Josephus’s Judean War

Flavius Josephus's Judean War deserves its place among the most influential ancient western texts, though not for the reasons that caused it to survive. In it, we see a Judean aristocrat living in Rome and writing in Greek in the decade following the destruction of Jerusalem. Josephus manages the extraordinary feat of meshing his native traditions with Greek political, rhetorical, and historiographical discourses, while yet distancing himself from “the Greeks” to cement the bond with his host society. The chapter explores questions regarding Judean War's date, context, purposes, content, structures, themes, and devices. By examining the length of each of the seven books, the text's symmetry, four major themes, and seven major speeches, the chapter shows that Josephus is in control of his text, and his own self-image in that text.