Every allowance being made for our author’s defects, the _importance_ of his work is unquestionable. His writings bridge the gulf between sacred and profane literature; they bring the Jewish nation out of its isolation into the main current of world history. The task which he set himself could only be accomplished by a Jew, and few Jews possessed the requisite qualifications of a wide outlook and an intimate knowledge of the world and of Greek literature. His detachment from his nation and other characteristics which may appear as deficiencies in the man are not without their advantages for the historian. For the O.T. period we may consult him as a store-house of Rabbinical and Alexandrian lore, though his acquaintance with Palestinian tradition is considered by experts[41] to have been as superficial as, judged by his interpretation of proper names, was his knowledge of Hebrew. But it is only when we come down to about the last century before our era and to the N.T. period itself that his evidence acquires supreme importance. Here he gives us the background of Jewish and world history in the time of our Lord and the infant Church; without his labours such a work as Schürer’s _Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_ could not have been written. Some figures which in the N.T. are little more than names become clothed with life; side-lights are cast on others with which we are more familiar. We may follow in detail the story, told with all the moving pathos of Greek tragedy, of the rise of Herod the Great to the height of his fame and of the nemesis which blasted his domestic happiness. We have full and lifelike portraits of Roman governors and generals, comparable with the slighter sketches in the Gospels and Acts; on the one hand we may read of the causes of the unpopularity of Pilate[42] and of his successors, the last of the procurators, whose corrupt administration and shameless peculation precipitated the war,[43] on the other of high-minded governors like Petronius,[44] claiming kinship with similar noble characters in the N.T.