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During the leisure of his life in Rome Josephus composed the four works which, owing largely, no doubt, to their popularity with early Christian writers, have survived entire: the Jewish War (7 books), the Jewish Antiquities (20 books), the Life and the treatise Against Apion (2 books). There is no adequate ground for thinking that he published anything further.

(i) The Jewish War. This, the earliest of the works, was, in its present Greek form, finished in the latter half of Vespasian’s reign, between A.D. 75 and 79. It cannot be earlier than A.D. 75, because it mentions the completion of the temple of Pax (B. J. VII. 158), which was dedicated in that year; it had, moreover, been preceded by other histories of the war. The Greek, as the author tells us,^[16] is a translation, made for the use of the learned Roman world at large, of a first draft, written in his native Aramaic for the benefit of a smaller circle of readers in upper (or inland) Syria. The Aramaic has not survived. The Greek—for which assistance was obtained, “employing certain collaborateurs with a view to the Greek style” are his words, c. Ap. I. 50—shows no sign of its Semitic parentage and probably amounted to practically a new work. It is unlikely, e. g., that the first draft contained the summary sketch of Jewish history from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, which occupies Books I and II of the Greek. The work seems to have been issued in parts.^[17] Copies were presented to Vespasian and Titus and other Romans who had taken part in the war, and sold to Herod Agrippa II and other learned Jews (c. Ap. I. 51). Titus himself affixed his imprimatur. A long correspondence on the work passed between the author and his friend, Agrippa; two specimens of the king’s letters, in rather slipshod Greek, are quoted.^[18]

Books I and II give a rapid sketch (expanded in the Ant.) of Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes (168 B.C.) down to the defeat of Cestius Gallus in A.D. 66 and the preparations for the war. Book III narrates the coming of Vespasian and Titus, the siege of Jotapata and the fighting in Galilee; Book IV the close of the Galilæan campaign, the factions in Jerusalem, the advance of Vespasian upon the city and his return to Rome on being elected emperor by his army; Book V describes the city and Temple, the investment by Titus and the capture of the first and second walls; Book VI the horrors of the famine, the taking of the fortress of Antonia, followed by the burning of the Temple and the capture and destruction of the city; Book VII the return of Titus to Rome, the triumphal procession and the capture of the last strongholds of the Jewish fanatics.

(ii) The Jewish Antiquities. In this, his magnum opus, Josephus undertook to write the history of his nation from the creation to the outbreak of the Jewish War. He tells us of his misgivings in entering on so large a task, the toil which it involved, and how it was only through the encouragement of his patron Epaphroditus (to whom Ant., the Life and the Apion treatise are all dedicated) that it was finally completed in the thirteenth year of Domitian’s reign and the fifty-sixth of his own life, A.D. 93-94 (Ant. I. 6 ff.; XX. 267). The work towards the close shows some marks of weariness. The title (Ἰουδαïκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία) and the division into twenty books were doubtless derived from the great Roman history (Ῥωμαïκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία) of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

In Books I-X the narrative closely follows the Biblical account down to the Babylonian captivity; XI carries on the story to Alexander the Great; XII to the death of Judas Maccabæus (161 B.C.); XIII contains the history of the Hasmonæan house to the death of Queen Alexandra (67 B.C.); XIV the intervention of Pompey and the Romans and the accession of Herod the Great (37 B.C.), whose reign (37-4 B.C.) fills XV, XVI and the first half of XVII; the rest of XVII comprises the reign of Archelaus (4 B.C. to A.D. 6); XVIII, XIX and XX cover the remainder of the period of the Gospels and the Acts, including notices of Quirinius, Pilate, Tiberius, Herod the Tetrarch, and the two later Herods; the greater part of XIX is occupied with a full, but irrelevant, account of the assassination of the emperor Gaius and the accession of Claudius (A.D. 41); XX summarizes the events to the outbreak of the war (A.D. 66).

As regards the historian’s authorities for the first half of his work, the main source was the Greek Bible (“the Septuagint”), occasional use being made of the Hebrew. This was supplemented by (1) legends and commentary, drawn, in part at least, from Rabbinic tradition (Haggadah and Halachah); (2) Hellenistic reproductions of the Biblical history by Alexandrians such as Demetrius and Artapanus; (3) secular historians and non-Biblical documents such as Berosus, the annals of Tyre, etc. The number of authorities named under this last head is considerable, but it is probable that many of them were known to Josephus only through the great Universal History of Nicolas of Damascus, the friend of Herod the Great and Augustus, to which he is largely indebted throughout the whole of Ant. For the centuries following the Captivity his authorities are unfortunately scanty and of little value. From the Captivity to Antiochus Epiphanes his main sources are the LXX books of 1 Esdras and Esther, some legends of Alexander the Great, the Letter of Aristeas, 1 Maccabees and (occasionally) Polybius. From this point he relies largely on two lost Universal Histories of Augustan writers, Strabo and Nicolas of Damascus. The latter was undoubtedly his chief authority for the very full account of the reign of Herod the Great, though he does not accept all his statements without question, and appears to have had access to some less eulogistic history of that monarch. Mention is once made of the “Memoirs of King Herod” (XV, 174). With the accession of Archelaus the history, unfortunately for the student of the N.T., again becomes meagre, expanding into greater fullness when the reign of Agrippa I is reached. With regard to him Josephus would obtain information from his son, Agrippa II, and for the events leading up to the war he could draw on his own recollections. The account of the assassination of Gaius, which is of primary importance for the Roman historian, was thought by Mommsen to be derived from the work of Cluvius Rufus, a witness of the events which immediately preceded it. Besides these authorities Josephus had access to priestly records (he notes the succession of high priests throughout the narrative) and to important decrees concerning privileges granted on various occasions to Jews resident in Asia and elsewhere.

(iii) The Life was written as a sequel to the Antiquities, to which it is appended in the MSS. A promise of such an appendix is made at the end of Ant. (XX. 266); and the Life closes with a dedication of the whole history to Epaphroditus, the patron named in the exordium to the larger work. But the Life seems to have been an afterthought, added only after an interval of some six or seven years, since it is implied that, Agrippa II is already dead,^[19] and his death is said to have occurred in A.D. 100. The immediate occasion for its production was the appearance of a rival history of the Jewish War by Justus of Tiberias, in which the writer accused Josephus of being the real cause of the war with Rome. “The appearance of Justus’s work, with its damaging criticisms, was likely to endanger the secure position which Josephus had won for himself at Rome, and the earlier historian of the war felt bound to defend himself. The Life, then, by no means answers to its name. It is not a complete autobiography, but simply an apologetic statement as to the actions of Josephus as commander in Galilee, to which have been added a few details as to the earlier and later events of his life, by way of prologue and epilogue.”^[20] The defence, in which Josephus attempts to pose as friendly to the Romans, while he has to admit the part which he took in organizing the Jewish forces to oppose them, is extremely weak; and the work, which is characterized by inordinate self-praise, is the least satisfactory of the historian’s writings.

(iv) The treatise Against Apion (in two books) is, on the other hand, the most pleasing of our author’s works, showing a well-designed plan, great literary skill, and a more genuine patriotism, a warmer and more impassioned zeal for his country’s religion, than we find elsewhere. The title (not the author’s) is, like that of the Life, unsuitable, Apion not being mentioned until Book II is reached. Older titles were: “On the Antiquity of the Jews” (not sufficiently distinctive), and “Against the Greeks.” It is designed as a reply to criticisms on the Antiquities and a refutation of current attacks upon, and groundless prejudices against, the Jewish nation; it is, in short, an Apology for Judaism with a demonstration of the antiquity of the race. It gives an interesting insight into the anti-Semitism of the first century. Apion is merely one representative of Israel’s enemies; a grammarian and interpreter of Homer, he is best known as the leader of the embassy to Caligula in A.D. 38, which brought accusations against the Jewish residents in Alexandria, and was opposed by a counter-embassy of Alexandrian Jews, headed by Philo. Josephus challenges the extreme antiquity claimed for the Greeks; accounts for the silence of Greek writers with regard to Jewish history; cites evidence for the antiquity of his nation from Egyptian, Phœnician, Babylonian and Greek sources; refutes the malignant and absurd accusations of the anti-Semites; and concludes with an able and eloquent defence of the lawgiver and his code,^[21] contrasting his conception of God with the immoral ideas current among the Greeks. The numerous quotations from lost writings give the work a special value. Its date must be later than A.D. 93 (the date of Ant.), but whether written before or after the Life is uncertain.

Two further works, as he tells us at the end of Ant., were projected by Josephus, viz.: (1) A summary sketch of the war and the subsequent history of his nation down to A.D. 93-4; (2) “A work in four books concerning God and His being and concerning the Laws, why some actions are permitted to us by them and others are forbidden.” It is unlikely that either was ever completed. But the work on “Customs and Causes,” as he elsewhere calls it, appears, from the mention of the four books and from scattered allusions in the Antiquities to its intended contents, to have already taken shape in his mind, and was perhaps begun. The failure to carry out this scheme is regrettable.

From the repeated occurrence, usually with reference to the Seleucid dynasty or Parthian affairs, of the phrase “as we have shown elsewhere,” Josephus might appear to have written a monograph on Syrian history. But the variations on the phrase, “as has been shown elsewhere” (lit. “in others”) and (twice) “... by others,” make it probable that the use of the first person, where it occurs, has been carelessly taken over from one of his authorities.

The fourth book of Maccabees (in vol. iii. of Dr. Swete’s LXX) appears in the older editions of Josephus, but has no claim to have come from his pen.