Chapter 7. 1
Josephus
Jewish Historian
Born into a family of Priest. Lived with the Essenes
Pharisee at the age of nineteen. Became High Priest,
Governor of the providence of Galilee
First
Word
Most scholars quote Josephus writings like everybody knows who he is; well, I didn’t. The works Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of the history
of the Jewish people.
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.
Josephus was born into
a family of Priest about four years after the death of Jesus Christ. 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. Josephus
took on Flavius’s name as his middle name and became a Roman citizen, however
most Jews considered him an unforgivable traitor; that in effect he had defected to the
Roman side.
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. 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.
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