Quotes About Josephus

The Essenes of Qumran thought Melchizedek was an angel. The philosopher Philo believed he was the divine Logos. The Jewish historian Josephus said he was only a man, but so righteous that he was "by common consent . . . made a priest of God." David saw Melchizedek as a prototype of the promised Messiah who would establish a new order of king-priests (Psalm 110:1–4).

Representing Pharisaic views, for example, Josephus catered to the Greco-Roman intelligentsia, formulating a body-soul dualism quite at odds with Israel's Scriptures but very much at home in the Platonic tradition.

According to Josephus, Gessius Florus never omitted "any sort of violence, nor any unjust sort of punishment; . . . it was this Florus who necessitated us [the Jews] to take up arms against the Romans, while we thought it better to be destroyed at once, than by little and little" (Antiquities 20:254–57).

Under the latter, Herod, the first foreigner, was given the Kingdom of the Jews by the Romans. As Josephus relates, he was an Idumean on his father's side and an Arabian on his mother's. But Africanus, who was also no common writer, says that they who were more accurately informed about him report that he was a son of Antipater, and that the latter was the son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the so-called servants of the temple of Apollo.

The approach to Earth of Halley's Comet in the year 66 is the probable explanation of the account by Josephus of a sword that hung over Jerusalem for a whole year. In 1066 the Normans witnessed another return of Halley's Comet. Since it must, they thought, presage the fall of some kingdom, the comet encouraged, in some sense precipitated, the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. The comet was duly noted in a newspaper of the time, the Bayeux Tapestry.

Ancient historians like Josephus the Jew, Berosus the Chaldean, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus (Josephus even mentions these last four) discussed a powerful flood that occurred in their past. Ancient Greek historians like Xenophanes, Herodotus, Eratosthenes, and Strabo all commented on fossils being from a significant water event in the past (not always to the extent of biblical proportions but they understood the point).

the historian's one alleged mention of Jesus of Nazareth — a little over one hundred notorious words in all — that was considered by Josephus scholars as a later insertion by an unscrupulous Christian scribe. Some historians believed that Josephus himself must have inserted the passage upon threat of his book being banned, or that it was inserted by later forgers. Ryan didn't know what to believe about the famous Testimonium Flavianum:

and those that reflect a more overtly Hellenized influence (Philo, but also Josephus). In his extensive analysis of references to the divine Spirit in selected Jewish texts, Levison concluded, "Among the effects of the [divine] spirit prophecy is most pervasive," noting that Philo, Josephus, and Pseudo-Philo even occasionally add references to the divine Spirit in discussions of OT prophets/prophecy,

Canon Farrar, who finds himself compelled to admit that this passage in Josephus is an interpolation, consoles himself by saying: "The single passage in which he (Josephus) alludes to Him (Christ) is interpolated, if not wholly spurious, and no one can doubt that his silence on the subject of Christianity was as deliberate as it was dishonest." [565:3]

Josephus also, who gives us a minute account of the atrocities perpetrated by Herod up to even the very last moment of his life, does not say a single word about this unheard-of crime, which must have been so notorious. Surely he must have known of it, and must have mentioned it, had it ever been committed.

I understand there was some controversy about the coroner's ruling concerning Josephus Jones's

According to Josephus, on Cyrus's ceremonial entrance to the city, Daniel (who lived at least until the third year of Cyrus) presented him with the writings of Isaiah that included a letter addressed to Cyrus by name, written 150 years earlier.2 Can you imagine his reaction?

Josephus writes of a delegation of 8,000 Roman Jews—out of a likely total Jewish population of 40,000—who received an audience with the Emperor Augustus in 4 ce.

Jerusalem, as the site of the Second Holy Temple, had grown dramatically since Hasmonean times, boasting a Jewish population of perhaps a half million out of an overall population in Palestine that ranged between 1 and 2.5 million. Josephus reported that the

Yes, and how did Josephus know?" continued Helen. "He wasn't on Masada, he was with the Roman army.

This is reported by Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book VI, pars. 28–30.

After all, the Jewish historian Josephus maintains the world was created in the autumn, at the autumn equinox. A reasonable notion, since of course there were fruits in paradise; given the apple hanging from the tree, it must indeed have been autumn…