Antiquities of the Jews (
Antiquitates Judaicae in
Latin) is a twenty volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Roman emperor Flavius
Domitian which was around
93 or
94 AD.
Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of
history of the Jewish people, written in
Greek for Josephus' gentile patrons. In the first ten volumes, Josephus follows the events of the historical books of the
Hebrew Bible beginning with the creation of
Adam and Eve. The second ten volumes continue the history of the Jewish people beyond the biblical text and up to the Jewish War.
This work, along with Josephus's other major work,
The Jewish Wars (
Bellum Judaicum), provides valuable background material to historians wishing to understand 1st-century AD Judaism and the
early Christian period.
Stephen L. Harris,
Understanding the Bible, (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1985).
Content
In the preface of
Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus provides his motivation for composing such a large work. He writes:<blockquote>Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear to all the Greeks worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures.Ant. 1.5. Trans. by William...
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