Ancient Historians · Part 19 · Philo and Josephus · C1
Josephus II: The Jewish War
Part 19 of Ancient Historians: Josephus watched the siege of Jerusalem from the Roman lines in 70 CE, and wrote the only full account of the city’s destruction and the burning of the Temple. He also told the story of Masada, where, he says, 960 rebels chose death rather than slavery. But archaeologists who dug at Masada found some things that fit his story, and some that don’t. Evaluating evidence and argument (while it is true that, admittedly, nonetheless, the extent to which, there is little evidence that), and the language of archaeology, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria. The siege and Masada are described briefly.
Philo, this is the hardest thing I have to tell you. About seventy years from now, Rome will destroy Jerusalem, and the Temple will burn. Josephus will watch it happen, standing beside the Roman general, and he will write it down.
The Temple? Destroyed? Our people have already mourned one Temple, burned by the Babylonians. To lose a second…
I am sorry, Philo. I will tell it briefly. And then I will tell you about a fortress in the desert called Masada, where Josephus tells a famous story, and where, two thousand years later, archaeologists will dig to see whether it is true. Tonight’s grammar is the careful grammar of weighing evidence.
In 70 CE, the Roman general Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, besieged Jerusalem. Inside the city, rival rebel groups had been fighting each other, and had burned food stores; famine killed many people. After months of siege, the Romans broke through, and the Temple was burned and destroyed. Josephus says Titus wanted to save it; another ancient source suggests he ordered its destruction, and historians still debate this. Josephus’s figure of over a million dead is almost certainly too…
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