Twenty-Two Books

For we do not have countless books that disagree with and contradict one another, but only twenty-two books, containing the record of all time, and they are justly trusted. Five of them are the books of Moses, which contain the laws and the tradition from the origin of mankind down to his death; this period falls a little short of three thousand years. From the death of Moses to Artaxerxes, who reigned over the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets who came after Moses wrote down what was done in their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four contain hymns to God and precepts for human life. From Artaxerxes to our own time everything has been written down, but it has not been thought worthy of the same trust as the earlier books, because there has not been an exact succession of the prophets. How we treat our own writings is plain from what we do. Long ages have now passed, and no one has dared to add anything to them, to take anything away, or to change anything. It is born in every Jew, from his very birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, gladly to die for them. Many of our captives, many times over, have been seen enduring torture and every kind of death in the theaters rather than utter a single word against the laws and the records that go with them. What Greek would endure as much for his own writings? He would not face even the slightest harm to save all the writings of his people from being destroyed. For they regard them as words improvised to suit the fancy of those who wrote them; and they are right to think so even of the older writers, since they see some writers of today daring to write about events at which they were not present, and which they did not trouble to learn about from those who knew. Indeed, about the war we have just been through, some have published what they call histories without ever having visited the places or come anywhere near the action; they have put together a few things from hearsay, and most shamelessly abused the name of history. [a]

I, on the other hand, have written a true record of the whole war and of everything that happened in it, for I was present at all of it myself. I was general of those among us called Galileans as long as resistance was possible. Then I was captured and became a prisoner of the Romans. Vespasian and Titus kept me under guard and made me attend them constantly, at first in chains; later I was released and sent from Alexandria with Titus to the siege of Jerusalem. During that time nothing that was done escaped my knowledge. What happened in the Roman camp I saw and carefully wrote down, and what the deserters reported I alone understood. Then, having leisure in Rome, when all my material was ready for the work, I made use of some assistants for the Greek language, and so I wrote the account of what was done. I was so sure of its truth that I thought fit to take as my first witnesses the supreme commanders in the war, Vespasian and Titus. To them I gave the books first, and after them to many of the Romans who had fought in the war; and I sold them to many of our own people, men who were also versed in Greek learning, among them Julius Archelaus, the most venerable Herod, and the most admirable King Agrippa himself. All of these testified that I had carefully upheld the truth. They would not have dissembled or kept silent if, from ignorance or to please anyone, I had distorted or left out anything that happened. [d]

Yet some worthless people have tried to slander my history, as though they had been set a schoolboys’ exercise in paradoxical accusation and slander. They ought to know that anyone who promises to give others an account of true events must first know them accurately himself, either by having followed them closely or by learning them from those who knew. This is what I believe I have done above all in both my works. The Antiquities, as I said, I translated from our sacred writings, being a priest by birth and having a share in the philosophy contained in those writings. The history of the war I wrote as one who took part in many of its actions, was an eyewitness of most of the rest, and was ignorant of nothing whatever that was said or done in it. How, then, can one not think it brazen of those who have set out to dispute with me about the truth? They may claim to have read the emperors’ field journals, but they were certainly not present at the affairs of us who fought against them. [e]

I have been obliged to make this digression in order to point out how carelessly those who profess to write histories go about it. I think I have now shown well enough that recording the history of ancient times is a tradition of the barbarians rather than of the Greeks. Next I wish to say a few words to those who try to prove that our state is recent, because, as they claim, the Greek writers have said nothing about us. After that I will produce testimonies to our antiquity from the writings of other peoples, and show that those who have slandered our nation are utterly slanderous in what they say. [g]

Our country, then, does not lie on the coast, nor do we delight in trade or in the mixing with other peoples that comes from it. Our cities are built far from the sea, and since the land we inhabit is good, we work hard at farming it. Above all we take pride in raising our children well, and we make keeping the laws, and the reverence for God handed down according to them, the most necessary work of our whole life. Since, besides all this, our way of life is peculiar to us, nothing in ancient times brought us into contact with the Greeks, as their exports and imports did for the Egyptians, and for the people of the Phoenician coast their eagerness for buying and selling, out of love of money. Nor did our forefathers turn to robbery, as some others did, or to war in order to gain more, though our country had many tens of thousands of men who did not lack courage. That is why the Phoenicians themselves, sailing to the Greeks to trade, soon became known to them, and through them the Egyptians, and all those whose cargoes they carried to the Greeks across the great seas. Later the Medes and Persians became well known when they ruled Asia, and the Persians above all, since they made war as far as our own continent. The Thracians became known because they were neighbors, and the Scythians through those who sailed to the Black Sea. In general, all who lived along the sea, both the eastern and the western, became better known to those who wished to write; but those who lived farther inland were for the most part unknown. The same thing appears to have happened in Europe. The city of the Romans, which had long held such power and won such victories in war, is mentioned neither by Herodotus nor by Thucydides nor by any one of their contemporaries; it was only late, and with difficulty, that knowledge of the Romans reached the Greeks. Those who were thought the most exact writers, Ephorus among them, were so ignorant of the Gauls and the Iberians of Spain that Ephorus supposes the Iberians, who inhabit so great a part of the western world, to be a single city; and they have dared to describe customs as theirs that were never practiced or spoken of among them. The reason they did not know the truth was that they had no contact at all with these peoples; the reason they wrote falsehoods was that they wanted to seem to know more than others. How, then, can it be any wonder that our nation was not known to many, and gave them no occasion to mention it in their writings, living so far from the sea and choosing to live as it does? [h]

Suppose, then, that we were to argue that the Greeks are not an ancient people because nothing is said about them in our records. Would they not laugh at us, bringing forward, I think, the very reasons I have just given, and produce their neighbors as witnesses to their antiquity? I will try to do the same. I will use the Egyptians and the Phoenicians as my chief witnesses, for no one could slander their testimony as false, since they are well known to have been most hostile to us: the Egyptians all of them in common, and of the Phoenicians the Tyrians. About the Chaldeans I cannot say the same, since they were the founders of our race, and because of that kinship they do mention the Jews in their records. When I have given my proofs from these peoples, I will then point out those Greek writers who have mentioned the Jews, so that those who envy us may not have even this pretext for disputing what I say.