The 1st-century CE Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, however, understood this to mean that Jephthah burned his daughter on Yahweh's altar, whilst pseudo-Philo, late first century CE, wrote that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering because he could find no sage in Israel who would cancel his vow.

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.

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.

The works of Josephus were translated into Latin during the fourth century ( possibly by Rufinus ), and, in the same century, the Jewish War was " partially rewritten as an anti-Jewish treatise, known today as Pseudo-Hegesippus, but < nowiki ></ nowiki > was considered for over a millenium and a half by many Christians as the ipsissima verba of Josephus to his own people.

Goliath's stature grew at the hand of narrators or scribes: the oldest manuscripts — the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel, the first-century historian Josephus, and the fourth century Septuagint manuscripts — all give his height as " four cubits and a span " (); later manuscripts increase this to " six cubits and a span " ().

The first surviving historical mention of the Pharisees is from the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus ( 37 – 100 CE ), in a description of the " four schools of thought ," or " four sects ," into which the Jews were divided in the 1st century CE ; the other schools were the Essenes, who were generally apolitical and who may have emerged as a sect of dissident priests who rejected either the Seleucid-appointed or the Hasmonean high priests as illegitimate ; the Sadducees, who were the main antagonists of the Pharisees ; and the " fourth philosophy " possibly associated with the anti-Roman revolutionary groups such as the Sicarii and the Zealots.

In a 1951 article, J. Liver argued that the 825 date has some credibility because, with it, the elapsed time between that date and the start of building of Solomon ’ s Temple, given as 143 years and 8 months in Menander / Josephus, agrees very closely with the date of approximately 967 BC for the start of Temple construction as derived from 1 Kings 6: 1 ( fourth year of Solomon ) and the date given by most historians for the end of Solomon ’ s forty-year reign, i. e. 932 or 931 BC.

The first known instance of a medal being awarded comes from the historian Josephus who, writing long after the event, accounts that in the fourth century BCE the High Priest Jonathan led the Hebrews in aid of Alexander the Great, and that in return for this, Alexander " sent to Jonathan ... honorary awards, as a golden button, which it is custom to give the king's kinsmen.

He equally speculates that his fourth commandment was lost perhaps as early as Josephus ' time ( circa 37-100 A. D ./ C. E.

He equally speculates that his fourth commandment was lost perhaps as early as Josephus ' time ( circa 37-100 A. D ./ C. E.

In Antiquities of the Jews Josephus states that Judas, along with Zadok the Pharisee founded the " fourth sect ", of 1st century Judaism ( the first three are the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes ).

* Flavius Justus, fourth son of Josephus

The Jewish historian Josephus references the fourth book of Nicolaus ' history concerning Abram ( Abraham ).

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 Evans, if the passage had been an interpolation after the emergence of conflicts between Jews and Christians, it would have had a more accusative tone, but in its current form reads as one would expect it to read for a passage composed by Josephus towards the end of the first century.

However, the tradition is comparatively late ( it dates from Josephus, a 1st century AD historian ), and scholars are practically unanimous that the book had a long period of growth, that it includes some material of considerable antiquity, and that it reached its present form in the Persian period ( 538 – 332 BC ).

Most of the Talmudic rabbis, and Josephus, following the belief that Urim meant lights, argued that divination by Urim and Thummim involved questions being answered by great rays of light shining out of certain jewels on the breastplate ; each jewel was taken to represent different letters, and the sequence of lighting thus would spell out an answer ( though there were 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and only 12 jewels on the breastplate ); two Talmudic rabbis, however, argued that the jewels themselves moved in a way that made them stand out from the rest, or even moved themselves into groups to form words.

Indeed in the Septuagint and Greek language Jewish texts such as the writings of Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, Jesus is the standard Greek translation of the common Hebrew name Yehoshua ( Joshua ), Greek having lost the h sound, as well as of the shortened form Yeshua which originated in the Second Temple period.

It occurs in Josephus very often under the form Esbonitis or Sebonitis.

For instance, there were literary writers such as Strabo, Plutarch, and Josephus who intentionally withdrew from this way of expression ( classical Greek ) in favor of the common form of Greek.

This part is in the form of a dialog, between a master ( Aloysius, Latin for Luigi, who is meant to represent Palestrina's ideas ) and a student, Josephus, who represents Fux himself, a self-admitted admirer of Palestrina.

The Rachab form also appears in the works of Josephus.

They are reproduced in a variant form by Josephus.

The name Simon is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Shimeon, a common Jewish name that Albright and Mann note is found in the Old Testament and in Josephus.

The third form of the tradition is that of Jason of Cyrene, on which the second Book of the Maccabees is based ; and Schlatter is even of the opinion that Josephus himself drew his account of the Tobiads from this same source.

It was first coined by Josephus Flavius in the first century A. D. to describe the characteristic government for Jews.

Josephus argued that while the Greeks recognized three types of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and anarchy, the Jews were unique in that they had a system of government that did not fit into those categories.

Serving as the editorial director of the paper, he promoted The News & Observer as a government watchdog and moved the news of the paper away from the personal and partisan stances it had taken under Josephus Daniels.

In later years Josephus Daniels was to claim that World War 1, was the first in American history in which there was great concern for both the health and morals of our soldiers.

Some feel that the text of Acts shows evidence of having used the Jewish historian Josephus as a source ( in which case it would have to have been written sometime after 94 AD ).

Several scholars have argued that Acts used material from both of Josephus ' works, rather than the other way around, which would indicate that Acts was written around the year 100 or later.

Here Acts 12: 21-23 is largely parallel to Antiquities 19. 8. 2 ; ( 2 ) the cause of the Egyptian pseudo-prophet in Acts 21: 37f and in Josephus ( War 2. 13. 5 ; Antiquities 20. 8. 6 ); ( 3 ) the curious resemblance as to the order in which Theudas and Judas of Galilee are referred to in both ( Acts 5: 36f ; Antiquities 20. 5. 1 ).

Josephus too relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks, and the Midrashic text, Esther Rabba also makes the identification.

The 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus mentioned a book circulating under the name of Solomon, which contained incantations for summoning demons and described how a Jew called Eleazar used it to cure cases of possession.

The Testimonium Flavianum ( meaning the testimony of Flavius < nowiki ></ nowiki >) is the name given to the passage found in Book 18, Chapter 3, 3 of the Antiquities in which Josephus describes the condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities.

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.

Much of the scholarly work concerning the references to Jesus in Josephus has thus concentrated on close textual analysis of the Josephan corpus to determine the degree to which the language, as preserved in both early Christian quotations and the later transmissions, should be considered authentic.

Book 20 of the Antiquities do not appear in any other versions of Josephus ' The Jewish War except for a Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavomium ( at times called Testimonium Slavonium ) which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.

However, although both the gospels and Josephus refer to Herod Antipas killing John the Baptist, they differ on the details and motives, e. g. whether this act was a consequence of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias ( as indicated in Matthew 14: 4, Mark 6: 18 ), or a pre-emptive measure by Herod which possibly took place before the marriage to quell a possible uprising based on the remarks of John, as Josephus suggests in Antiquities 18. 5. 2.

Some scholars argue that the passage is an intrusion into the progression of Josephus ' text at the point in which it appears in the Antiquities and breaks the thread of the narrative.

A final argument from silence relates to Josephus ' own writings and questions the authenticity of Testimonium based on the fact that it has no parallel in the Jewish War, which includes a discussion of Pontius Pilate at about the same level of detail.

Van Voorst also states that the use of a neutral term " called Christ " which neither denies nor affirms Jesus as the Messiah points to authenticity, and indicates that Josephus used it to distinguish Jesus from the many other people called Jesus at the time, in the same way that James is distinguished, given that it was also a common name.

Louis Feldman views the reference to Jesus in the death of James passage as " the aforementioned Christ ", thus relating that passage to the Testimonium, which he views as the first reference to Jesus in the works on Josephus.

Vermes calls the Jesus notice in the Testimonium a " veritable tour de force " in which Josephus plays the role of a neutral witness.

However, he states that scholars are divided on the tone of the original reference and while some scholars believe that it had a negative tone which was softened by Christian interpolators, others believe that it had a neutral tone, in keeping with the style and approach of Josephus regarding the issue.

After Vespasian did become Emperor in 69 he granted Josephus his freedom at which time Josephus assumed the emperor's family name of Flavius.

It consistently portrayed him as a member of the sect, and as a traitor to the Jewish nation — a view which became known as the classical concept of Josephus.

The Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus states that three of the seven lamps were allowed to burn during the day also ; however, according to the Talmud ( Rashi, Tractate Shabbat 22b ), only the center lamp was left burning all day, into which as much oil was put as into the others.

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.