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The MouseionFlavius Josephus

Flavius Josephus

4 works in the library, 4 with an English translation.

Roman–Jewish historian and military leader, born at Jerusalem. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
1st c. AD
Kinds of writing
History (2), Biography, Philosophy
Analysed
516,588 words

The 4 works

First the work Flavius Josephus is best known for; then the works here with a translation and the most familiar vocabulary: the fewest rare words to look up. That is vocabulary only; grammar, dialect and ideas may still be demanding.

The road of the text

Follow the text from Flavius Josephus's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Readers
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  1. AD 37The authorBorn at Jerusalem, in the first year of the emperor Gaius (AD 37 or 38)2,3
  2. 27 years laterAD 64The authorSails to Rome to free some imprisoned priests; shipwrecked in the Adriatic3,7
  3. 2 years laterAD 66The authorThe revolt begins; Josephus is sent to Galilee3,8,9
  4. 1 year laterAD 67The authorJotapata falls after forty-seven days; he surrenders and foretells that Vespasian will be emperor3,10,13
  5. 2 years laterAD 69The authorVespasian, now emperor, has his chain cut3,15
  6. 1 year laterAD 70The authorWith Titus at the siege and fall of Jerusalem3,16
  7. about 5 years laterc. AD 75The authorThe Jewish War in Greek, probably between 75 and 7920
  8. about 18 years laterAD 93The authorFinishes the Jewish Antiquities in the thirteenth year of Domitian (93–94)4,22
  9. about 7 years laterc. AD 100The authorDies, some time after 94; the date is unknown3,5 Debated among scholars
  10. about 150 years laterc. AD 248ReadersOrigen writes that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ27,29,47
  11. about 2 years laterc. AD 250CopiesA papyrus leaf of the War, now in Vienna, usually dated to the third century: the oldest copy34
  12. about 70 years laterc. AD 324ReadersEusebius quotes the passage on Jesus, and says Rome gave Josephus a statue18,28,35
  13. about 230 years laterc. AD 550CopiesA Latin version of the Antiquities and Against Apion is made by order of Cassiodorus3,22,36
  14. about 350 years laterc. AD 900CopiesThe oldest medieval manuscript, Palatinus graecus 14, dated by Thackeray to the ninth or tenth century3
  15. about 640 years later1544Print and editionsFirst printed Greek text, edited by Arnoldus Arlenius (Basel, Froben)37,38
  16. about 190 years later1737Print and editionsWilliam Whiston's English translation39
  17. about 150 years later1885Print and editionsBenedikt Niese's great edition begins to appear (1885–95)40,41
  18. 41 years later1926Print and editionsThackeray's Loeb edition begins; the ninth and last volume follows in 19653,28
  19. 45 years later1971ReadersShlomo Pines publishes an Arabic version of the passage on Jesus29
  20. 29 years later2000Print and editionsThe Brill Josephus Project, a new English translation with commentary, begins42

Life and work

Checked against sources · 6 October 2026

Josephus called himself plainly «Ἰώσηπος Ματθίου παῖς ἐξ Ἱεροσολύμων ἱερεύς»: Joseph son of Matthias, a priest from Jerusalem, who had fought the Romans at first and then watched the rest of the war against his will.1 He was born in the first year of the emperor Gaius (Caligula), AD 37 or 38,2,3 and died some time after 94, probably around 100.3,4,5 Much of what we know about Judaea in the age of Herod, Pontius Pilate and the great Jewish revolt against Rome comes from him.5

A priest of Jerusalem

He opens his autobiography with his family: «Ἐμοὶ δὲ γένος ἐστὶν οὐκ ἄσημον, ἀλλʼ ἐξ ἱερέων ἄνωθεν καταβεβηκός», “The family from which I am derived is not an ignoble one, but hath descended all along from the priests”. His father's line belonged to the first of the twenty-four rotas of priests who served in the Temple, and through his mother he claimed descent from the Hasmonean kings.2,5 By his own account he was a prodigy, consulted on the law by the chief priests at fourteen; he tried out all three Jewish schools and a desert hermit before, at nineteen, beginning public life as a follower of the Pharisees; whether he ever counted himself one of them is debated.5,6 At about twenty-six, probably in 64, he sailed to Rome to plead for some imprisoned priests. His ship sank in the Adriatic, and some six hundred people “swam for our lives all the night” before about eighty were picked up. Landing at Puteoli, he made friends with a Jewish actor, Aliturus, who introduced him to Nero's wife Poppaea, and the priests were freed.3,7

General in Galilee

Debated among scholars When the revolt broke out in 66, Josephus was sent to Galilee, but his two accounts of why disagree. The Jewish War says he was made general of both Galilees;8 the Life says he and two other priests were sent to persuade the troublemakers to lay down their arms.9 His translator H. St J. Thackeray called the two accounts “both biased and in some details inconsistent”.3

In 67 the Roman general Vespasian besieged him in the hill town of Jotapata (Yodfat), which fell in July after forty-seven days.3,10 Josephus jumped into a pit that led to a hidden cave, where forty men of rank were hiding.11

Ancient tradition / legend What happened next we know only from him. His companions refused to surrender, so Josephus proposed that they draw lots, each man killing the next. He was left alive with one other man, “whether we must say it happened so by chance, or whether by the providence of God”, and persuaded him to live too.12 A mathematical puzzle based on the story is still called the “Josephus problem”.5 The historian Mary Smallwood judged that he “was guilty of shocking duplicity at Jotapata, saving himself by sacrifice of his companions”.5

Brought before Vespasian, he asked to speak in private: «ἐγὼ δὲ ἄγγελος ἥκω σοι μειζόνων», “I come to thee as a messenger of greater tidings”, and then «σὺ Καῖσαρ, Οὐεσπασιανέ, καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ, σὺ καὶ παῖς ὁ σὸς οὗτος», “Thou, O Vespasian, art Caesar and emperor, thou, and this thy son”.13 This is not only his own boast: the Roman biographer Suetonius also tells how “Josephus by name, as he was being put in chains, declared most confidently that he would soon be released by the same man, who would then, however, be emperor.”14

The prophecy came true in 69. The new emperor set him free, and at Titus' suggestion his chain was cut with an axe rather than unlocked, so that he would be “like a man that had never been bound at all”.15 He took the family name of his patrons, Flavius.5

Between two fires

In 70 he was with Titus at the siege of Jerusalem, as interpreter and go-between.3 The Jews wanted him dead, and “the Romans also, whenever they were beaten, supposed that it was occasioned by my treachery”. When the city fell he asked Titus for the freedom of some of his countrymen and was given sacred books as a gift; soon afterwards he won the release of his brother and fifty friends, and, allowed into the Temple, he freed about a hundred and ninety people he knew among the captives.16 In Rome Vespasian “gave me an apartment in his own house, which he lived in before he came to the empire. He also honored me with the privilege of a Roman citizen, and gave me an annual pension”; Domitian later made his land in Judaea free of tax.17

Four books

The Jewish War, in seven books, came first.18,19 He says he had written it before in his own language for the peoples of the East, and now meant “to translate those books into the Greek tongue”.1 That first version, probably in Aramaic, is lost; the Greek shows no sign of being a translation and seems to have been written afresh, probably between 75 and 79.20 Titus wanted the world to learn the facts from these books alone, so “he subscribed his own hand to them, and ordered that they should be published”.20,21

The Jewish Antiquities, in twenty books, runs from the creation of the world to the twelfth year of Nero. Josephus finished it, he says, in the thirteenth year of Domitian and the fifty-sixth of his own life: AD 93–94.4,22 Thackeray saw it as a Jewish answer to the twenty books of Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.22 The Life was added at its end, chiefly to defend his conduct in Galilee against a rival historian, Justus of Tiberias.3,17 Against Apion, in two books, defends the antiquity of the Jewish people against those who slandered them and against the doubt raised by the silence of the famous Greek historians,23 and preserves many quotations from books now lost.3

His Greek

Greek was his second language, and he said so. He boasts of his learning, but admits «τὴν δὲ περὶ τὴν προφορὰν ἀκρίβειαν πάτριος ἐκώλυσεν συνήθεια»: in William Whiston's version, “I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness”.4 For the War, he says, he used «τισι πρὸς τὴν Ἑλληνίδα φωνὴν συνεργοῖς», “some helpers for the Greek language” (our translation). Whiston, whose English is the one in the reader, made this “I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue”, but the Greek speaks of helpers with the writing, not of lessons.20,24

Thackeray built a theory on that sentence. He found the War written in the polished, old-fashioned Attic Greek admired in the first century, careful even to avoid clashing vowels; he heard Josephus' own rougher voice in the Life; and in Books 17–19 of the Antiquities he saw a hack assistant slavishly imitating Thucydides.20 The War itself opens with an echo: its «μεγίστου τοῦδε τοῦ κινήματος», “this very great upheaval” (our translation), recalls Thucydides' «κίνησις γὰρ αὕτη μεγίστη».1,20,25

Jesus, John and James

Debated among scholars Book 18 of the Antiquities has a paragraph about Jesus, the Testimonium Flavianum, which begins «Γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἰησοῦς σοφὸς ἀνήρ, εἴγε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή», “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man”, and says «ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν», “He was [the] Christ”.26 Many scholars argue that Josephus, a Jew, could not have written that, and in the third century Origen says that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ, «ἀπιστῶν τῷ Ἰησοῦ ὡς Χριστῷ».27,28 Most scholars now think Josephus wrote a shorter notice that a Christian hand later improved; a minority think the whole paragraph a forgery.28,29 Two other passages are generally accepted as his: the account of John the Baptist, put to death by Herod,29,30 and the stoning of “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James”.28,31

Masada

Debated among scholars The War ends with its most famous scene. In 73, or by a proposed later dating 74, the last rebels held out on the rock of Masada.32 When the Romans broke through the wall,32 says Josephus, their leader Eleazar persuaded them to kill their families and then one another: «οἳ τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἦσαν ἑξήκοντα πρὸς τοῖς ἐνακοσίοις», “Those others were nine hundred and sixty in number”. Only “an ancient woman, and another who was of kin to Eleazar” survived, hidden with five children, to tell the Romans.33 Josephus is the only ancient source, and scholars disagree about what the remains show: the historian Shaye Cohen called his account “incomplete and inaccurate”, while the archaeologist Jodi Magness has written that archaeology can neither prove nor disprove it.32

Why he matters

Next to the Bible, Josephus is the chief source for Judaea in the Second Temple period, and the only extended eyewitness of the revolt whose account survives.5,19 For centuries Jews distrusted him as a traitor, while Christian monks copied him and kept him alive.5,29 The geographer Carl Ritter put the case for and against him in one line: “Josephus is, however, to be used with great care.”5

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

Kept by Christians. Jews are not known to have preserved his works; the oldest surviving manuscripts were copied by Christian monks, who valued him for the background to the New Testament.29 There are about 120 Greek manuscripts, 33 of them older than the fourteenth century.29 The oldest copy of all is a fragmentary leaf of a papyrus book of the War in Vienna, usually dated to the third century.34

Each work on its own road. The four works came down separately. For the Life, the oldest manuscript is P (Palatinus graecus 14 in the Vatican), of the ninth or tenth century. For the War, Thackeray traced two families of manuscripts and found readings of the weaker family already in the third-century writer Porphyry, so the text had begun to divide very early.3,20 The Antiquities was so long that it was split in two early on, and its first and second halves have different manuscripts.22 Against Apion hangs by a thread: every other surviving Greek copy seems to have been copied from one imperfect eleventh-century manuscript in Florence (Laurentianus 69.22).3

Latin. Early translations help to correct the Greek. A free Christian adaptation of the War in Latin, known as "Hegesippus", was made about 370, and a full Latin translation of the War was known to Cassiodorus.19,20 Cassiodorus, the scholar and statesman who founded the monastery of Vivarium, had the Antiquities and Against Apion put into Latin.3,22,36 That Latin is the only witness for a long stretch of Against Apion (2.52–113) that is missing from all the Greek manuscripts.3 You can see the gap in the reader: in the middle of 2.51 Niese's Greek breaks off and his text continues in Latin until it turns back into Greek in 2.113.43

Print. The first printed Greek text appeared at Basel in 1544, from the press of Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, edited by Arnoldus Arlenius from manuscripts in the library of the Spanish ambassador at Venice. It also printed 4 Maccabees, then thought to be by Josephus.37,38 For Against Apion and the first half of the Antiquities, Thackeray found that this edition seems to draw in part on a manuscript not otherwise known.3,22 In 1737 William Whiston published his English translation, made from Haverkamp's Greek edition;39 it became enormously popular, and was often the book English-speaking Christians owned after the Bible.5 The great critical edition is Benedikt Niese's (Berlin, 1885–95), based on a detailed study of the manuscripts. Its section numbers are the ones scholars cite, and the reader uses them too; Whiston's English is divided into the older chapters.3,40,41 A new critical edition is being prepared at Münster.5

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

Debated among scholars The passage on Jesus. The Testimonium (Antiquities 18.63–64) stands in every Greek manuscript, and Eusebius quoted it in nearly the same words in the early fourth century.29,35 Since the 1970s two more versions have come into the debate: an Arabic one in the tenth-century chronicle of Agapius, brought to light by Shlomo Pines in 1971, and a Syriac one in the twelfth-century chronicle of Michael the Syrian. The Arabic does not say that the Jewish leaders accused Jesus, and the Syriac says not "he was the Christ" but "he was believed to be the Christ".29 Many scholars took these as closer to what Josephus wrote. In 2008 Alice Whealey argued that both depend on a Syriac translation of Eusebius, but that the reading "he was thought to be the Christ", which Jerome's Latin also has, may well be the original.29 Louis Feldman's view in the Loeb edition was that “our text represents substantially what Josephus wrote, but that some alterations have been made by a Christian interpolator”.28

John the Baptist: aroused or overjoyed? In Antiquities 18.118 the manuscripts of Josephus say the crowds around John were ἤρθησαν, "aroused"; Eusebius, and the Slavonic version, have ἥσθησαν, "overjoyed". Niese, who printed Eusebius' word, and Schürer, who preferred it, both doubted that Josephus would speak warmly of a man who stirred up the people. Robert Eisler argued that Christians had changed it so as not to link John with revolt, and Feldman's Loeb text goes back to the manuscripts.28 The reader has Niese's «ἥσθησαν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τῇ ἀκροάσει τῶν λόγων», and Whiston hedges with “they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words”.30

A passage on James that is not there. Origen says that Josephus blamed the fall of Jerusalem on the killing of «Ἰακώβου τοῦ δικαίου», James the Just, the brother of Jesus.27 Eusebius says the same. But no such passage stands in our Josephus: the surviving notice of James's death says nothing of the sort. Feldman suggests that Origen and Eusebius were thinking of what Josephus says about divine vengeance for John the Baptist.28,31

The Slavonic War. An Old Russian translation of the War, first brought to notice in Russia in 1866, contains passages about John the Baptist and Jesus that are in no Greek manuscript. Robert Eisler defended them as genuine in the 1920s, and Thackeray took his work seriously, but scholars now reject them as later additions.20,44

Small differences with big echoes. The title "Jewish War" is the one Josephus himself uses, but most manuscripts call the book "On the Capture" (of Jerusalem).20 In Antiquities 20.263, where Josephus says he studied Greek letters, one manuscript (A) and the epitome add "and poetry"; the other manuscripts, and the reader's text, do not.4,20 And at 20.268 Josephus promises a work on God and the laws «ἐν τέσσαρσι βίβλοις», in four books, where Whiston's English has “three books”.3,4

Books to read it in

  • B. Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera, 7 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–95).40,41 The great critical edition, and the Greek text in the reader.
  • W. Whiston, The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus the Jewish Historian (London, 1737).39,41 The English in the reader, from an American printing of 1856. Old-fashioned and sometimes loose, but famous.
  • S. A. Naber, the Teubner text of Josephus, 6 vols (Leipzig, 1888–96).3 A Greek text that trusts a different group of manuscripts from Niese's.
  • H. St J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 1, The Life; Against Apion (Loeb Classical Library 186, 1926), and vols 2–3, The Jewish War (LCL 203 and 210, 1927–28).3,20,45 Greek and English on facing pages, with introductions still worth reading.
  • H. St J. Thackeray, R. Marcus, A. Wikgren and L. H. Feldman, Josephus, vols 4–9, Jewish Antiquities (Loeb Classical Library, 1930–65).22,28,46 Feldman's last volume (1965) has rich notes on the passages about Jesus, John and James.
  • S. Mason (ed.), Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2000– ).5,42 A new English translation with full commentary, by several scholars; the first volume was Feldman's Judean Antiquities 1–4.
  • Arnoldus Arlenius (ed.), the first printed Greek Josephus (Basel: Froben and Episcopius, 1544).37,38 The first edition. For some works it seems to draw on a manuscript not otherwise known, and so is sometimes an important witness.

Where this comes from

Sources (47)
  1. Josephus, Jewish War 1.1–1.4 (the preface: who he is, the first version in his own language, the opening echo of Thucydides), in the reader
  2. Josephus, Life 1–6 (his family and birth in the first year of Gaius), in the reader
  3. H. St J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 1: The Life; Against Apion (Loeb Classical Library 186, 1926): the introduction (life, works, manuscripts, editions), Internet Archive
  4. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.259–268 (the two endings: his Greek, the date of completion, the works planned), in the reader
  5. Wikipedia, Josephus (life, the name Flavius, the Josephus problem, Smallwood's and Ritter's verdicts, reception, translations, Niese, the Münster edition)
  6. Josephus, Life 7–12 (his education, the three schools, Bannus, the Pharisees), in the reader
  7. Josephus, Life 13–16 (the journey to Rome, the shipwreck, Poppaea), in the reader
  8. Josephus, Jewish War 2.566–568 (the generals chosen in 66; Josephus for both Galilees), in the reader
  9. Josephus, Life 28–29 (sent to Galilee with two other priests), in the reader
  10. Wikipedia, Siege of Yodfat (a 47-day siege in 67)
  11. Josephus, Jewish War 3.340–342 (the pit, the cave, the forty men), in the reader
  12. Josephus, Jewish War 3.383–391 (the drawing of lots), in the reader
  13. Josephus, Jewish War 3.392–408 (before Vespasian; the prophecy; the forty-seventh day), in the reader
  14. Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 5.6, in the Loeb Classical Library translation (1914), on LacusCurtius
  15. Josephus, Jewish War 4.622–629 (Vespasian frees Josephus; the chain cut), in the reader
  16. Josephus, Life 414–421 (after Jotapata; the siege of Jerusalem; those he set free), in the reader
  17. Josephus, Life 422–430 (life in Rome under Vespasian, Titus and Domitian; the dedication to Epaphroditus), in the reader
  18. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.9.1–4 (the statue in Rome; the seven books of the War and the twenty of the Antiquities), in the reader
  19. Wikipedia, The Jewish War (seven books, the Latin translations, the only extensive eyewitness account)
  20. H. St J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 2: The Jewish War, Books I–III (Loeb Classical Library 203, 1927): the introduction (title, Aramaic first version, date, style and assistants, the Slavonic version, manuscripts), Internet Archive
  21. Josephus, Life 361–364 (the War presented to the emperors; Titus signs it; Agrippa's letters), in the reader
  22. H. St J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 4: Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV (Loeb Classical Library 242, 1930): the introduction (date, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the two halves, manuscripts), Internet Archive
  23. Josephus, Against Apion 1.1–3 (the purpose of the work), in the reader
  24. Josephus, Against Apion 1.47–56 (how he wrote the War; helpers for the Greek), in the reader
  25. Thucydides, History 1.1.2, in the reader
  26. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.63–64 (the Testimonium Flavianum), in the reader
  27. Origen, Against Celsus 1.47 (Josephus on John the Baptist and James; Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Christ), in the reader
  28. L. H. Feldman, Josephus, vol. 9: Jewish Antiquities, Books XVIII–XX (Loeb Classical Library 433, 1965): notes on 18.63, 18.117–118 and 20.200, Internet Archive
  29. Wikipedia, Josephus on Jesus (the manuscripts, the Testimonium and its Arabic and Syriac versions, Whealey's argument, John the Baptist, James)
  30. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119 (John the Baptist), in the reader
  31. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.199–203 (the stoning of James), in the reader
  32. Wikipedia, Siege of Masada (the single written source, the breach of the wall, the views of Cohen, Atkinson, Cline and Magness)
  33. Josephus, Jewish War 7.389–406 (the end at Masada), in the reader
  34. Brent Nongbri, “Manuscripts of the Jewish War by Josephus” (blog, 20 June 2025): the Vienna papyrus and the medieval copies
  35. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.11.7–9 (quoting the Testimonium), in the reader
  36. Wikipedia, Cassiodorus (statesman under Theodoric, founder of Vivarium; the Institutiones written from the 530s into the 550s)
  37. Wikipedia, List of editiones principes in Greek (Josephus: Basel, 1544, Froben and Episcopius, ed. Arlenius, with 4 Maccabees)
  38. Wikipedia, Arnoldus Arlenius (the 1544 Josephus from manuscripts in Mendoza's library)
  39. The title page of Whiston's translation, The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus the Jewish Historian (London, 1737), on Bill Thayer's site at the University of Chicago
  40. Wikipedia, Benedikt Niese (the editio maior of Josephus, Berlin, 1885–1895; his numbering)
  41. The reader's copies of Josephus: each file's header names its source (Niese's Flavii Iosephi Opera, Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–1895; Whiston's translation, Auburn and Rochester, NY: Alden and Beardsley, 1856)
  42. G. J. Goldberg, review of the Brill Josephus Project (Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, ed. Steve Mason; vol. 3, Judean Antiquities 1–4, by L. H. Feldman, 2000), on josephus.org
  43. Josephus, Against Apion 2.51–114 in the reader: Niese's text runs in Latin from the middle of 2.51 to the middle of 2.113
  44. Wikipedia, Slavonic Josephus (Popov, 1866; Eisler, 1926; rejected by recent scholarship)
  45. Internet Archive, record of Josephus, vol. 3: The Jewish War, Books IV–VII, tr. H. St J. Thackeray (Loeb Classical Library 210, 1928)
  46. Internet Archive, record of Josephus, vol. 8: Jewish Antiquities, Books XV–XVII, tr. R. Marcus and A. Wikgren (Loeb Classical Library 410, 1963)
  47. Wikipedia, Contra Celsum (written in around 248)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 6 October 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

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