Antiquities of the Jews

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Antiquities of the Jews (Antiquitates Judaicae in Latin) was a work published by the Jewish historian Josephus, also known as Flavius Josephus, about 93-94 (cf. AJAXX.267, the overlap mentioned therein occurred from 1.9.93 to 14.3.94).

Antiquities of the Jews is a history of the Jewish people, written in Greek for Josephus' gentile patrons. Beginning with the creation of Adam and Eve, it follows the events of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, but sometimes omits or adds information.

The extant copies of this work, which all derive from Christian sources, even the recently-recovered Arabic version, contain two passages about Jesus. The long one has come to be known as the Testimonium Flavianum. If genuine, it is the earliest record of Jesus in Jewish sources, and as such is sometimes cited as independent evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. However, most scholars view the Testimonium Flavianum as dubious - not only does the text read more continuously without it, but despite Josephus being a life long Jew, who portrayed Vespasian as the Messiah (Vespasian was Josephus' patron), the Testimonium Flavianum has Josephus state that Jesus was the Christ, foretold by the prophets, and a worker of wonders.

One of the best known translations of this work was provided by William Whiston in 1737. However, the Loeb Classical Library has a more recent translation normally preferred academically.