Josephus and His Books

After all this, it is right that we should not be ignorant of Josephus himself, who has contributed so much to the history in hand: where he came from and of what family. He makes this plain again himself, saying: “Josephus son of Matthias, a priest from Jerusalem, who himself fought against the Romans at first and was compelled to be present at what happened afterward.” [a] He became the most celebrated man among the Jews of that time, not only among his own people but among the Romans too, so that he was honored with a statue set up in the city of Rome, and the books he labored on were judged worthy of a library. [b] He set down the whole Antiquities of the Jews in twenty books, and the history of the Roman war of his own time in seven. He himself testifies that he issued the latter not only in Greek but also in his native tongue, and, on account of the rest, he deserves to be believed. [c] Two other books of his are also in circulation and worth reading, On the Antiquity of the Jews. In them he answers Apion the grammarian, who had then composed a treatise against the Jews, and others too who tried to slander the ancestral customs of the Jewish nation. [d] In the first of these he sets down the number of the covenant Scriptures of the so-called Old Testament, showing which are undisputed among the Hebrews, as from ancient tradition, teaching it in these very words: [e]