Flavius Josephus

Josephus was born in Jerusalem in AD 37 as Joseph, son of Matthias, into a priestly family of the Jewish aristocracy. He tells us in his own life-story that as a young man he studied the main Jewish schools of thought, and that at about the age of twenty-six he travelled to Rome to plead for priests imprisoned by the governor Felix. When the revolt against Rome broke out in AD 66 he was given command of the defence of Galilee.

In AD 67 he held the fortress of Jotapata against the army of Vespasian until it fell, and he was taken prisoner. He declared to Vespasian that the general would become emperor, and when that came true in AD 69 he was set free. He then stood beside Titus through the siege of Jerusalem, which ended in AD 70 with the burning of the Temple, and afterwards he settled in Rome as a client of the Flavian emperors, with a house, a pension and Roman citizenship, taking the name Flavius.

In Rome he wrote the works that have survived: The Jewish War, first composed in Aramaic and then put into Greek in the 70s; the Antiquities of the Jews, a history of his people from the Creation; his Life; and the treatise Against Apion, a defence of Jewish traditions. He is our fullest witness to the Jewish revolt and to the world of Judea under Rome, and he was read for many centuries in Christian Europe. William Whiston's English translation of 1737 became the standard version in English.