Complete works

Flavius Josephus lived in the first century and moved between several roles: a Pharisee, a soldier, an informant for Rome, and a writer. Born in Judea, he later wrote in Greek for a Roman audience, and his surviving works are the largest body of writing on ancient Jewish history that we still have. Among them are some of the oldest accounts of Jesus, John the Baptist, and James the brother of Jesus that were written independently of the Gospels. Much of what we know about the Essenes, the group often linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and about the beliefs of the Sadducees and Pharisees comes from his pages.

This collection gathers his major texts. The War of the Jews recounts the revolt against Rome and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The Antiquities of the Jews traces Jewish history from the Creation to the Roman takeover of Palestine. The Life of Flavius Josephus is his own account of fighting against Rome and then serving the empire. Against Apion defends Judaism against insults from Greek and Roman writers, and Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades is a work attributed to him.

The volume also includes an index that matches passages in the Antiquities with books of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha.