Josephus: The Life and Legacy of the Roman-Jewish Historian

When it comes to ancient conflicts, the Jewish-Roman Wars are among the best documented, and that is wholly due to the fact that a contemporary writer and occasional eyewitness wrote a history of the conflict almost as it was happening. In his position on both sides of the war at different times, Josephus was often an eyewitness to the events that he narrates, which is almost unheard of in most ancient history. Moreover, the unique circumstances that allowed him to empathize with both sides of the conflict on a deep emotional level also helped lessen the bias that is typically unavoidable for writers, especially those who wrote in antiquity. This, combined with his training in the Roman tradition of history writing that emphasizes both the accurate recording of historical information and taking an unbiased perspective, served to enhance his credibility. 

Of course, the credibility that modern historians appreciate is the very reason Josephus has a tarnished reputation within the Jewish community. In the summer of the year 70 A.D., amid the ongoing war between the Jews and Romans, Josephus was in his Roman attire as he walked the ground below the walls of Jerusalem, close enough to be heard and nearly close enough to be hit. The city above him was dying by inches, packed with the starving and the desperate, ringed by the legions of Rome and cut off from the world. He was once a priest from one of the great families of the city, and he was calling up to the defenders in their own language, begging them to give up, spare the Second Temple, and save what was left. They knew exactly who he was, because he had been one of their own generals just three years earlier. Now he stood in the enemy's camp as the interpreter and mouthpiece of the Roman army that was about to burn their sanctuary to the ground. They cursed him from the walls as a traitor and threw down stones, and somewhere behind those walls, in the doomed city, were his mother, wife, and childhood home.