he received a revelation from God that Vespasian was that man and that he was destined to be the emperor of Rome.
The emperor Nero committed suicide before he could be killed in 68 CE. This ushered in a year of civil war with multiple generals contesting power. Just as Roman troops proclaimed General Vitellius as their chosen emperor in Germany, the troops in the east did the same with Vespasian. Their support encouraged him to consider claiming power, and his conviction was reportedly further reinforced by omens. Omens from his youth were reinterpreted and when Vespasian was making sacrifices on Mount Carmel, a priest called Basilides, whose name means royal, interpreted the entrails and told Vespasian that he would be successful in his endeavor to expand his household with boundless territory and a multitude of men.
Whether Vespasian truly believed these omens or simply used them to justify his bid for power is unknown, but Josephus’s proclamation would have fit nicely into his plans. In 69 CE, Vespasian returned to Rome and made himself emperor, leaving his son Titus in charge of the war in Judea. When Josephus’s prediction was proven right, he was freed and then accompanied Titus to Jerusalem as an advisor.
Josephus was with Titus when he encamped outside Jerusalem on May 1, 70 CE. The author claims that he unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Jewish leaders to surrender. Following a five-month siege, during which the trapped Jews were, according to Josephus, plagued by murder, famine, and cannibalism, the Romans took Jerusalem. The Temple was destroyed, according to Josephus under Titus’s orders. Rome had effectively won the war, though mopping up operations would continue until 74 CE.
Josephus was granted lands in Judea as a reward for assisting Rome in securing their victory, but instead, he traveled to Rome with Titus. There he took the cognomen of the Flavian family becoming Flavius Josephus, a freedman and client of the Flavian imperial family.
He was there in 71 CE to see Vespasian and Titus celebrate a joint triumph for their defeat of the Jews. According to images displayed on the Arch of Titus, spoils from the destroyed temple were shown in the triumphal procession. Josephus did not share how he felt about that spectacle, but he enjoyed the continued favor of the Flavians, being awarded more land in Judea in 75 CE. Flavius Josephus disappears from the historical record around 100 CE.
The Works of Flavius Josephus
The Jewish War
As far as we know, Flavius Josephus wrote four works. The first, probably published around 75 CE, was his Jewish War. It was an account of the conflict between Rome and the Jews starting with background information about the Maccabees, Jewish rebels in the 2nd century BCE, covering the main war between 66 and 71 CE that Josephus himself participated in, and some of the aftermath ending with the Siege of Masada.
The work was written in Greek, and therefore probably for a gentile audience, and was endorsed for its historical accuracy by Emperor Vespasian, his son Titus, and the Roman client king of Judea, Agrippa II. Josephus suggests that he had already written an account of the war for his kinsmen in his native tongue, which was probably Aramaic.
Josephus paints a picture of the Jews as a peaceful and civil people who were pulled into war by a combination of incompetent Roman governors and a small group of discontent zealot rebels who were able to rally the people and turn them against their traditional aristocratic leaders, like Josephus and his family.
Antiquities of the Jews
Antiquities of the Jews was published in Greek sometime before the death of the last Flavian, Domitian, in 96 CE. The purpose of the work seems to have been to explain Jewish history and culture to a gentile audience. He may have considered this an important project considering the conflicts between Jews and pagans at the time. Throughout the work, he praises the Jews as the pinnacle of civilization and tells the history of the world from their perspective.
The Bible was one of the sources for this work, which Josephus, as a devout Jew, trusted implicitly. Therefore, his history relates as fact things that cannot be true, such as the story of Methuselah living for 969 years, but it suggests that most Jewish people considered these stories to be true at the time. He covers history from God’s creation of the earth to the Jewish War.
Life of Flavius Josephus
Josephus also published an autobiographical account of his life, which covered much of the same territory as his Jewish Wars, but inconsistencies between the two are noticeable. This work, which may have been an appendix to the Antiquities of the Jews, seems to have been written specifically to counter attacks on his character and acts during the war published by a historian called Justus of Tiberias. Justus was another eyewitness to the war, who was an advisor to the Judean client king Agrippa II after the war but waited until his patron’s death to write his history. Josephus accuses him of being one of the rebel zealots responsible for the war.
Against Apion
Against Apion was probably published around 97 CE and was a two-volume defense of Judaism as an ancient religion, much older than Greek religion. In a similar vein to his autobiography, Josephus seems to have been responding to anti-Jewish criticism that he ascribes to a Greek author called Apion, a Hellenized Egyptian who was also living in Rome.
Is Josephus a Reliable Source?
Is Flavius Josephus a trustworthy source for the historical events that he recounts? According to Josephus, yes. On many occasions throughout his works, Josephus claims that, unlike previous historians, he is recording an accurate and unbiased history of his people.
For his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus relied on what he considered historically reliable sources, including the Bible. Consequently, his record is only as good as his sources. He does seem to have removed some things from Biblical stories that he considered problematic but also left details that modern readers would consider fantastical.
When it came to the Jewish Wars, Josephus was writing about events that he lived through and participated in. He also boasts that he had access to excellent historical records, such as Vespasian and Titus’s field notes. Despite that, he gets quite a few things wrong. He gets distances between places in Judea wrong, gives dubious population estimates, and even gives an implausible timeline for his personal history. This suggests that, despite his protestations, Josephus was comfortable being flexible with the facts to suit his purpose.
And what was his purpose? Many Jews branded Josephus a traitor for not committing suicide after Yofat and helping the Romans. Consequently, Rabbinic texts for the next millennium never refer to Josephus by name, though they recount many of the same events. One of Josephus’s purposes was clearly to justify his actions.
The author was also a supporter of the Flavians and had their needs in mind. It is interesting that as well as passing his prophetic vision on to Vespasian, in his history, Josephus recounts an omen that dried up springs outside Jerusalem miraculously began to flow when Titus arrived. Considering how the Flavians used omens, Josephus seems to have been part of their propaganda machine.
Josephus is also not secretive about the fact that he wanted to create a better understanding of Jewish history and the important role of the Jews in universal history. At every opportunity, he tries to make a convincing case for the superiority of Jewish culture.
Therefore, it is fair to say that not everything that Josephus says can be taken at face value and should be viewed in light of his purpose for writing. Nevertheless, he seems to express how traditional aristocratic Jews thought and felt about Judaism and the relationship between Jews and the Greco-Roman world at the time. For this, he is invaluable.
