CHAPTER IX

OF JOSEPHUS, AND THE WORKS HE HAS LEFT

SINCE we have referred to his writings, it may be proper also to notice Josephus himself, who has contributed so much to the history in hand, whence and from what family he sprung. He shows this, indeed, in his own works, as follows. “Josephus, the son of Mattathias, a priest of Jerusalem, who at first himself fought against the Romans, and at whose affairs he was afterward of necessity present,” was a man most distinguished, not only among ‘his own countrymen, the Jews, but also among the Romans; so that they honoured him with the erection of a statue at Rome, and the books that he composed, with a place in the public library. He wrote the whole Antiquities of the Jews, in twenty books, and his history of the Jewish war in seven books, which he says were not only written in Greek, but also translated by him into his native tongue; in all which he is worthy of credit as well as in other matters. There are also two books of his which deserve to be read, on “The Antiquity of the Jews.” In these he makes his reply to Apion, the grammarian, who had then written against the Jews; they contain also a refutation of others, who attempted to vilify the national peculiarities of the Jewish people. In the first book he gives us the number of the canonical writings called the Old Testament, such as are of undoubted authority among the Hebrews, setting them forth, as handed down by ancient tradition, in the following words.