Flavius Josephus

Jewish notable and Greek historian. In Hebrew he was Yoseph ben Matatyahu, the son of Matthias, a well-known member of the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem; and his mother was related to the former royal house of the Hasmonaeans (Maccabees). Josephus' native language was Aramaic, but he received an excellent Hebrew education. As a youth, he espoused in turn the three principal versions of Judaism, successively becoming an adherent of the Sadducees, the monastic Essenes, and the Pharisees, in whose ranks he then enrolled permanently, joining the priesthood at Jerusalem. In about A.D. 64 he went to Rome in order to intercede for a fellow priest who had been arrested, and through the help of Alityrus - a Jewish actor in the entourage of Nero (54-68) - and of the empress Poppaea, his mission was successful. Josephus returned home to find that the First Jewish Revolt against the Romans (to the Jews, the First Roman War) had become imminent. The Jewish leadership, however, was sharply divided, and Josephus was one of those who felt such an insurrection could not succeed. Nevertheless, when the rebellion began in 66, a moderate group of Jewish leaders who were temporarily in charge of Jerusalem sent him to take command of the troops in Galilee. But a number of local Jews opposed him and, as the Roman governor of Syria, Vespasian, who had been entrusted with the suppression of the rising, approached with an army, Josephus withdrew inside the fortified town of Jotapata. When, however, this fortress had been under siege for nearly seven weeks and the defenders, in desperation, pledged themselves to a suicide pact, Josephus evaded the pact and went over to the Romans. Kept prisoner at first, he was released because he seemed useful as a collaborator - and also because he prophesied that Vespasian would become emperor, a prediction that came true in 69 AD. During the siege of Jerusalem he earned additional hatred from his countrymen by acting as interpreter to the Roman commander, the new ruler's son Titus, whom subsequently, after the capture of the city, he accompanied to Alexandria and then to Rome. There he was awarded Roman citizenship and assumed the imperial family name of Flavius; and he received a residence and a pension as well. It was during his residence in Rome that he became a writer. His first work, the History of the Jewish War, completed in 77 or 78 AD. Josephus, whose Greek was shaky, employed helpers to assist him with the translation. His greatest work is known to us as the Jewish Antiquities, though he himself called it the Archaeologia.