Josephus' Jewish War

Thesis Statement

The Jewish War by Josephus is the voluminous, detailed and scholarly report of the first century Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. Universe is of course our own, and I think it is not too difficult to understand why Josephus has become such a flash point in the great debate over the existence of any historical than Jesus.

Introduction

The war climaxed with the siege of Jerusalem, built up as it was by King Herod, as the single most beautiful and wonderfully rich city in history.

The siege, resulting in the wholesale destruction of the most glorious temple, and the starvation of hundreds of thousands of the population (which was also undergoing two civil wars), is the single most bloody, inhumane and shocking thing I've ever read. Retreating, wall at a time, to the upper city, then to the outer courts of the temple, then to the inner temple, and then to the sewers under the city, decimating all the populace for their food and fighting each other, the survivors had become soulless, unfeeling, brutal robots, driven by hunger and desperation and yet never surrendering to the Romans to save their own lives, save their city from destruction wall at a time, or to save their temple.

Arguments

In an alternate universe to this one, scholars investigating Christianity's origins are a happy lot. There, the man whom 2000 years of Christian tradition places at the genesis of the movement enjoys ample attestation.

In that alternate world, early Christian letter writers also have the occasional word to say about the Roman governor who was responsible for their Lord's crucifixion, about the privileged and respected Jewish mother of their incarnated Son of God, about the ascetic prophet who had preceded him and even baptized him, so tradition had it. And the relations between those many apostles of the Christ, who discuss and argue and vilify across the pages of the early Christian epistles, are characterized by regular claims and counterclaims about the authority Jesus had bestowed upon them while on earth, or the channels through which they could trace their credentials and their doctrines back to the man himself who had set everything in motion.

When scholars in that alternate universe step outside the writings of the Christian movement itself, they find that widespread notice was taken of the new faith and its founder by the contemporary world. The Alexandrian philosopher Philo had mentioned his death under Pilate in speaking of the Roman governor's reprehensible career in Judea. Pliny the Elder, who collected all manner of natural and unnatural phenomena associated with famous figures and sects, had recorded certain traditions—probably apocryphal, but no matter—about astronomical portents which Christians said had accompanied their founder's birth, as well as an amazing reaction of nature reputed to have taken place at the time of his death. This chronicler's nephew, Pliny the Younger, had related Christian tales about the man and his exploits in his letter to the emperor. And other assorted commentators of the time ...