The _Jewish War_ (_Bellum Judaicum_) _B.J._ or _B._ The Treatise _Against Apion_ _Ap._ The _Life_ _Vita_ or _V._ Schürer, _Jewish People in the Time of_ _Jesus Christ_ (_JPTC_) _circa_ (“about” of dates) _c._ References, _e.g._ _Ant._ XVII. 6.5 f. (171-181). The figures 6.5 f. refer to the older division, found in all editions (Niese’s included), of the books into sections (6 or vi) and subsections (5 and following subsection). The bracketed figures (171-181) indicate the smaller divisions first introduced by Niese. SELECTIONS FROM JOSEPHUS INTRODUCTION Life Josephus, son of Matthias the priest, and on his mother’s side claiming descent from the royal Hasmonæan house—or Flavius Josephus, to give him the name which he adopted out of gratitude to his Imperial patrons—was born in the first year of the Emperor Caligula, A.D. 37-38. St. Paul’s conversion had probably taken place a few years earlier.[1] His life of upwards of sixty years falls into two nearly equal parts, spent respectively in Palestine and in Rome. The Palestinian portion, again, is sharply divided into the pre-war period (to A.D. 65), of which we know comparatively little, and the great four years’ war (A.D. 66-70), of which we know a great deal. Of his precocious youth, when, if we may believe him, Rabbis flocked to hear the wisdom of the boy of fourteen; how he himself two years later “did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint,” making trial successively of the three sects of his nation, and ending his education by three years passed as an ascetic with a hermit in the wilderness; how on his return to Jerusalem at the age of nineteen he joined the popular and influential party of the Pharisees; of the one outstanding incident of his early manhood, his visit to Rome at the age of twenty-six—of all these things we may read in his own words.[2] Although he finally threw in his lot with the Pharisees, we may judge from the three years’ stay with Ban(n)us, the specially full account which he gives of the Essenes,[3] and other indications, that the tenets and communistic life of that order left a lasting impression. If we may again attempt a synchronism with events in the life of St. Paul, we may say that the Rabbis were listening to the boy about the time of the first Council of the Church at Jerusalem, he was receiving his schooling during the third missionary journey, and his return to Jerusalem nearly coincided with the arrest of the Apostle in that city.