While Josephus enjoyed great honor among Christian scholars, for centuries he passed out of the knowledge of his own people. The Talmud has no reference to him, for the surmise that he is the "philosopher" visited by the four sages who journeyed from Palestine to Rome[1] is no more than a vague possibility. Nor has the supposed identification with the Joseph Hakohen that is mentioned in the Midrash anything more solid to uphold it.[2] In the Middle Ages, however, when Spain, Italy, and North Africa witnessed a remarkable revival of Jewish literature, both secular and religious, and when scientific studies again interested the people, the historical literature of other peoples became known to their scholars, and several Jewish writers mention the chronicles of one Yosippon, or "little Joseph." The text of the chronicle itself is widely known from the eleventh century onwards. The first author to mention it is David ben Tammum (ab. 950), and an extract from the book is found about a century later. Four manuscripts of it have come down to us: two in the Vatican, one in Paris, and one in Turin, and it was among the earliest Hebrew books printed. Professing to be the work of Joseph ben Gorion, one of the Jewish commanders in the war with Rome and a prefect of Jerusalem, it is written in a Rabbinical Hebrew that is nearer the classical language than most medieval compositions. It was indeed argued on the ground of its pure classical idiom that it dated from the fourth century, but Zunz[3] showed that this was impossible. It bears all the traces of the pseudepigraphic tendency of a period that produced the first works of the Cabala, the Seder Olam Zutta of Rabbi Joshua, and the neo-Hebraic apocalypses. The attempt to write an archaic Hebrew is marred by the presence of Rabbinical and novel terms. Reference to events or things only known to later times is combined with the pretension of an ancient chronicle. The country and the date of the author are uncertain, but probabilities point to Italy, where in the ninth and tenth centuries Jewish culture flourished, and where both Arabic and Latin works were well known in the Ghettos. The transcription of foreign names, the frequent introduction of the names of places in Italy, the acquaintance with Roman history, and the fact that Italian Jews are among the first to recognize Yosippon favor this theory. It is fitting that the country where Josephus wrote his history should also have produced a Jewish imitation of his work. Yosippon indeed was soon translated into Arabic, and its narratives and legends passed into the current stock of Ghetto history. The book was swollen by later additions, which Zunz has proved to belong to the twelfth century. One Yerahmeel ben Shelomoh who flourished in that epoch is mentioned in an early manuscript as a compiler of Yosippon and other histories; and it is possible that he was himself responsible for parts of the work in its present form.