The works of Josephus provide information about the First Jewish–Roman War and also represent literary source material for understanding the context of the
Dead Sea Scrolls and late
Temple Judaism. Josephan scholarship had traditionally identified him as a
Pharisee. Some authors portrayed him as a member of the sect and as a traitor to the Jewish nation—a view which became known as the classical concept of Josephus. In the mid-20th century, scholars challenged this view and formulated the modern concept of Josephus. They consider him a Pharisee but describe him in part as patriot and a historian of some standing. In his 1991 book,
Steve Mason argued that Josephus was not a Pharisee but an orthodox Aristocrat-Priest who became associated with the philosophical school of the Pharisees as a matter of deference, and not by willing association.
Impact on history and archaeology The works of Josephus include useful material for historians about individuals, groups, customs, and geographical places. However, modern historians have been cautious of taking his writings at face value. For example,
Carl Ritter, in his highly influential
Erdkunde in the 1840s, wrote in a review of authorities on the ancient geography of the region: Outside of the Scriptures, Josephus holds the first and the only place among the native authors of Judaea; for Philo of Alexandria, the later Talmud, and other authorities, are of little service in understanding the geography of the country. Josephus is, however, to be used with great care. As a Jewish scholar, as an officer of Galilee, as a military man, and a person of great experience in everything belonging to his own nation, he attained to that remarkable familiarity with his country in every part, which his antiquarian researches so abundantly evince. But he was controlled by political motives: his great purpose was to bring his people, the despised Jewish race, into honour with the Greeks and Romans; and this purpose underlay every sentence, and filled his history with distortions and exaggerations. Josephus mentions that in his day there were 240 towns and villages scattered across
Upper and
Lower Galilee, some of which he names. Josephus's works are the primary source for the chain of
Jewish high priests during the
Second Temple period. A few of the Jewish customs named by him include the practice of hanging a
linen curtain at the entrance to one's house, and the Jewish custom to partake of a
Sabbath-day's meal around the
sixth-hour of the day (at noon). He notes also that it was permissible for Jewish men to marry many wives (
polygamy). His writings provide a significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the
Maccabees, the
Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of
Herod the Great. He also describes the
Sadducees, the
Pharisees and
Essenes, the Herodian Temple,
Quirinius's census and the
Zealots, and such figures as
Pontius Pilate,
Herod the Great,
Agrippa I and
Agrippa II,
John the Baptist,
James the brother of Jesus, and
Jesus. Josephus represents an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple
Judaism and the context of
early Christianity. A careful reading of Josephus's writings and years of excavation allowed
Ehud Netzer, an
archaeologist from
Hebrew University, to discover what he considered to be the location of
Herod's Tomb, after searching for 35 years. It was above
aqueducts and pools, at a flattened desert site, halfway up the hill to the
Herodium, 12 km south of Jerusalem—as described in Josephus's writings. In October 2013, archaeologists Joseph Patrich and Benjamin Arubas challenged the identification of the tomb as that of Herod. According to Patrich and Arubas, the tomb is too modest to be Herod's and has several unlikely features. the connection of
"Semites", "Hamites" and "Japhetites" to the classical nations of the world, and the story of the
siege of Masada.
Josephus's original audience Scholars debate about Josephus's intended audience. For example,
Antiquities of the Jews could be written for Jews—"a few scholars from Laqueur onward have suggested that Josephus must have written primarily for fellow Jews (if also secondarily for Gentiles). The most common motive suggested is repentance: in later life he felt so bad about the traitorous
War that he needed to demonstrate … his loyalty to Jewish history, law and culture." However, Josephus's "countless incidental remarks explaining basic Judean language, customs and laws … assume a Gentile audience. He does not expect his first hearers to know anything about the laws or Judean origins." The issue of who would read this multi-volume work is unresolved. Other possible motives for writing
Antiquities could be to dispel the misrepresentation of Jewish origins or as an apologetic to Greek cities of the Diaspora in order to protect Jews and to Roman authorities to garner their support for the Jews facing persecution. Later rabbinic authorities condemned or marginalized Josephus, and he is largely absent from traditional Jewish sources until
Isaac Abarbanel, who was fluent in Latin and differentiated between the different compositions of Josephus, one addressed to the Jews in Hebrew and another in Greek and Latin. In some places Abarbanel refers to Joseph ben Gurion but appears to be referencing the
Sefer Yosippon.
Literary influence and translations Josephus was a very popular writer with Christians in the 4th century and beyond as an independent source to the events before, during, and after the life of
Jesus of Nazareth. Josephus was always accessible in the Greek-reading Eastern Mediterranean. His works were translated into Latin, but often in abbreviated form such as
Pseudo-Hegesippus's 4th century Latin version of
The Jewish War (). Christian interest in
The Jewish War was largely out of interest in the downfall of the Jews and the Second Temple, which was widely considered by Christians to be
divine punishment for the crime of killing Jesus. Improvements in printing technology (the
Gutenberg Press) led to his works receiving a number of new translations into the vernacular languages of Europe, generally based on the Latin versions. Only in 1544 did a version of the standard Greek text become available in French, edited by the Dutch
humanist Arnoldus Arlenius. The first English translation, by
Thomas Lodge, appeared in 1602, with subsequent editions appearing throughout the 17th century. The 1544 Greek edition formed the basis of the 1732 English translation by
William Whiston, which achieved enormous popularity in the English-speaking world. It was often the book—after the Bible—that Christians most frequently owned. Whiston claimed that certain works by Josephus had a similar style to the
Epistles of St. Paul. Later editions of the Greek text include that of
Benedikt Niese, who made a detailed examination of all the available manuscripts, mainly from France and Spain.
Henry St. John Thackeray and successors such as
Ralph Marcus used Niese's version for the
Loeb Classical Library edition widely used today. On the Jewish side, Josephus was far more obscure, as he was perceived as a traitor. Rabbinical writings for a millennium after his death (e.g. the
Mishnah) almost never call out Josephus by name, although they sometimes tell parallel tales of the same events that Josephus narrated. An Italian Jew writing in the 10th century indirectly brought Josephus back to prominence among Jews: he authored the
Yosippon, which paraphrases Pseudo-Hegesippus's Latin version of
The Jewish War, a Latin version of
Antiquities, as well as other works. The epitomist also adds in his own snippets of history at times. Jews generally distrusted Christian translations of Josephus until the
Haskalah ("Jewish Enlightenment") in the 19th century, when sufficiently "neutral" vernacular language translations were made.
Kalman Schulman finally created a Hebrew translation of the Greek text of Josephus in 1863, although many rabbis continued to prefer the Yosippon version. By the 20th century, Jewish attitudes toward Josephus had softened, as he gave the Jews a respectable place in classical history. Various parts of his work were reinterpreted as more inspiring and favorable to the Jews than the Renaissance translations by Christians had been. Notably, the last stand at Masada (described in
The Jewish War), which past generations had deemed insane and fanatical, received a more positive reinterpretation as an inspiring call to action in this period. The standard
editio maior of the various Greek manuscripts is that of
Benedictus Niese, published 1885–95. The text of
Antiquities is damaged in some places. In the
Life, Niese follows mainly manuscript P, but refers also to AMW and R. Henry St. John Thackeray for the
Loeb Classical Library has a Greek text also mainly dependent on P. André Pelletier edited a new Greek text for his translation of
Life. The ongoing Münsteraner Josephus-Ausgabe of
Münster University will provide a new critical apparatus. Late Old Slavonic translations of the Greek also exist, but these contain a large number of Christian interpolations.
Evaluation as a military commander Author Joseph Raymond calls Josephus "the Jewish
Benedict Arnold" for betraying his own troops at Jotapata, while historian
Mary Smallwood, in the introduction to the translation of
The Jewish War by
G. A. Williamson, writes: == Historiography and Josephus ==