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The Antiquities of the Jews

Flavius Josephus · Translated by William Whiston, 1737

Flavius Josephus

The Antiquities of the Jews

Translated by William Whiston, 1737

What this is

Twenty books of Jewish history from the creation to the eve of the revolt of 66, written in Rome in the 90s by a Galilean commander who had surrendered to Vespasian and taken his family name. It is the main independent source for almost every public figure named in the gospels.

How it is set

One leaf per book, with the sections numbered inside it as Long numbers them. A section of Marcus is often three lines, and a page holding three lines is not a page.

What is not here

Notes. These books have the text and nothing else at present — no map, no lives, no commentary. The Gospel of St Luke shows what an annotated book looks like on this shelf, and these will follow it. An empty heading is better than invented filler.

The 20 books

  1. I 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. But when the earth did not come into… 22 sections
  2. II 1. After the death of Isaac, his sons divided their habitations respectively; nor did they… 16 sections
  3. III 1. When the Hebrews had obtained such a wonderful deliverance, the country was a great trouble… 15 sections
  4. IV 1. Now this life of the Hebrews in the wilderness was so disagreeable and troublesome to them,… 8 sections
  5. V 1. When Moses was taken away from among men, in the manner already described, and when all the… 11 sections
  6. VI 1. When the Philistines had taken the ark of the Hebrews captive, as I said a little before,… 14 sections
  7. VII 1. This fight proved to be on the same day whereon David was come back to Ziklag, after he had… 23 sections
  8. VIII 1. We have already treated of David, and his virtue, and of the benefits he was the author of… 15 sections
  9. IX 1. When Jehoshaphat the king was come to Jerusalem, from the assistance he had afforded Ahab,… 14 sections
  10. X 1. It was now the fourteenth year of the government of Hezekiah, king of the two tribes, when… 11 sections
  11. XI 1. In the first year of the reign of Cyrus 1 which was the seventieth from the day that our… 8 sections
  12. XII 1. Now when Alexander, king of Macedon, had put an end to the dominion of the Persians, and had… 11 sections
  13. XIII 1. By what means the nation of the Jews recovered their freedom when they had been brought into… 16 sections
  14. XIV 1. We have related the affairs of queen Alexandra, and her death, in the foregoing book and… 16 sections
  15. XV 1. How Sosius and Herod took Jerusalem by force; and besides that, how they took Antigonus… 11 sections
  16. XVI 1. As king Herod was very zealous in the administration of his entire government, and desirous… 10 sections
  17. XVII 1. When Antipater had thus taken off his brethren, and had brought his father into the highest… 13 sections
  18. XVIII 1. Now Cyrenius, a Roman senator, and one who had gone through other magistracies, and had… 9 sections
  19. XIX 1. Now this Caius 2 did not demonstrate his madness in offering injuries only to the Jews at… 9 sections
  20. XX 1. Upon the death of king Agrippa, which we have related in the foregoing book, Claudius Cæsar… 11 sections
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Text: Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews — William Whiston’s translation, 1737, public domain, from Project Gutenberg ebook 2848, set unaltered. The gospel pages on this shelf cite him constantly — for Pilate, Antipas, Annas, Caiaphas, Quirinius and John the Baptist. Those claims can now be read against the text they rest on.