Project Gutenberg's The Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus

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Title: The Antiquities of the Jews

Author: Flavius Josephus

Translator: William Whiston

Posting Date: January 4, 2009 [EBook #2848]
Release Date: October, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS ***

Produced by David Reed

THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS

[1]

By Flavius Josephus

Translated by William Whiston

PREFACE.

1. Those who undertake to write histories, do not, I perceive, take that
trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those
such as are very different one from another. For some of them apply
themselves to this part of learning to show their skill in composition,
and that they may therein acquire a reputation for speaking finely:
others of them there are, who write histories in order to gratify those
that happen to be concerned in them, and on that account have spared no
pains, but rather gone beyond their own abilities in the performance:
but others there are, who, of necessity and by force, are driven to
write history, because they are concerned in the facts, and so cannot
excuse themselves from committing them to writing, for the advantage
of posterity; nay, there are not a few who are induced to draw their
historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce them for the
benefit of the public, on account of the great importance of the facts
themselves with which they have been concerned. Now of these several
reasons for writing history, I must profess the two last were my own
reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we
Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and
what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it,
because I saw that others perverted the truth of those actions in their
writings.

2. Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear
to all the Greeks [2] worthy of their study; for it will contain all our
antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out
of the Hebrew Scriptures. And indeed I did formerly intend, whe