I. Josephus’s Histories.  The Greek period began with Alexander’s conquest of Palestine in 332 and extended to the Maccabean uprising in 168 B.C.  For the external history of this period the writings of the historian Josephus are the chief sources.  This famous Jewish writer was born in 37 A.D., and apparently lived till about the close of the reign of Domitian in 96.  According to his own testimony he was the son of a priest named Mattathiah.  Until he was sixteen he studied under the Jewish rabbis.  He then spent three years with the Jewish sect known as the Essenes.  At the age of nineteen he joined the party of the Pharisees.  His point of view in general is that of this dominant popular party.  He was able to read Latin, but wrote his histories in Greek.  At the age of twenty-six he went to Rome where he spent three years.  Returning to Palestine at the beginning of the great rebellion against Rome, he was appointed revolutionary governor of the important province of Galilee.  The appointment was unfortunate, for he proved both incompetent and unreliable.  In 67 A.D. he and his followers were shut up by Vespasian in the Galilean city, Jotapata.  During the siege he vainly tried to desert to the enemy.  At the fall of the city he was captured, but his life was spared by Vespasian.  In time he ingratiated himself with Titus and also incurred the hostility of his countrymen by trying to persuade them to lay down their arms.  He spent the latter part of his life in Rome, devoting himself to study and writing.  As a result of his long residence at Rome under the patronage of the Roman emperors, he was powerfully influenced by the Greek and Roman philosophical schools.

Josephus was the great apologist of his race.  His chief aims in writing his histories were:  (1) to excuse his own acts in connection with the great rebellion; (2) to show why the overwhelming calamity had overtaken his race; and (3) to answer the attack of their Gentile foes by tracing the remarkable history of his people, and by presenting in attractive form their beliefs, institutions, and laws.  Of his two great historical works the one entitled The Jewish War was issued probably between 75 and 79 A.D.  It opens with the beginnings of the Maccabean struggle, and traces the history, with increasing detail, to the destruction of Jerusalem and the suppression of the Jewish revolt at Gyrene, two or three years before the book was written.  His second great work was issued in 93 A.D. under the title of The Antiquities of the Jews.  In twenty books it traces Israel’s history from the earliest beginnings to the opening years of the Jewish war (68 A.D.).  The first half of this extensive history is based on the author’s free paraphrase of the Greek version of the Old Testament.  For the latter half he draws largely from the apocryphal book of I Maccabees and from the writings of contemporary Greek and Jewish historians.  Chief among these are Polybius, Nicolaus of Damascus, and Strabo.  At