To the same motive must be attributed the historian’s reticence on the subject of a Messiah. The words addressed to the serpent: “It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,”[32] occasion no allusion to a future deliverer, nor yet the prophecies of Balaam; Jacob’s blessing is omitted; the oracle which foretold the coming of a world-ruler out of Judæa is interpreted of Vespasian.[33] On the other hand, there are a few passages which suggest that Josephus did not regard the fulfilment of prophecy as closed with the destruction of Jerusalem, and that he may have entertained a belief in a Messianic era involving the downfall of Rome, of which he dared not speak openly. On Balaam he writes (_Ant._ IV. 6. 5 [125]): “From the accomplishment of all these things in accordance with his prediction one may conjecture what will happen in the future”; and again, in the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (_Ant._ X. 10. 4 [210]): “Daniel also showed the king the meaning of the stone, but I have not thought proper to relate this, my duty being to describe past, not future, events,” while curious enquirers are referred to the prophetical book. In his public life as statesman and general Josephus scarcely deserves the hard names of traitor and renegade. Involved in early manhood in the rush of events arising out of a popular movement which had long been gathering force, with which he did not sympathize, which he could not stem and vainly tried to direct, realizing from the first the hopelessness of combating the Roman legions, and anxious to find some means of compromise by which to save his country from ruin, he nevertheless accepted the post with which he was entrusted, and threw himself into the task of organizing, to the best of his ability, the defences of Galilee, so long as resistance was possible; while he devoted the energies of his later life, when his position might have tempted him to disown his nation, to writing its history and defending his countrymen against the slanders of a malignant world. * * * * * On the position of Josephus as _a historian_, widely different opinions have been held, from that of Jerome who extolled him as a “Greek Livy,” to the criticisms of some modern writers who have accused him of bias and gross misrepresentation.