THE WARS OF THE JEWS;
OR THE
HISTORY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
PREFACE.
§1. [1]WHEREAS THE war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been The war against Romans. he greatest of all those, not only the that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations; while some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves, have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given false accounts of things, and this either out of a humour of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews; and while their writings contain sometimes accusations, and sometimes encomiums, but nowhere the accurate truth of the facts, I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live nnder the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians;[2] I,
2. NOW AT the time when this great concussion of affairs happened, the affairs of the Romans were themselves in great disorder. Those Jews also, who Roman affairs. were for innovations, then arose when the times were disturbed; they were also in a flourishing condition for strength and riches, insomuch that the affairs of the east were then exceeding tumultuous, while some hoped for gain, and others were afraid of loss in such troubles; for the Jews hoped that all of their nation which was beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection together with them. The Gauls also, in the neighbourhood of the Romans, were in motion, and the Celtae were not quiet; but all was in disorder after the death of Nero. And the opportunity now offered induced many to aim at the royal power: and the soldiery affected change, out of the hopes of getting money. I thought it therefore an absurd thing to see the truth falsified in affairs of such great consequence, and to take no notice of it; but to suffer those Greeks and Romans that were not in wars to be ignorant of these things, and to read either flatteries or fictions, while the Parthians, and the Babylonians, and the remotest Arabians, and those of our nation beyond Euphrates, with the Adiabeni, by my means, knew accurately both whence the war begun, what miseries it brought upon us, and after what manner it ended.
3. IT IS true, these writers have the confidence to call their accounts histories; wherein yet they seem to me to fail of their own purpose, as well as to relate nothing that is Of other historians. found; for they have a mind to demonstrate the greatness of the Romans, while they still diminish and lessen the actions of the Jews, as not discerning how it cannot be that those must appear to be great who have only conquered those that were little ; nor are they ashamed to overlook the length of the war, the multitude of the Roman
- ↑ I have already observed more than once, that this history of the Jewish war was Josephus' s first work, and published about A.D. 75, when he was but thirty-eight years of age; and that when he wrote it, he was not thoroughly acquainted with several circumstances of history from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, with which it begins, till near his own times, contained in the first and former part of the second book, and so committed many involuntary errors therein. That he published his Antiquities I eighteen years afterward, in the 13th year of Domitian, A.D. 93, when he was much more completely acquainted with those ancient times, and after he had perused those most authentic histories, the first book of Maccabees, and wrote the Chronicles of the Priesthood of John Hyrcanus, &c. That accordingly he then reviewed those parts of this work, and gave the public a more faithful, complete, and accurate account of the facts therein related; and honestly corrected the errors he had before run into. Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth an Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterward [am the author of this work].
- ↑ Who these Upper Barbarians, remote from the sea, were, Josephus himself will inform us, sect. 2, viz., the Parihians and Babylonians, and remotest Arabians [or the Jews among them]; besides the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians. Whence we also learn, that these Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians pr at least the Jews among them}, as also the Jews beyond Euphrates, and Adiabeni, or Assyrians, understood Josephus' s Hebrew, or rather Chaldaic, books of the Jewish War, before they were put into the Greek language.
