As any parent knows, when you send a child out into the world, there’s no way to predict what twists and turns the youngster’s life might take. How much truer that is for an author, especially when the “child”—the book—survives for two millennia.
When Josephus wrote his “Jewish War” around the year 75, he could not have guessed its longevity or its use and misuse. The book narrates a rebellion in Judea against Rome (66-73) that savaged a legion before the avenging empire sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and killed or enslaved large numbers of Jewish civilians. It includes vivid scenes of the Roman way of war, of suffering during the siege of Jerusalem, and, perhaps most memorably, of the mass suicide of resistance fighters making their last stand at Masada. A member of the Judean elite turned Roman citizen, Josephus wrote primarily for the Jews of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Yet the majority of his readers in the centuries since have been Christians.
