The approximate dates presented by Josephus are in concordance with other historical records, and most scholars view the variation between the motive presented by Josephus and the New Testament accounts is seen as an indication that the Josephus passage is not a Christian interpolation.

" Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman Judæa.

The Romans fared very poorly during the initial revolt facing a completely unified Jewish force ( unlike during the First Jewish-Roman War, where Flavius Josephus records three separate Jewish armies fighting each other for control of the Temple Mount during the three weeks time after the Romans had breached Jerusalem's walls and were fighting their way to the center ).

Josephus, citing Tyrian court records and Menander in Against Apion, gives a specific year during which Hiram I of Tyre sent materials to Solomon for the construction of the temple.

According to Josephus, he was a milder ruler than his grandfather Herod the Great, and Josephus records him as talking with and then forgiving a law student accused of political rabble rousing, rather than punishing him as his grandfather and some other Herods would have done.

* Flavius Josephus ( Antiquitates Iudaicae i. 6, § 1 ) reads " Tarshush ", identifying it as the city of Tarsus in southern Asia Minor, which was referred to in Assyrian records from the reign of Esarhaddon as Tarsisi.

Flavius Josephus records that Herod the Great completely rebuilt the Temple, even going so far as to replace the foundation stones and to smooth off the surface of the Temple Mount.

Josephus records three short-lived marriages in Berenice's life, the first which took place sometime between 41 and 43, to Marcus Julius Alexander, brother of Tiberius Julius Alexander and son of Alexander the Alabarch of Alexandria.

The beginning date of Hiram ’ s reign is derived from a statement by Josephus, citing both Tyrian court records and the writings of Menander, relating that 143 years passed between the start of construction of Solomon ’ s Temple until the founding of Carthage ( or until Dido ’ s flight that led to its founding ).

Josephus, citing both Tyrian court records and the writings of Menander, says that it was in Hiram ’ s 12th year that he sent assistance to Solomon for building the Temple.

Josephus records the earliest account of the false but understandable etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Bedouin-like Shepherd Kings, which scholars have only recently shown means " rulers of foreign lands.

Neverthelss Noah in his promotional materials did enthusiastically claim that the historian Josephus had said of the Book of Jasher: " by this book are to be understood certain records kept in some safe place on purpose, giving an account of what happened among the Hebrews from year to year, and called Jasher or the upright, on account of the fidelity of the annals.

Josephus also records the Persian persecution of Jews and mentions Jews being forced to worship at Persian erected shrines.

In 1808, Henry Alford cast doubt on Tabor due to the possible continuing Roman utilization of a fortress which Antiochus the Great built on Tabor in BC219, and which Josephus records was in use by the Romans in the Jewish War.

The town played a role after the Hasmonean Maccabee Revolt: Josephus records that the Jewish High Priest Jonathan was killed there by Demetrius II Nicator.

Josephus mentions a number of people who had taken the vow, such as his tutor Banns ( Antiquities 20. 6 ), and Gamaliel records in the Mishna how the father of Rabbi Chenena made a lifetime nazirite vow before him ( Nazir 29b ).

Josephus records him admitting to using " nameless oral tradition " ( 1. 105 ) and " myths and legends " ( 1. 229 ) into his account, and there is no reason to doubt this, as admissions of this type were common among historians of that era.

Josephus ' records of Berossus include some of the only extant narrative material, but he is likely dependent on Alexander Polyhistor, even if he did give the impression that he had direct access to Berossus.

Josephus records that Pompey profaned the Temple by insisting on entering the Holy of Holies.

Flavius Josephus in Jewish Antiquities book 20, chapter 2 records the story of King Izates who having been persuaded by a Jewish merchant named Ananias ( claimed by Robert Eisenman in James the Brother of Jesus to be Paul of Tarsus ) to embrace the Jewish religion, decided to get circumcised so as to follow Jewish law.

1 Maccabees records that Judah's army consisting of 3, 000 men were terrified of such a large force and two thirds of them deserted, leaving Judah with 800-1, 000 soldiers ( 1 Maccabees, and Flavius Josephus respectively ).

Josephus argued for an Egyptian etymology, and some scholarly suggestions have followed this in deriving the name from Coptic terms mo " water " and ` uses " save, deliver ", suggesting a meaning " saved from the water ".

The etymology of the word into English is from Old French Philistin, from Classical Latin Philistinus found in the writings of Josephus, from Late Greek Philistinoi ( Phylistiim in the Septuagint ) found in the writings by Philo, from Hebrew Plištim, ( e. g. 1 Samuel 17: 36 ; 2 Samuel 1: 20 ; Judges 14: 3 ; Amos 1: 8 ), " people of Plešt " (" Philistia "); cf.

The name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes, both deriving from the Persian Khshayārsha, thus Ahasuerus is usually identified as Xerxes I ( 486-465 BCE ), though Ahasuerus is identified as Artaxerxes in the later Greek version of Esther ( as well as by Josephus, the Jewish commentary Esther Rabbah, the Ethiopic translation and the Christian theologian Bar-Hebraeus who identified him more precisely as Artaxerxes II ).

Bar-Hebraeus identified Ahasuerus explicitly as Artaxerxes II ; however, the names are not necessarily equivalent: Hebrew has a form of the name Artaxerxes distinct from Ahasuerus, and a direct Greek rendering of Ahasuerus is used by both Josephus and the Septuagint for occurrences of the name outside the Book of Esther.

According to the Bauer-Danker Lexicon, the noun ίδιωτής in ancient Greek meant " civilian " ( ref Josephus Bell 2 178 ), " private citizen " ( ref sb 3924 9 25 ), " private soldier as opposed to officer ," ( Polybius 1. 69 ), " relatively unskilled, not clever ," ( Herodotus 2, 81 and 7 199 ).

The translations of Josephus ' writing into other languages have at times included passages that are not found in the Greek texts, raising the possibility of interpolation, but this passage on James is found in all manuscripts, including the Greek texts.

As is common with ancient texts, however, there are no surviving extant manuscripts of Josephus ' works that can be dated before the 11th century, and the oldest of these are all Greek minuscules, copied by Christian monks.

There are about 120 extant Greek manuscripts of Josephus, of which 33 predate the 14th century, with two thirds from the Comnenoi period.

There are about 170 extant Latin translations of Josephus, some of which go back to the sixth century, and according to Louis Feldman have proven very useful in reconstructing the Josephus texts through comparisons with the Greek manuscripts, reconfirming proper names and filling in gaps.

Both Origen and Eusebius had access to the Greek versions of Josephus ' texts.

These additional manuscript sources of the Testimonium have furnished additional ways to evaluate Josephus ' mention of Jesus in the Antiquities, principally through a close textual comparison between the Arabic, Syriac and Greek versions to the Testimonium.

Origen explicitly mentions the name of Josephus 11 times, both in Greek and Latin.

Another example of the textual arguments against the Testimonium is that it uses the Greek term poietes to mean " doer " ( as part of the phrase " doer of wonderful works ") but elsewhere in his works, Josephus only uses the term poietes to mean " poet ," whereas this use of " poietes " seems consistent with the Greek of Eusebius.

Paul Maier states that the first case is generally seen as hopeless, given that a Jew, Josephus would not have claimed Jesus as the Messiah, and that the second option is hardly tenable given the presence of the reference in all Greek manuscripts ; thus a large majority of modern scholars accept the third alternative, i. e. partial authenticity.

Josephus introduces himself in Greek as Iōsēpos ( Ιώσηπος ), son of Matthias, an ethnic Hebrew.

For many years, printed editions of the works of Josephus appeared only in an imperfect Latin translation from the original Greek.

Some anti-Judean allegations ascribed by Josephus to the Greek writer Apion, and myths accredited to Manetho are also addressed.

Josephus refers to Pilate with the generic Greek term, hēgemōn, or governor.

From the perspective of the theocratic government, " God himself is recognized as the head " of the state, hence the term theocracy, from the Greek " rule of God ", a term used by Josephus for the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

During this time he became the patron of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish resistance leader captured at the Siege of Yodfat, who would later write his people's history in Greek.

The Greek version ( Septuagint ) of the Book of Esther refers to him as Artaxerxes, and the historian Josephus relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks.