The Jewish War

by Flavius Josephus, Martin Hammond (Translation), Martin Goodman (Editor)

In August of AD 70 the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman forces after a six-month siege. This was the disastrous outcome of a Jewish revolt against Roman domination which began in AD 66 with some early success, but soon became mired in factional conflict. The war ended in the destruction of the famous Jewish Temple (rebuilt by Herod the Great a century before).

The remarkable story of the war is narrated by an eye-witness and participant, Josephus. He was at first a rebel commander, then after his capture, supported Titus in the final assault on Jerusalem. Josephus spares no detail of a horrific conflict - atrocities on both sides, the reign of terror in Jerusalem, the appalling conditions of the siege, and the final mass suicide at Masada. His vivid narrative is our prime source for this period of history. It is a dramatic story, which resonates to the present day.

Genres: History, Classics, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Religion, Jewish, Judaism

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 75

About the author

Titus Flavius Josephus was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer who was born in Jerusalem - then part of Roman Judea - to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

He initially fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War as the head of Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in 67 to Roman forces led by Vespasian after the six-week siege of Jotapata. Josephus claims the Jewish Messianic prophecies that initiated the First Roman-Jewish War made reference to Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome. In response Vespasian decided to keep Josephus as a hostage and interpreter. After Vespasian did become Emperor in 69, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperor's family name of Flavius.

Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem, which resulted -- when the Jewish revolt did not surrender -- in the city's destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod's Temple (Second Temple).

Josephus recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, including the Siege of Masada, but the imperial patronage of his work has sometimes caused it to be characterized as pro-Roman propaganda.

His most important works were The Jewish War (c. 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94). The Jewish War recounts the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation (66–70). Antiquities of the Jews recounts the history of the world from a Jewish perspective for an ostensibly Roman audience. These works provide valuable insight into 1st century Judaism and the background of Early Christianity.

Alternate spelling:
Flávio Josefo (Romance languages)

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Jewish people rose up against mighty Rome in the year 66 A.D.; and for seven improbable years, against all odds, they defied the seemingly invincible legions of the Roman Empire. It is an epic story – one of courage and folly combined – and Flavius Josephus tells it well in his book The Roman-Jewish War.

Josephus was born in 37 A.D. in what was then Roman Judea. He was in his late twenties and early thirties when the events of the Roman-Jewish War unfolded; he wrote his history of the war around 75 A.D., shortly after the war’s end, when his memories of the war’s blood and horror were no doubt quite vivid. And he quite literally saw the war from both sides – initially a leader of the Jewish resistance, he decided after being captured by the Romans that the war was unwinnable, and spent the rest of the war as a sort of hostage negotiator, trying to convince his fellow Jewish rebels to lay down their arms. It was a turn of events that put him in a uniquely propitious position to tell this story.

The early passages of The Roman-Jewish War go all the way back to Herod’s predecessors in Judea, and Josephus quickly proceeds to a consideration of the rule of Herod himself – Herod I, or “Herod the Great,” as he no doubt liked to call himself. Game of Thrones fans may derive a familiar frisson from Josephus’ chapters on Herod’s murder of his wife Mariamme and various other family members including his heir Antipater. Small wonder, with the members of the ruling family scheming against each other and killing each other off, that little practical administration of Judea was getting done, or that the Judea of that time was a chaotic place; and when Rome instituted direct rule, the stage was set for a full-scale uprising by the Jewish people.

The Roman-Jewish War began toward the end of the reign of the emperor Nero, and continued through the chaos of 69 A.D., the “Year of the Four Emperors,” when Galba, Otho, and Vitellius each ruled for a short time before being overthrown, until the emperor Vespasian finally established some stability at the capital. Josephus, who befriended both Vespasian and Vespasian’s son Titus (leading Roman general throughout the war, and a future emperor himself), unsurprisingly speaks of both these Roman leaders in terms of the highest praise, as when he writes how wise it was, how divinely inspired, that during the political turmoil at Rome Vespasian and Titus “held up operations against the Jews, feeling that while they were so anxious about things at home the invasion of a foreign country would be inopportune” (p. 274).

Josephus no doubt knew that he would be accused by some of his former fellow rebels of having turned traitor. It is almost certainly for that reason that Josephus emphasizes his attempts to keep the Jewish people from bringing destruction upon themselves, as when he remonstrates with the rebels during the Siege of Jerusalem: “Who doesn’t know the writings of the old prophets and the oracle pronounced against this unhappy city and now about to be fulfilled? They foretold the day of her fall….And aren’t the City and Temple full of your dead bodies? It is God then, God Himself, who is bringing with the Romans fire to purge the Temple and is blotting out the City, brimful of corruption, as if it had never been” (p. 345).

It is scarring to read the passages from The Roman-Jewish War that chronicle the final fall of Jerusalem to the Romans and the destruction of the Second Temple: “As the flames shot into the air the Jews sent up a cry that matched the calamity and dashed to the rescue, with no thought now of saving their lives or husbanding their strength; for that which hitherto they had guarded so devotedly was disappearing before their eyes” (p. 357). It is comparably painful to read of the looting of the Temple, with its irreplaceable and sacred artifacts of what was already, in 70 A.D., a millennia-old faith – “Most of the spoils that were carried were heaped up indiscriminately, but more prominent than all the rest were those captured in the Temple at Jerusalem” (p. 359).

And then there is Josephus’ account of the mass suicide of the last Jewish defenders in the fortress at Masada. Like Herodotus and Thucydides before him, Josephus will quote at length a masterpiece of rhetoric, whether he was there to hear a particular speech or not. In this case, the speaker is one Eleazar; and after acknowledging that the Jewish war against Rome failed in part because of infighting among the Jewish rebels, he speaks as follows:

“For those wrongs let us pay the penalty not to our bitterest enemies, the Romans, but to God – it will be easier to bear. Let our wives die unabused, our children without knowledge of slavery: after that, let us do each other an ungrudging kindness, preserving our freedom as a glorious winding-sheet….One thing only let us spare – our store of food: it will bear witness when we are dead to the fact that we perished, not through want but because, as we resolved at the beginning, we chose death rather than slavery.” (p. 399)

When I read this passage, I thought of how, for many years, members of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) swore at Masada an oath that “Masada shall not fall again.” And it never has, and I don’t think it ever will.

For this Penguin Books edition of The Roman-Jewish War, E. Mary Smallwood of Cambridge University has provided helpful footnotes, along with appendices, maps, and a chronological table of events of that time. It was 1,878 years, it occurs to me, between the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the establishment of מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medinat Yisra’el, the State of Israel, in 1948. Josephus’ The Roman-Jewish War captures well the unconquerable spirit that sustained the Jewish people through two thousand years of exile and persecution, until their homeland could be restored.

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Jewish War started strong and I wondered at first if it might hold a candle to Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. It doesn't in the end. Much of it comes across as a piece of special pleading. Josephus wrote the book during a time of growing hostility under Roman Emperor Domitian (reigned 81-96 CE) toward those of the Jewish faith. The Jews had long had an official exemption from participation in the state rites, yet the increasingly tyrannical Domitian firmly believed in the traditional Roman religion, and personally saw to it that ancient customs and morals were observed throughout his reign as a means of justifying the divine nature of Flavian rule. Josephus's friends and protectors, the Flavian emperors Vespasian and Titus, were dead by this time. Moreover, Josephus was writing against a work by Justin of Tiberias that portrayed him as an instigator of the revolt in Galilee. So The Jewish War is very much Josephus' apologia. He loses no opportunity to excoriate the character of his fellow Jews, though he grudgingly admires their fighting ability, or to praise the valor, insight, patience, fair play, discipline and training of the Romans. All the Jews by contrast are murderous banditti who pollute their own sanctuary and turn on each other in a heinous fratricidal civil war that precedes the arrival of the Romans. The Jewish leaders—John, Simon, the Zealots, the Idumeans—are the scum of the earth. Josephus often uses that very phrase. They, he says, possess no conscience or moral bearing. It all gets to be a bit much in the end. Though the book lacks crucial balance I nevertheless recommend it for two reasons: (1) its uniqueness as a document; and (2) it's detailed and vivid depictions of ancient Judea. Nothing I've read has ever provided me with such a detailed look at both ancient Jerusalem and the broader landscape of Judea.

[David Gustafson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let us begin by preparing ourselves for Josephus' account of "The Jewish Revolt" with a breathtaking tour of The Temple Mount prepared by the Israeli Antiquities Authority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHLD6...

With the loot from the Temple destruction and the sale of thousands of prisoners into slavery, Vespasian financed The Colosseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre. Vespasian did not live to see the completion of his Colosseum. His son Titus, who defeated the Jews, inaugurated it ten years after his victory with games that lasted for more than a hundred days.

Thus, the destruction of the Temple devoted to the worship of God, the creator of life and the repository of human blessings, financed an entertainment facility dedicated to the worship of artful killing and death.

To make a cultural comparison, here is a virtual tour of the completed Colosseum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAWTJ...

Now we are almost ready for "The Jewish Revolt," but we need some additional information about its author since Josephus has become an integral feature of the story by his own treachery. In some respects, the reader is listening to a criminal spin his alibi. But listen we must, because this is the only eyewitness account we have of so many of the strategies, tragedies and gory details of the Jewish War. Like a cynical lead investigator, the reader has to sort through the contradictions of this apologia whenever Josephus appears as a player to come away with a broader sense of what actually happened at the scene of the crime.

Josephus was born into a priestly family. He was educated in a rabbinic school and studied with the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes trying to decide on which sect to join. After living with an ascetic hermit in the desert for three years of meditation he returned to Jerusalem as a Pharisee.

A few years later, Josephus is given a minor diplomatic role, traveling to Rome to appeal to Nero on behalf of some fellow priests who had been charged with an unspecified crime. He wins their acquittal.

Back in Jerusalem, as war is about to break out, Josephus sides with the moderates to argue against the nationalists who are willing to take on the Roman empire. When the nationalists win the day and war is inevitable, he accepts their appointment as commander of Galilee.

As the Romans reduce every fortified town and village in Galilee, they finally surround Jotapata where Josephus is holed up with a few survivors. Here is where Josephus' account becomes the cringeworthy indictment of his own character that follows him in his footsteps almost two thousand years later.

First, his troops catch him trying to escape from the death trap. He claims that it was only his intention to go out and rally reinforcements in order to return and rescue them. He manages to talk himself out of being executed by his own troops who then decide that rather than surrender to the Romans, they should each commit suicide. Josephus argues that suicide is a dishonorable death and that instead, they should draw lots to kill one another. Naturally, "lucky" Josephus draws one of the last two tickets and when it comes down to himself and a lone survivor, he suggests that they should surrender to the Romans.

When taken to Vespasian, Josephus makes the outlandish prophesy that his captor will one day become emperor. Hearing other Jews assert that Josephus has the gift of prophesy, Vespasian spares him. When the prophesy comes true shortly after Nero's death, Josephus is released and is literally handed the keys to the kingdom that will later award him a house in Rome that had once belonged to Vespasian himself, tax free estates in Judea and a pension to write his histories.

Josephus, son of Matthias, will eventually take the name Flavius Josephus in honor of his new patrons and write his history of the Jewish revolt.

The original text was written in Aramaic. Later Josephus has it translated into Greek for the Gentile community. Most upper class Romans were fluent in Greek as were Vespasian and Titus, who reviewed the text before releasing it for distribution. This edited edition also serves as an apologia for his tarnished reputation.

As a side point of interest, ancient scrolls were about 10 inches wide and 30 feet long. They were often referred to as a book, but by modern standards they would be considered a long chapter. Scribes were paid per hundred lines of script. In the first century, reading books was a rich man's pleasure. One can only imagine how magnificent and imposing the interior of the Royal Library of Alexandria must have looked with its collection of thousands upon thousands of scrolls containing the written word of the ancient world!

Now, back to "The Jewish Revolt" as told by a traitor and a scholar who was indeed an eyewitness.

Josephus begins his account by giving a history of the region from the Maccabaean revolt in 65 B.C. up to a very detailed account of the murderous reign of the warlord and despot, Herod.

After more than a third of the book, the reader suddenly experiences whiplash when a massacre of Jewish men, women and children makes war imminent. This is what the reader has been waiting for!

Agrippa warns the gathered citizenry against going into battle against an empire that has conquered nation after nation after nation. Even skeptical scholars suggest that Josephus was very likely present when Agrippa delivered his famous, passionate appeal, but that he greatly embellished it.

The nationalist faction wins the day against the moderates, but that factionalism will play out and devolve into fratricide within the walls of Jerusalem while both sides are battling the Romans laying siege outside.

The reader will soon identify the tactical folly committed by the radicals in assuming that they could possibly win a defensive war against the only nation on earth that maintained a peacetime army that trained strenuously every day, a disciplined army supported by calvary, archers and siege engines that the Jewish forces lacked. As a behind-the-lines eyewitness, Josephus gives us the only description of the composition, deployment, command and tactics of units of the first century Roman war machine.

There is a respite in the fighting as Rome finds itself between emperors and Vespasian lacks imperial orders. Finally Vespasian becomes Emperor and his son Titus assumes command of the Roman forces. In short order, Titus reduces all of the surrounding fortress cities and encircles Jerusalem. Famine, panic and desperation consume the city.

Surrounded by the Romans who breach wall after wall, Jerusalem is wracked by murderous, factional infighting. Time after time, using Josephus as a mediator, Titus offers clemency if Jerusalem will only surrender. Both factions reject every offer, executing anyone suspected of surrendering.

Breaching the final wall, the Romans enter without mercy and lay waste to the city.

Amid the smoldering ruins, Titus allows Josephus to help himself to any spoils from the ruins as a reward for his service. He passes on the loot but accepts some copies of the Scriptures, the release of his brother, fifty friends and several women and children of acquaintances lined up for deportation and enslavement as well as three friends who were being crucified. One of those crucified actually survives his ordeal. Titus also rewards him with an estate outside of Jerusalem as compensation for his former property within the destroyed city.

The looting of the Temple and the taking of thousands of prisoners deflates the price of both gold and slaves throughout the region. There will still be enough profit to build the famous Colosseum

It is only natural to assume that ten years later in Rome, Titus would invite his famous historian to join him in the royal box for some entertaining games in the Colosseum. The same literary lion who devoted nine pages of his history to a minutely detailed description of the wonders of the destroyed Temple. How could Flavius Josephus refuse his Emperor and patron?

Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant!
Hail Caesar, those of us about to die salute you!

[Evan Leach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over 1,900 years ago, in July of 67, forty-one prominent Jewish leaders huddled in a dark cave below the city of Yodfat, in Galilee. One year before, the entire province of Judea had risen in revolt from the Roman Empire, and Roman forces had been systematically decimating the northern part of the province as a result. Yodfat had just fallen, and its citizens were being massacred by the thousands. Trapped and despairing, the leaders decided that mass suicide was preferable to falling into Roman hands, and prepared to kill themselves. But one of the forty-one, the Galilean commander Josephus, urged surrender instead. Incensed by his cowardice, his countrymen prepared to kill him until Josephus came up with an alternate plan. Instead of killing themselves, the Jews would draw lots one after another, and take turns killing one another in order. Somehow, Josephus ended up drawing the next to last straw. And when thirty-nine of his compatriots lay dead, he was able to convince the last remaining man that discretion was the better part of valor after all, and the two of them climbed out of that bloody cavern to offer their surrender to the victorious Romans.

At least, according to Josephus that is.


Memorial to the Defenders of Yodfat

Upon defection to the Romans, Josephus was able to somehow save his own skin (in large part by claiming that divine inspiration revealed to him that the Roman commander Vespasian would become Emperor, which shortly came true). But unsurprisingly, Josephus’ countrymen saw the defection and survival of one of their generals as something less than divine intervention, and Josephus was driven to write this history of the First Roman-Jewish War in an attempt to clear his name. Josephus’ account actually starts way back in the time of Octavian and Antony, with a description of the tumultuous reign of the infamous King Herod the Great (known to many readers from the New Testament). He goes on to cover the intervening years between Herod’s death and the revolt of 66, as successive Roman governors exploited their Jewish subjects, culminating in the greed of Gessius Florus. When Jewish anger finally erupted in revolution, Josephus was named commander of the Galilean province, which was to bear the full brunt of the initial Roman assault. Holding Galilee against multiple Roman legions and their auxiliaries was an impossible task, but Josephus did the best he could (at least according to his own account) before the northern part of the province fell. Then, Vespasian and his son, Titus (also destined to reign as Caesar) turned their eyes to the south, where Jerusalem awaited.



Even by the standards of ancient warfare, the fall of Jerusalem was brutal. While the Romans were occupied in the north, Jews in the south turned on themselves (in Josephus’ words) like a “wild beast grown mad, which, for want of food from abroad, fell now upon eating its own flesh.” At a time when every able-bodied soldier was badly needed, a series of petty tyrants fought each other for control of Jerusalem and the surrounding territories. The incredulous Romans sat back and let this play out for a while, before Titus finally descended to lay siege to the city. Unfortunately for the Jews, Titus waited until the city’s population was vastly inflated due to the Passover (when over a million Jews from the countryside flocked to the city to celebrate the festival) before beginning the siege. This exacerbated an already desperate food situation, and the result was famine on a horrific scale. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation, while the survivors turned to increasingly desperate measures. By the height of the siege, “some persons were driven to that terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there.” Many begged their own soldiers to kill them, judging death by the sword to be preferable than starvation. In one particularly harrowing story, a woman killed and ate her own infant son.

Josephus, now firmly on the Roman side, begged the citizens to surrender. While the majority of the populace was desperate enough, the armed garrison was determined to fight to the last. The city paid the price: in the summer of 70 the city finally fell after a seven month siege, the temple was destroyed, and Jerusalem was effectively leveled. Those who had somehow survived the siege “were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination.”


The Arch of Titus, commemorating Titus’ victory in the Siege of Jerusalem.

With that, the war was effectively over. But his people never forgave Josephus, who was viewed as a 1st century Benedict Arnold. He spent most of the rest of his life in Rome, living in comfort but always conscious that many Jews considered him a traitor. The Jewish War is his most famous book, and while the reader has to watch out for Josephus’ self-serving tendencies and occasional bias, this is an important primary source for both Jewish history and the history of the Roman Empire. Josephus’ work isn’t as pleasurable to read as, say, Thucydides, but he tells an epic (and tragic) story well enough. Not a “must read” by any stretch, but readers interested in history, particularly Jewish and/or Roman history, will find plenty of interest here. 3 stars.

[Rob Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The specificity and quality of the writing are very impressive.

[Yann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Écrit à la fin des années 70 du Ier siècle de notre ère, la « guerre des Juifs » relate la destruction de l’insurrection de la Palestine par Vespasien et son fils Titus. L'alliance entre les Juifs et les romains était pourtant ancienne: elle datait, du IIème siècle avant JC, à cette époque où Rome mettait en place une politique de déstabilisation du royaume Séleucide, pour aider son traditionnel allié Lagide, en soutenant les révoltes des indépendantistes locaux.

C'était la marque de la politique impérialiste des Romains que de se poser en défenseur des nations opprimées contre leurs oppresseurs, c'est à dire pour affaiblir leurs rivaux les plus puissants, avant d'asservir petit à petit ceux qu'ils avaient protégés. La dynastie des Maccabées fut donc protégée par Rome, jusqu'à ce que le pouvoir soit enfin confisqué par l'Empire, au milieu du premier siècle, après le règne d'Hérode le bâtisseur.

L’auteur de ce livre, Flavius Josèphe, juif, rabbin et descendant de rois fut commandant en Galilée lorsque les hostilités commencèrent. Vaincu et fait prisonnier, il devient un excellent ami des romains et les accompagna à Jérusalem où il tentera de convaincre les révolutionnaires de se rendre plutôt que d’entraîner la ville à la destruction par entêtement. La capitale sera complètement rasée, de même que le fameux temple dont les richesses seront emmenées comme trophées à Rome.

La description de la société contemporaine du Christ est d’une valeur inestimable. On découvre une société complexe déchirée par les rivalités entre factions : sicaires, esséniens, sadducéens, pharisiens, zélotes, ces différents groupes, outre des conceptions philosophiques différentes, représentent également des classes sociales qui supportent plus ou moins bien le joug romain. Ce cocktail explosif, suite aux odieux abus de l’administrateur romain Florus, va entraîner une part de la population dans une fuite en avant désespérée dont la résolution sera d’une noirceur terrible.

Aux mains d’une faction illuminée et criminelle, le peuple devient la victime impuissante de ceux là même qui prétendent les défendre. Sans égard pour la population, les insurgés veulent aller au bout du combat, préférant la mort de tous à la défaite. La description des malheurs de la population est à peine soutenable, comme cette pauvre mère réduite par la faim à manger son propre enfant; elle propose les reliefs de son horrible repas aux sicaires venus voir chez elle si elle ne cachait pas quelque nourriture qui aurait pu servir aux combattants.

Le fanatisme des révoltés épuise la patience et la clémence des romains, étonnés d'avoir affaire à des adversaires si déterminés à mourir, et qui multiplient les attaques suicide. Lorsqu'ils parviennent enfin au bout de nombreux efforts à vaincre les rebelles, il n’y a plus de pitié possible: la révolte est écrasée sans rémission.

C’est un livre passionnant mais très poignant, du fait déjà que l’auteur a été personnellement très impliqué dans les évènements, mais surtout la somme des malheurs et des horreurs décrites mettent à rude épreuve l’idée que l’on peut se faire de la bonté et de la douceur des hommes.

[Felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange character Josephus must have been. He must have been so guilt-ridden. And I suppose that shows through in this text in a strange kind of way. It's easy to imagine a different version of this story, in which Josephus is the main villain. He was a leader among the Jewish people during one of the most pivotal moments in their history, and yet he defected to the Roman side, assisted the Romans in winning the war (which was followed by a campaign of genocide), and then wrote a book afterwards, aggrandizing himself, and praising the Roman war machine.

Does any guilt shine through in the text directly? Not really. But you can maybe see his reaction to his guilt. Josephus's praise of himself grates at times, but I can't help but wonder if there's a degree of knowing and intentional overstatement in his egoism. Certainly, he's trying to rehabilitate his image. But he seems to do it by trying to presenting his cowardice as a kind of courage. In reality, his attempts to save his own skin doomed an enormous number of his countrymen. Take this quote below, for example. In keeping with the style of the period, he refers to himself in the third person.

Josephus’ prowess made him admired rather than hated by the generals, and the commander-in-chief was anxious to bring him out, not for punishment – he could inflict that even without Josephus coming forth – but because he preferred to save so excellent a man.

This is just one example of his self-aggrandizing. There are plenty. Another is the one in which Josephus tries to present himself as wise and cunning, as he literally hides from the enemy in a hole, while many of his own people are captured.

The Romans sought everywhere for Josephus both because their blood was up and because it was their commander’s express wish, since the war would be virtually over once Josephus was in his hands. So they searched carefully among the dead bodies and the men who had gone into hiding. But while the capture was taking place, Josephus, helped by some divine providence, had stolen away from the midst of the enemy and jumped into a deep pit communicating on one side with a wide cave which could not be seen from above.

He also stresses repeatedly the supremacy of the Roman military machine.

The purpose of the foregoing account has been less to eulogize the Romans than to console their defeated enemies and to deter any who may be thinking of revolt; and possibly those of an enquiring frame of mind who have not studied the matter may find it useful to get an insight into the Roman military set-up.

But in stating these sort of things, he seems to turn the defeat of the Jewish people (his people, I should add) into a kind of historical inevitability. Instead, of course, it was a historical defeat that he personally helped to bring about.

Josephus is no Thucydides. The Jewish War lacks the eloquence and the nuance of Thucydides. Josephus is more like Caesar, albeit told in roughly the same style as Thucydides. He covers interesting material, but his biases are both obvious and enormous.

[postmodern putin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breathtaking, tumultuous, and very often disturbing first hand account of the infamous Jewish revolt against Rome, Josephus presents an exceptionally detailed timeline of the major events which culminated in one of the most devastating conflicts in ancient human history. Written by a man who was both a participant and a historian, this work is a gripping blend of military struggles, personal tensions, and tragic downfalls, rendered in vivid, sometimes grisly detail. The siege of Jerusalem is the heart of the book, and here, the words of Josephus take on an almost apocalyptic nature. The desperation inside the city—famine turning families against each other, factions warring even as the Romans tighten their noose—is portrayed with horrifying clarity. The destruction of the Temple, one of history’s great tragedies, is depicted so powerfully that you can almost smell the smoke and hear the screams of the poor souls caught between two sides set on mutual annihilation. The fanatical Sicarii, the doomed Jewish rebels, and the stone cold Roman commanders, Vespasian and Titus, leave the reader with no lack of colorful personalities to carry the work forward. Josephus’s own role—a former Jewish commander who defected to the Romans—adds a fascinating layer of moral ambiguity. Is he a pragmatic survivor or a traitor? The book doesn’t shy from this tension. Despite its ambiguities,��The Jewish War remains an indispensable work. It’s history as epic tragedy, told by a flawed but brilliant narrator also gives us vital insight into the origins of the JQ. For anyone interested in Roman military campaigns, Jewish history, or the art of ancient historiography, this is essential reading. Just approach it knowing that Josephus is as much a character in his own drama as he is its chronicler.

[Yigal Zur · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best histories ever written

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for epic, this is it. From the dysfunctional family intrigues of the paranoid Herod's palace to the mass suicide of the Jews at Masada, Josephus--who apparently was at the siege of Jerusalem--relates the story of the Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire.
I started reading this book because it was referenced in two others I have been reading; one on the copper scroll of Qumran--a list of treasures that may have been saved from the temple-- and another on the treasure that Titus took back to Rome that has since disappeared into the coffers of history. But I also found that the book puts a good deal of the events of the New Testament in context. With the background of the factional conflicts in the temple, particularly between the priests installed by Herod and those by the Jews themselves, it is easy to see how some of the actions of Christ could be seen as controversial or even threatening--like the raid on the moneychangers and the halting of lawfully carried out lapidation--given the Herodian expectations of conspiracy and the pressures on the temple caused by this. It also puts some of Christ's prophecies into perpective.
Josephus himself has an almost modern sensibility, and his decriptions of the siege, the atrocities, the violence, the betrayals, the power stuggles and the intrigues is tinged with both horror and sympathy, outrage and sadness. It is often a moving chronicle of a people and thier struggles against a dominating power and the price they pay for thier survival.

[Kori Hartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading about Jesus' prophecies of the Jewish War in the New Testament is one thing . . . reading the actual account is another. This book is an eyewitness account of the Jewish War. I was horrified at the things the Jews did to their own country--their doings were what caused them to lose the war. And yet, even while killing each other and defiling God's temple, they still expected God to save them from the Romans. I was almost horrified to tears on the monstrosities they committed. One woman even cooked and ate her own child when she was driven mad by the famine that took hold of Jerusalem while the Romans were laying siege to it. The whole book though, gave a wonderful demonstration of God's power and providence and I truly loved it, even while it horrified me. It was wonderfully horrible and horribly wonderful.

[Paul Dubuc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book to read before a trip to Israel in 1999. It's a very readable English translation. This gives Josephus' account of the war between the Romans and the Jews in the 1st century. Most fascinating (and horrible) are the accounts of the destruction of Gamla and Jerusalem and the final siege of Masada. Scholars are critical of Josephus because he puts too much of himself into the story and because it is probably biased in favor of his Roman benefactors. (Josephus began fighting against the Romans, but then came over to their side when he was captured and convinced of the hopelessness of the rebellion. He tried to convince the Jews not to fight, but to accept Roman rule. He wrote this history for the Romans' benefit after the war.) Nevertheless, there are very few good historical accounts of this place and time. Reading it gives you a taste of what life would have been like in that ancient land during this terrible period. It's well worth the time spent reading it, especially if you plan to visit the places described.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call Josephus what you will—a dastardly turncoat, a glib flatterer, a shameless opportunist, a…err…bullshitter—but there’s no denying that his Jewish War is among the most fascinating documents of all antiquity. Not only does it cast an evocative light on the Jewish world of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, culminating with the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple: a cataclysmic, formative event for both Judaism and a nascent Christianity, and by extension a seminal moment in the annals of Western civilization; it is also the deeply personal account of a man who played a prominent role in the tumultuous history he recounts, and who, writing in Rome as a court favorite of the emperor Vespasian, sought to make sense of his own life and identity in a way that accorded both with the power of the pagan empire in the heart of which he lived out his days and a Jewish understanding of providence. It is, to boot, a work of high drama, with particularly compelling portraits of Herod, Titus, Simon bar Giora, John of Gischala, Herod Agrippa II, and, naturally, of Josephus himself; as well as a gruesome, doleful, elaborately detailed, and at times darkly humorous* piece of war reporting on the part of an author who was no stranger to generalship, military stratagems, or the sheer thrill and terror of combat. It has everything one could want in a work of postmodern historical fiction—complete with an unreliable narrator—and yet it is more-or-less real history.

Josephus was a first-century Jew of aristocratic stock: the son of a priestly father and a mother with a Hasmonaean pedigree. Educated for the priesthood, he claimed (falsely, as it happens) to have completely mastered the finer points of the Jewish law by the age of fourteen, and to have been sought out by elders even at this young age for his legal interpretations. As a teenager, he dabbled in each of the three “schools” of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, spending three years in an Essene-adjacent desert hermitage before returning to the world as a Pharisee. Passing most of his twenties with priestly duties, he became part of a diplomatic mission sent to Rome to entreat Nero, emperor and sovereign of Roman Judaea, for the release of a group of priests detained for nondescript offenses. There he remained until the outbreak of the Jewish Revolt in 66, whereupon he returned to Judaea. Despite belonging to a moderate faction that doubted the wisdom of the rebellion, Josephus was appointed commander of the northernmost rebel district of Galilee, which made him—after the routing of Cestius Gallus, the proconsul of Syria who made an early, ill-fated attempt on Jerusalem—the first rebel commander to face off against the father-son duo of Vespasian and Titus when they arrived in the region to begin their campaign of reconquest.

Unsurprisingly, the self-portrayal of Josephus is a flattering one. As a character, he is a rousing speaker, an inspiring and charismatic leader, a prudent advisor, a cunning tactician, a courageous fighter, and a faithful servant of the Divine will; even when this service might easily be mistaken for treason or a cowardly attempt to save his own skin. Taking pains to fortify the strongholds of Galilee before Vespasian’s arrival, he tries to instill Roman discipline in his troops, and foreshadows his own understanding of the war’s outcome by impressing upon them the importance of meriting God’s favor by abstaining from theft, extortion, and violence against the innocent:

Above all [Josephus] trained them for war by stressing Roman discipline at every turn: they would be facing men who had conquered almost the entire world by physical prowess and unshakable determination. He would feel certain of their soldierly qualities even before they went into action, if they refrained from their besetting sins of theft, banditry, and looting, from defrauding their countrymen, and from regarding as personal gain the misfortunes of their closest friends. For if those who went to war had a clear conscience, victory was certain; but men whose private life was smirched had not only human enemies but God to contend with.

Of course, it would be the depravities, sacrileges, and petty fissiparousness among the Zealot factions of Jerusalem that, in Josephus’s view, doomed the rebellion and the city to utter destruction. The Jewish rebels were never able to present a united front against the Romans, and the personal ambitions of princelings, warlords, and bandits took a fatal toll on the lives and treasure of the Jewish people, both of which were needlessly appropriated and callously disposed of by tinpot tyrants whose reign became so oppressive, according to Josephus, that many ordinary people came to pray for their “liberation” by Caesar.

This factionalism plagued Galilee even before the arrival of Vespasian and Titus. Josephus recounts an assassination attempt made against him by partisans of a man named John, who sought to turn the people of Tiberias against him and seize power for himself. No Hollywood screenwriter would take a pen to the story of his harrowing escape:

But when Josephus had collected the citizens in the stadium and was trying to tell them about the report he had received, John quietly sent armed men with orders to assassinate him. These men drew their swords, but the people saw what was coming and gave a shout. Hearing the noise Josephus swung round, and seeing the bare steel within inches of his throat took a flying leap on to the beach – while addressing the people he had been standing on a mount nine feet high – and jumping into a boat moored near by with two members of his bodyguard made a dash for the middle of the lake.

Nor to the clever ruse Josephus concocted to quell a subsequent rebellion in Tiberias: he approached the city by ship over the Sea of Galilee on a foggy morning at the head of a fleet manned only by skeleton crews, convincing the insurgents, who mistakenly believed that every ship was filled with soldiers ready to storm the beach, to surrender without a fight.

When the legions finally arrived, however, Josephus became convinced that the Almighty Himself was behind the inexorability of Roman arms. After a grueling siege, Vespasian captured the formidable Galilean stronghold of Jotapata, and Josephus hid in a cave with some of his compatriots. While his fellows contemplated taking their own lives, Josephus experienced what skeptics might describe as a very convenient epiphany. He reports having been plagued by disturbing dreams about the fall of Judaea and the exaltation of Rome; and now, facing a choice between certain death by his own hand and the sacrifice of his reputation among the Jews by going over to the Romans—who promised to spare his life out of respect for his prowess—the meaning of these dreams became clear to him: he was to be a messenger to the Jews, informing them that the God of Israel was using the Romans as His instrument to humble them for their transgressions:

At this very moment he was inspired to understand them, and seizing on the terrifying images of his recent dreams he sent up a secret prayer to God: ‘Inasmuch as it pleaseth Thee to visit Thy wrath on the Jewish people whom Thou didst create, and all prosperity hath passed to the Romans, and because Thou didst choose my spirit to make known the things to come, I yield myself willingly to the Romans that I may live, but I solemnly declare that I go, not as a traitor, but as Thy servant.’

As he would later tell the defenders of Jerusalem: “It is God then, God Himself who is bringing with the Romans fire to purge the Temple and is blotting out the City, brimful of corruption, as if it had never been.”

Brought before Vespasian, Josephus informed the general that God had chosen him to become ruler of the world: a prophecy that was speedily fulfilled when, the following year, Nero died and, after a year of chaos, Vespasian made a triumphal entry into Rome and became emperor. Leaving his son Titus behind to undergo the formidable task of conquering Jerusalem, Vespasian assigned Josephus as an interpreter and intermediary between the Roman forces and the rebels. From this point on, Josephus becomes a kind of weeping prophet in the vein of Jeremiah, tearfully imploring the Zealots of Jerusalem to spare the city and the Temple from God’s wrath by turning away from their folly. The Zealots, through their arrogance and lack of understanding, respond to his entreaties with showers of insults, stones, and arrows. According to Josephus, they were inspired by a prophecy that one of their own would become king of the world:

But their chief inducement to go to war was an equivocal oracle also found in their sacred writings, announcing that at that time a man from their country would become monarch of the whole world. This they took to mean the triumph of their own race, and many of their scholars were wildly out in their interpretation. In fact the oracle pointed to the accession of Vespasian; for it was in Judea he was proclaimed emperor.

Josephus positively vilifies the rebel leaders Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala, each of whom claimed part of Jerusalem as his own fiefdom, and both of whom behaved not like patriots or even like pious men, but rather like common thugs and murderers. Even with the Romans camped outside the walls, their partisans are battling one another in the streets, and even in the Temple itself; at least when they aren’t robbing the common people, killing anyone suspected of disloyalty, and plundering the Sanctuary for their own enrichment. The murder of the high priest Ananus**, who leads an effort to wrest control of the city from the “terrorists”*** but is killed by Simon’s Idumean allies, is identified by Josephus as a harbinger of doom.

In light of these atrocities, the Romans become a beacon of hope for the masses of Jerusalem. There are several mass defections as the legions of Titus gradually pound their way through the city’s multilayered defenses; each of which the Zealots attempt to stifle with massacres of their own people. What was the Roman yoke, wonders Josephus, compared to the inhumanity and blasphemy of the Zealots?

Unhappy City! What have you suffered from the Romans to compare with this? They entered your gates to purge with fire the filthiness within you: you were no longer the place of God; you could not continue, now that you were the burial-place of your own sons and had turned the Sanctuary into a common grave for those who had slain each other. Even now you might be restored to life, if only you would make atonement to God who destroyed you!

While the Romans, though gentiles, had been careful to respect the sanctity of the Temple—except in the case of the procurator Florus, whose desecrations played a significant role in igniting the rebellion—the rebels, in their lust for power, had ransacked the House of God without a moment’s hesitation:

The Romans, who had no share in them, respected their enemies’ holy places and till now had kept their hands off them, while those who had been brought up in them, and if they survived would alone possess them, were doing their best to destroy them.

In the eyes of Josephus, Jerusalem had produced “a generation far more godless” even than that of Sodom on the eve of its destruction^, and it thus merited a similar fate. The siege ends with a dramatic scene in which Titus tries desperately, but without success, to save the Sanctuary from both the Zealots and his own wrathful men:

The soldiers were like men possessed and there was no holding them, nor was there any arguing with the fire. . . . realizing that there was still time to save the glorious edifice, Titus dashed out and by personal efforts strove to persuade his men to put out the fire, instructing Liberalius, a centurion of his bodyguard of spearmen, to lay his staff across the shoulders of any who disobeyed. But their respect for Caesar and their fear of the centurion’s staff were powerless against their fury, their detestation of the Jews, and an uncontrollable lust for battle. Most of them were also spurred on by the expectation of loot, being convinced that the interior was bursting with money and seeing that everything outside was of gold. . . . Then from within a flame suddenly shot up, Caesar and his staff withdrew, and those outside were free to start what fires they liked. Thus the Sanctuary was set on fire in defiance of Caesar’s wishes.

It seems to me that in his interpretation of the war, Josephus connects the “religious” sin of idolatry with the “political” sins of tyranny and factionalism—two closely-related concepts. He opines near the end of his history that “it was never intended that our nation should bear arms,” reminding his Jewish hearers that God alone had destroyed Pharaoh’s army and sent His Angel to smite Sennacherib without the aid of human hands, and that every attempt by the Jews to have a “nation among nations,”—to oppose the coercive powers of this world on their own terms, through human means, entrusting their fortunes to their own strength rather than to God—had ended with ignominy.

He likewise traces the loss of Jewish liberty to the restoration of monarchy by Aristobulus I (c. 104 BC), which ended the Maccabean tradition of ascribing kingship to God alone, marking the beginning of a sordid history in which the public weal was undermined by the personal dramas of a succession of brutal and treacherous men who either wore a crown or sought to gain one through force and fraud. The idolatry of worldly power created an internal disorder that the Romans, beginning with Pompey, were fated to correct according to the laws of nature. The Jews trusted in might over right, and, in accordance with their own philosophy, God had sided with the big battalions:

What corner of the earth had escaped the Romans, unless heat or cold made it of no value to them? From every side fortune had passed to them, and God, who handed dominion over from nation to nation round the world, abode now in Italy. It was an immutable and unchallenged law among beasts and men alike, that all must submit to the stronger, and that power belonged to those supreme in arms.

Josephus artfully juxtaposes the chaos engulfing Rome after Nero’s death with the tyrannization of Jerusalem under the Zealots. And as his story began with the usurpations of the Hasmonaeans, it ends with the dual triumphs of Vespasian and Titus, restorers of res publica and saviors of the world.






*The Hebrew ha-eben, “the stone,” sounded similar to habben, “the son/the child/the boy,” so Josephus tells us that during the siege, whenever the Roman catapults launched a stone projectile at the walls, the Jewish lookouts would shout “Baby on the way!” and everyone would hit the deck.

**Incidentally, this is the same Ananus who, according to Josephus’s later work Jewish Antiquities, ordered the stoning of James, the brother of Jesus.

***G.A. Williamson’s translation uses this word multiple times. I’d be curious to know what Greek word it translates.

^It is interesting to note the parallels between the condemnation of “this generation” by Josephus and that by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, as well as their common usage of the image of Sodom. Both Josephus and the authors of the Synoptics were writing around the same time.

[Jakub Horbów · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siedmioksiąg Flawiusza można podzielić na dwie części, pierwsza wprowadza czytelnika do świata znanego większości Europejczyków z Kościoła i religii i uzmysławia, jak wielkim niedomówieniem jest dzisiejsza kultura chrześcijańska próbującą przedstawiać czasy Jezusa w oderwaniu od złożoności, jaką charakteryzował się ten skrawek świata. Druga równie ciekawa, choć miejscami nużąca, bo Flawiusz potrafi być w swoim dziele gawędziarzem-nudziarzem, nie stroniącym od przydługich dygresji, to faktyczną kronika powstania żydowskiego przeciw Rzymowi i jego upadku. Księga dotyczącą zdobywania Jerozolimy była zdecydowanie najlepszą częścią całego dzieła, a przedstawienie poszczególnych powstanczych frakcji przejmujących inicjatywę i władze nad obleganym miastem i ich stopniowa degeneracja wydaje się studium uniwersalnym.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the history of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans around the year 70 ad. The author was a general for the Jews who was captured by the Romans and talked his way into an advisory role so he could write the history of the conflict. It is a fascinating story of how the Romans administered their empire and how they went about maintaining order in the far reaches of their empire. Not to give too much away, but rebelling against the Romans turned out to be a very bad idea. The story reads amazingly well, although the beginning historical background is thick with hard to remember names. The capture of Jerusalem and the assault on Masada are especially interesting. The book is also notable for providing contemporary evidence of the life of Christ from a non-christian contemporary source. I actually listened to this on audio, but it was one of the best audio books I have ever read. Highly recommended.

[Bonnie_blu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful translation / interpretation of Josephus's book, "The Jewish War." Williamson's translation is thorough, erudite, very easy to read, informative, and exciting. Josephus writes about the war in great detail for both the Jews and the Romans. His description of Jewish society and the internal conflicts among the various sects are fascinating. Josephus's detailing of Roman Army formations, kit, engineering, tactics, and motivations of the leaders provides us with exceptional information about the Roman Army at war. Of course, great skepticism must be used when reading the book. As with most ancient historians, an exciting tale was the most important aspect of writing "history." Also, Josephus was highly motivated to please the emperors since his life depended on each, and to justify his traitorous behavior of switching sides. Therefore, it is important to be at least somewhat familiar with Roman history and the Jewish War in order to be able to separate the propaganda from the actual events (as much as possible).

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the horse's mouth. Josephus, a priest in the temple in Jerusalem, a military leader of Jewish resistance against Vespasian, a romanised citizen. The history is written in the style of the time. The Penquin edition, abridged from the original,is still enormously readable. Valuable insight to early christianity and the might of Rome.

[Chris Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a story. Was there ever such a time. A nation destroyed by a tyrannical empire, tearing itself to pieces by self-destructive factionalism and fanaticism. Told so well, objectively but not too much so, by a man who was present, on the side of the Romans, to participate in his own nation's destruction.

It deserves 9 stars.

[Edward]

“Josephus's History of the Wars of the Jews, has in it more tragical passages than perhaps any history whatsoever.

(1.) It was a desolation unparalleled, such as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be. Many a city and kingdom has been made desolate, but never any with a desolation like this. Let not daring sinners think that God has done his worst, he can heat the furnace seven times and yet seven times hotter, and will, when he sees greater and still greater abominations. The Romans, when they destroyed Jerusalem, were degenerated from the honour and virtue of their ancestors, which had made even their victories easy to the vanquished. And the wilfulness and obstinacy of the Jews themselves contributed much to the increase of the tribulation. No wonder that the ruin of Jerusalem was an unparalleled ruin, when the sin of Jerusalem was an unparalleled sin—even their crucifying Christ. The nearer any people are to God in profession and privileges, the greater and heavier will his judgments be upon them, if they abuse those privileges, and be false to that profession, Amos 3 2.”
~Matthew Henry, “Commentary on the Whole Bible: Matthew 24”

[Adi · Rating 5 out of 5]

אני אשקר אם אני אגיש שקראתי את הכל,קראתי פרקים שעניינו אותי חחחח אבל היה מאוד מעניין

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flavius Josephus' "Jewish Wars" is a great book with extraordinary rewards for at least four categories of reader. Churchgoers will be fascinated by the portrait that it provides of Judea at the time Christ was alive. Those interested in political history will discover a complex and detailed portrait of the workings of the Roman Empire. Those interested in military history will find an excellent description of the techniques and horrors of war in the first century of the Common Era. Finally, the "Jewish Wars" contains thought provoking discussion on the need for Jews to have their own state.
Those who have attended church regularly for a number of years will certainly remember homilies in which the priest or minister has made an assertion about the historical era that Jesus lived in when attempting to explain the meaning of a reading. In fact there exist only two significant sources about the historical social, and cultural context of Jesus: the New Testament books and Josephus' writings. For anyone intending to continue attending Church, the "Jewish Wars" will have great rewards. Josephus provides an analysis of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. He describes the religious practices of the Jews in the first century and he gives a gripping account of the wars in the Judea during the period.
For those interested in the history, the "Jewish Wars" provides a wealth of detail on multiple aspects of the Roman Empire. Josephus gives an account of the training and techniques of the roman army as well as its methods when engaged in battle. He describes the style of government and diplomacy used by the Romans to control the territories on the periphery of their empire. He explains how how palace politics affected wars in the distance provinces and how wars in the provinces impacted politics at the centre. Tacitus and Suetonius brilliant describe the political struggles in Roman but Josephus gives us the single best picture of politics in the Roman Provinces.
As a general who fought against the Romans for several years, Josephus provides great detail on the techniques of battles and sieges conducted by the Roman legions. His book is a rich source on siege engines, armour, and battlefield tactics. The "Jewish Wars" is a treasure trove for the lover of military history.
For those who dislike war, Josephus offers a passionate and cogent description of the horrors of war. At the end of every account of a battle, Josephus laments the loss of life. His descriptions of the brutality of sieges are remarkable. He describes the miseries of hunger that the civilians trapped in cities under siege and notes that at times people will resort to cannibalism. He tells how innocent people will often be slaughtered or sold into slavery after the siege ends. All in all, Josephus makes a powerful case for peace and against war.
Finally, at front and centre of the "Jewish Wars" is Josephus' argument that it is better for a people to enjoy peace and prosperity under a foreign power than to fight a war of independence that will entail an enormous loss of life and property. Josephus began as a resistance fighter and then went over to the Romans hoping that if enough Jews sided with the Romans, the deaths and destruction that ultimately occurred would be averted. Thus Josephus can be viewed either as a turncoat or as a rational man trying to save his people from the disaster that would result from their fighting a war against a such a vastly stronger enemy. However, whether one agrees with Josephus or not, it is quite clear that he makes a brilliant case for the course that he chose.
"The Jewish Wars" is an excellent book for many reasons and I recommend it highly to anyone who is interested in either the Roman Empire, the beginnings of Christianity or the history of the Jewish people.

[Einzige · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech to the Jews, and spake such words as you might expect upon such a posture. At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus, that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the most tumultuous, fell to fighting, and caught up stones, and threw them at the soldiers."

Firstly I must thank Josephus for providing us with the first recorded mooning in human history.

As to the book more broadly its great strength is its greatest weakness - and that is that it is a very comprehensive work of history of a very interesting time period.

This means that you get a very full picture (though Josephus clearly had an agenda) of the truly remarkable rise and fall of Herod (of infant slaying infamy), a firsthand account of what it is like to be against war with Rome and the real brutalities of civil war. It also means you get numerous names/genealogies and descriptions of geography and cities.

So while it can be overwhelming are repetitious at times its still well worth the effort.

[Ethan Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an amateur ancient historian, I would consider this work a 'must read' to understand one of the most important events in antiquity.

As is common to many, my introduction into history was through the Bible. While the Bible itself is not a history book, though containing much history, it is a book of covenants, the agreements and arrangements between God and man. This history is the factual observance of the fulfillment and end of one of the most well-known covenants, the Mosaic covenant. The prophecies of Christ being fulfilled with perfect accuracy is laid out in a blood chilling account within these pages. Horrors of horrors. Though redemption was available and taken by those who heeded the Messiah's admonitions.

Written by a Jew of Jews, who fought as fierce as any other rebel within the Jewish revolt. Josephus saw the futility of continuing resistance against the onslaught of the Roman armies. He turned over to the Romans under the protection of Titus himself to attempt to convince his people to surrender and submit. Yet, he had to watch the horrors of his people continuing to defy his warnings and pay the most dear price for all of their rebellion.

[Karol E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enter the Jewish War in splendid detail from the rising of Herod to the sack of Jerusalem by Titus...and possibly the most amusing historian in antiquity. Flavius Josephus is a delight: well versed, detailed and "slightly" pompous to the point of hilarious disbelief.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The siege and famine are appallingly brutal.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an interesting mix of amazing classic and 2nd rate history. Josephus's history tells several epic archetypal tales, some of which may be the best that we have from antiquity. The first is the story of Herod's family, which is full of so much intrigue, incest, backstabbing, paranoia, and eunuchs that it makes Game of Thrones look tame. The second is the siege narratives. There are plenty of exciting siege narratives from antiquity (my favorite that I've read is Thucydides' narrative of the siege of Plataea), but Josephus's narratives of the sieges of Jotapata (where he was the Jewish commander) and Jerusalem are epic and horribly tragic and gory (there are several other memorable sieges as well, such as at Masada). Lastly, the overall history is a narrative of the cataclysmic destruction of a civilization/nation/way of life. The Jewish War is unique in that it preserves the memories and perspective of one of the many nations ground into dust by Rome. Unfortunately, the actual 'history' is kind of second rate. Josephus starts the book off with Thucydidean intentions (alluding to Thucydides within the first page), an aspiration that he shares with the second-raters Xenophon and Polybius to whom he is much more similar. He claims several times that he is only trying to relate the dispassionate truth, but the guy was a participant in the war and also had the necessity of brown-nosing to his imperial sponsors (the same people who destroyed his country), so he is incredibly biased both for his own faction (the Jewish aristocracy) and for Vespasian/Titus, and he lays the entirety of the blame on the more radical Jewish factions. He doesn't even try to sound impartial and he launches into formulaic invective virtually every time he mentions the leaders of the radical Jewish factions, which I found tiresome. On top of that, he gets virtually all of his measurements wrong (both distances and durations), he often gets basic facts wrong, and it appears as though he's plagiarized large sections of his work from other sources (to be fair, that was probably very common with ancient authors. The annoying part is that he didn't try very hard to integrate the plagiarized passages into his work, so the passage will say something like "I described the Alans in another section" because that's what the original work says, but that section wasn't copied into Josephus's work, and Josephus didn't even take the time to delete that spurious reference). So yeah, second-rate history, first-rate stories.

The history is divided into 7 books. The first book is long, starting with the persecutions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, describing the rise and reign of the Maccabees, and then narrating the long reign of Herod up to his death. The second describes the fallout from Herod's death and then skims over the situation in Judaea up to the onset of the rebellion, including a description of the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Book 3 describes the early stage of the war and the siege of Jotapata. Book 4 describes some more sieges and the turmoil in Jerusalem leading to the Zealots and Simon taking control. Book 5 describes Titus's siege of Jerusalem up until its final stages. Book 6 describes the final stages of the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the city. Book 7 describes triumph of Vespasian and Titus (the most detailed description of a Roman triumph that exists) and the subsequent cleanup operations in Judaea and beyond.

First I want to dwell on why the Jews rebelled. I'm no expert in this field and maybe the experts know better, but Josephus didn't explain it well in my opinion. Yes, they had been taxed and mistreated horribly by both Herodians and Roman officials for decades/centuries, but many other regions of the empire had as well without similarly intense rebellions. There were a few additional factors in play for the Jews though - their religion, Jerusalem, and possibly demographic factors. The Jewish religion explicitly forbids the worship of anything corporeal, including/especially other men, and Roman imperial policy was that the emperor had to be worshipped as a god. This almost caused a rebellion during the reign of Caligula when Caligula insisted that a statue of him be erected in the temple: "The crowd shouted back that they were prepared to suffer anything in defence of their law. Petronius called for quiet, and asked them, ‘Will you then go to war with Caesar?’ The Jews replied that they offered twice-daily sacrifices for Caesar and the Roman people, but if Caesar insisted on the erection of these statues he must first sacrifice the entire Jewish nation: and they were ready to present themselves for the slaughter, together with their children and their wives. At this Petronius was filled with admiration and pity for the extraordinary devotion of these people to their religious principles, and their willingness, if it came to that, to die for them." Caligula ended up being killed before he could do anything about this.
In addition, I think that the Jewish religion already had those features of the Abrahamic religions that can make their believers so radical and devout (but was still relatively unusual in the ancient world). Josephus's descriptions of the many radical Jewish factions - especially the Zealots (further split between John and Eleazar), the Sicarii, and Simon's faction, makes them sound like the ancient Jewish versions of ISIS. They were literally terrorists who assassinated important figures, terrorized the local population, were radically devoted to their agendas, and were utterly incapable of any sort of compromise. Time and again Josephus describes their (ultimately futile) fanaticism on the battle field. Josephus says that when the Sicarii were subjected to torture, "no one could fail to be amazed at the physical endurance and mental state — call it fanaticism or strength of will — which they displayed. Under every form of torture and bodily maiming devised with the sole aim of forcing them to acknowledge Caesar as their master, not one of them gave in or came near to saying the words, but all kept their resolution proof against this ultimate trial, and took the tortures and the burning with bodies that seemed immune to pain and spirits almost joyful. Most astonishing of all to the spectators was the response of the young children, none of whom, even at their age, could be forced to call Caesar their master." Josephus claims that the defenders of Masada killed themselves and their wives/children (960 in total) rather than fall into Roman hands.
Another nail in the coffin was, ironically, the strength of Jerusalem. It was a misleadingly overpowered city in that any normal kingdom would never have been able to take it, leading the Jews, who probably couldn't imagine just how vast and powerful the Roman empire was, to overestimate their chances again and again. Josephus may have been exaggerating but Jerusalem sounds like it was a truly awe-inspiring city, especially after all of Herod's embellishments. "Remarkable among the unique privileges permitted to the Jews were the pilgrimage festivals held three times a year in Jerusalem, at which huge numbers gathered in a fashion not permitted elsewhere in the Roman world." The Jewish religion at that time was in some ways a cult centered around Jerusalem , because the Temple was their center of worship. Thanks to a tax on all adult Jewish males throughout the Roman empire, the Temple was also amazingly wealthy, and the Jews had been lavishing attention and resources on it for centuries. It's heartbreaking to read Josephus's description of how the Temple had been built: "The temple was situated on a commanding hill. At first the level top of this hill was barely extensive enough to accommodate the sanctuary and the altar, with all the surrounding ground either precipitous or steep... after walling the hill from base to top on the three other sides, and finally completing a massive project which dwarfed the original ambition — costing them long ages of labor and all the funds in the sacred treasury, even when supplemented by the tribute which came in to honor God from all over the world — they built both the upper courts round the sanctuary and the lower temple enclosure... Such huge foundation work had the superstructure it deserved. All the colonnades had two rows of supporting columns 38 feet high — each column a single length of the whitest marble — and ceilings panelled in cedar. In their natural glory these columns, perfectly shaped and fitted, presented a striking spectacle innocent of any applied embellishment either painted or carved... This gate was 75 feet high with doors 60 feet wide, even more richly decorated with a lavishly thick overlay of silver and gold... The gate at the far end... was completely covered with gold, and so was the entire wall surrounding it: above it there were the famous golden grapevines, with clusters large as a man hanging from them... In front of these doors hung a curtain of equal length, a Babylonian tapestry worked in blue, linen-white, scarlet, and purple. This was a wonderful piece of artistry, but the combination of colors also had symbolic meaning as an image of the universe. Scarlet suggested fire, linen the earth, blue the air, and purple the sea — two of the colors in an obvious relation, and linen and purple reflecting their origin, linen produced by the earth and purple by the sea. Worked into the tapestry was a panorama of the heavenly bodies, omitting, though, the signs of the zodiac... The exterior aspect of the sanctuary building made an absolutely stunning impact, both spiritual and visual. Covered all over in massive plates of gold, as soon as the sun rose it radiated such a fiery blaze of light that anyone necessarily facing in that direction had to avert his eyes, as if from a direct glance at the sun. To foreigners on their way to the temple it looked from the distance like a snow-clad mountain, as all not covered by the gold was pure white in color." The Temple was literally the St. Peter's Basilica or the Mecca of the ancient Jewish world. In fact it was the forerunner of those places. The centrality of the Temple in Jewish worship also made it a flash point - throughout the history, the three feasts of Passover, Booths, and the Pentecost, when virtually the entire population of Judaea would congregate in Jerusalem, were flashpoints for unrest and violence as vast crowds packed the Temple.

I think that another cause of the strength of the rebellion could have been demographics. I have no data for this but it really sounds as if peace under the Romans had led to a population boom and a bumper crop of volatile young men. I was just amazed by the sheer number of bandit leaders roaming the countryside that Josephus talks about. Like it felt like they and there men were constantly being killed, and yet they were replaced by new bandits as fast as they could be killed. And the sheer number of factions was overwhelming - there was the Jerusalem aristocracy, itself somewhat divided between Hasmoneans and Herodians; the Sicarii ('the Sickles'), who seem to have been fanatical terrorists who kind of sparked the rebellion but ended up holing up in Masada; the Zealots, who seized power in Jerusalem after killing off the aristocracy only to split into their own two factions; Simon, a 'bandit' leader who eventually also occupies parts of Jerusalem; and the Idumeneans, a small nation to the south of Judaea that had been converted to Judaism by the Maccabees. On top of this there were countless minor 'bandits' that Josephus briefly describes. So I imagine that maybe there was an excess of young men in Judaea, and maybe that led to them becoming desperate and radicalized. But who knows.

[James Carrigy · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

"Even worse than the atrocities continually committed were the threats of terrors to come." - P. 169

Nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven remains elusive.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than Antiquities of the Jews. The story of Jerusalem's fall was much more detailed and epic than I had expected. Sometimes Josephus' details are eyebrow raising - the speech at Masada? Give me a break.... Makes one wonder about all the other speeches he relates.

But, from what I understand, his details that are verifiable by archaeology have generally panned out more or less accurate.

Josephus discusses the Sicarii somewhat, and I've read that some authors think that this might be etymologically the same as Iscariot - ie, perhaps Judas Iscariot was modelled after the despised and traitorous Sicarii. I think the hypothesis reasonable, because it sounds like the Sicarii were well known for greed and treachery and being the source of Jerusalem's destruction. I'll quote one of Josephus's descriptions at length:

It was one Eleazar, a potent man, and the commander of these Sicarii, that had seized upon it [Masada]. He was a descendant from that Judas who had persuaded abundance of the Jews, as we have formerly related, not to submit to the taxation when Cyrenius was sent into Judea to make one; for then it was that the Sicarii got together against those that were willing to submit to the Romans, and treated them in all respects as if they had been their enemies, both by plundering them of what they had, by driving away their cattle, and by setting fire to their houses; for they said that they differed not at all from foreigners, by betraying, in so cowardly a manner, that freedom which Jews thought worthy to be contended for to the utmost, and by owning that they preferred slavery under the Romans before such a contention. Now this was in reality no better than a pretense and a cloak for the barbarity which was made use of by them, and to color over their own avarice, which they afterwards made evident by their own actions; for those that were partners with them in their rebellion joined also with them in the war against the Romans, and went further lengths with them in their impudent undertakings against them; and when they were again convicted of dissembling in such their pretenses, they still more abused those that justly reproached them for their wickedness. And indeed that was a time most fertile in all manner of wicked practices, insomuch that no kind of evil deeds were then left undone; nor could any one so much as devise any bad thing that was new, so deeply were they all infected, and strove with one another in their single capacity, and in their communities, who should run the greatest lengths in impiety towards God, and in unjust actions towards their neighbors; the men of power oppressing the multitude, and the multitude earnestly laboring to destroy the men of power. The one part were desirous of tyrannizing over others, and the rest of offering violence to others, and of plundering such as were richer than themselves. They were the Sicarii who first began these transgressions, and first became barbarous towards those allied to them, and left no words of reproach unsaid, and no works of perdition untried, in order to destroy those whom their contrivances affected.

Note also that Josephus identifies a certain Judas Sicarii as a prominent ancestor and source of the Sicarii's actions. Again, the themes here are greed, and treachery.

Of note also is the tale of the Stone:

Now the stones that were cast were of the weight of a talent, and were carried two furlongs and further. The blow they gave was no way to be sustained, not only by those that stood first in the way, but by those that were beyond them for a great space. As for the Jews, they at first watched the coming of the stone, for it was of a white color, and could therefore not only be perceived by the great noise it made, but could be seen also before it came by its brightness; accordingly the watchmen that sat upon the towers gave them notice when the engine was let go, and the stone came from it, and cried out aloud, in their own country language, The Stone Cometh so those that were in its way stood off, and threw themselves down upon the ground; by which means, and by their thus guarding themselves, the stone fell down and did them no harm. But the Romans contrived how to prevent that by blacking the stone, who then could aim at them with success, when the stone was not discerned beforehand, as it had been till then; and so they destroyed many of them at one blow.

What language did they speak in Jerusalem at this time? Many say Aramaic, such that 'stone' would be 'kepha'. But some (Buth et al) argue that Hebrew was still used, and this phrase, "stone is coming!!" would then have been, "Eben ba!!" Not far off from "Ben ba!", ie, "[the] son is coming!!" How deeply into defenders' psyches did this terrifying stone lodge, and how well known did this phenomenon become? Had all who heard about the siege also heard about the constant fear and cries of the Stone coming to crush people with no warning?

The renowned and often repeated Jewish prophetic motif of the Stone which the builders rejected is quoted by Mark, Matthew and Luke, but Mark, the first to write and who likely didn't use Josephus, adds nothing to it, while Matthew and his copier Luke add a whole new idea - "Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust." The son is coming....

Where did Matthew get the idea of the Stone falling on and crushing people? Because it's definitely a post-Mark addition. Perhaps from the infamous Stone of the destruction of Jerusalem (and this idea doesn't depend on the language used in Jerusalem, just the concept).

Interestingly, the only story that I remember Josephus repeating from Antiquities (IIRC) was about a certain man called Jesus. This story must have really stuck in the psyche of those who were a part of the fall of Jerusalem, and it's worth pasting here for those who have never heard that there was a man named Jesus from a 'blue collar' background, who went around Jerusalem during a major feast time prophesying woe several years before the fall of Jerusalem and the temple, who was handed to the Romans by the Jewish leaders, was whipped but never cried out against his tormentors nor answered their interrogations, and died in Jerusalem while carrying out his prophetic ministry:

[T]here was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple,7 began on a sudden to cry aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!" This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, "Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!" And just as he added at the last, "Woe, woe to myself also!" there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost.

How interesting that Josephus writes twice, extensively, about this Jesus, but never wrote about another Jesus who allegedly rocked the holy land and prophesied the destruction of the temple (I don't buy that any part of the (completely unjosephan) Testimonium Flavianum is authentic. But if it is, why then is it so completely overshadowed by this much longer, repeated, conspicuous, but far less interesting tale?).

So, while I found Antiquities to be a bit of a chore, the Jewish War kept me interested throughout and I learned a lot. I could also picture many of the events happening having visited most of the places involved.

[Curlemagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in the mood to read about Judea under Roman rule, and why not go to a primary source?

The Roman emperors and diplomats have a frustrating (for a reader) habit of repeating names, I wish Josephus had numbered them Antiochus I and II and so on; turns out history doesn't adhere to coherent narrative rules

It was fascinating to read this compared to the rabbinic /Talmudic tradition about the khurban, the destruction of the Second Temple. I had never heard of the siege of Jotapata; Josephus is such a fascinating petty suck-up of a narrator. An astonishing, provocative piece of writing, worth analyzing as a mix of propaganda, self-promotion, editorial rebuttal and genuine elegy for the loss of his community.

It is, however, extremely long and sometimes tedious. Would not recommend to people without a deep vested interest in the epoch.

[Danielle Bullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

1000% worth reading, just to understand the history of the world better, particularly (obviously) around what happened in the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and how we got there, and how the Jews eventually worked themselves into such a terrible, horrifying corner. Eye opening, haunting and harrowing. I do not recommend reading unless you have someone to discuss it with, however, especially if you are under the age of 16-18. A lot of the things described later on are truly terrible, considering that they actually happened, and remembering that those were real people just makes is haunting.