Antiquities of the Jews

Twenty books retelling the history of the Jewish people for a Greek and Roman readership, written in Rome around 93 CE by a man who had commanded rebel troops against the empire he now lived in. Josephus opens at creation and follows the narrative of the Hebrew scriptures through Abraham, Moses, the judges, the monarchy, and the exile, regularly supplementing the biblical account with later Jewish tradition, Hellenistic sources, and explanations aimed at outsiders unfamiliar with Jewish law. The closing books move past scripture to the Hasmonean rising, Herod the Great, the Roman procurators, and the pressures that broke into revolt in 66 CE. It remains a principal source for first-century Judaea and carries the long-disputed passage on Jesus known as the Testimonium Flavianum. William Whiston’s 1737 translation.