The Jewish War
Ioudaikos Polemos
The catastrophic Jewish revolt against Rome was caused above all by internal Jewish factionalism and a fanatical minority, not by Roman injustice or by the failure of Judaism itself, a case its author, a former rebel commander turned Roman client, had every personal reason to make.
- internal Jewish factionalism blamed for the revolt's disaster
- written by a participant turned Roman client historian
- the sole detailed narrative source for the Temple's destruction
- Israelite historiographic tradition addressed to a Greco-Roman audience
A firsthand history of the Jewish revolt against Rome (AD 66-73), including the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, written in Greek in Rome by a former Judean priest and rebel general who surrendered to and was later patronized by the Flavian emperors. Josephus writes as both participant and outsider, blaming the war's disaster chiefly on rival Jewish factions and messianic extremists rather than on Rome, a framing scholars generally read as shaped by his position as a Flavian client needing to justify both the war's outcome and his own conduct in it. Despite its evident bias, it remains the only detailed narrative source for the revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple, composed consciously within the tradition of Israelite historical writing even as it addresses a Greco-Roman audience.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…