Who was Josephus Flavius

Josephus Flavius

Sometimes we ask ourselves how come we know SO much about history and the period of the 2nd Holy Temple at the time of Jesus.

1st – we have the Bible. 2nd we have the 4 books that were written by Josephus Flavius.

Who was Josephus Flavius?

In 66 AD during the Jewish revolt against the Romans, the rulers at that time, the Jews defeated them and the Romans fled out of the country. One of the revolt commanders was a Jew, Joseph Ben Matityahu (Joseph, the son of Matityahu).

In 67 AD, the Romans sent two legions to re-conquer Israel and during one of the battles, in the Northern part of Israel, “Yodfat”, they captured Joseph the son of Matityahu. He was faced with two options. One option was to become a slave, a gladiator or to die. He chose the other option. He chose to live and approached the Roman commander and said to him: “I know that one day you’ll be crowned Caesar and you will need someone to write your biography. And I am the person who can do this best”.

Needless to say, that at the end of this interview, he got the job, and changed his name to Josephus Flavius. He wrote a few books about the war between the Romans and the Jews during that time. All books have been found to be extremely accurate, so much so that archaeologists greatly rely on them prior to start digging and use the detailed descriptions to determine where to dig. Also, from reading his detailed descriptions, we also know, for the most part, what to expect to find.

In his books, Josephus Flavius documents and writes about a person in the Galilee, named Jesus that healed people and performed miracles. And he is not one of the believers.

There is one issue where one may find some exaggeration in Josephus’s writings – the battles between the Romans and the Jews and that is because he had to give the Romans the Glory he ‘owed’ them.

This ‘betrayel’ of Joseph the son of Matityahu gives us so much information about this period that he can be forgiven for his so called ‘betrayal’.

I am sharing this information with you so that you better understand how come we know so much on the 1st century AD.