Explore the controversial legacy of Flavius Josephus (born Yosef ben Mattityahu, c. 37 CE), the Jewish priest and aristocrat who became the primary, yet problematic, source for the dramatic destruction of the Second Temple. Appointed a general in the Jewish revolt against Rome, he famously surrendered after the siege of Yodfat and, by predicting that Vespasian would become Emperor, saved his own life and became a favored Roman advisor. . Writing his seminal works, The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, under Roman patronage, Josephus offered a vast, Hellenized history of his people to a Greco-Roman audience, providing invaluable accounts of sects like the Pharisees and Essenes, but forever earning the complex reputation of a traitor among many of his own people for siding with the very empire that razed Jerusalem.
