The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2014 Sep
Date: 2014 Oct 03
Modified: 2022 Nov 18
Rating: 4
Summary
The Jewish War or Judean War (in full Flavius Josephus's Books of the History of the Jewish War against the Romans, also referred to in English as The Wars of the Jews,) is a book written by Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian of the 1st century. It is a description of Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 164 BC to the fall and destruction of Jerusalem in the First Jewish–Roman War in 70 AD. The book was written about 75 AD, originally in Josephus's "paternal tongue", probably Aramaic, though this version has not survived. It was later translated into Greek, probably under the supervision of Josephus himself. The sources of knowledge of the First Jewish–Roman War are: this account of Josephus, the Talmud (Gittin 57b), Midrash Eichah, and the Hebrew inscriptions on the Jewish coins minted, and Book V of Tacitus' Histories. The text also survives in an Old Slavonic version, as well as Hebrew which contains material not found in the Greek version, and which is lacking other material found in the Greek version.
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