F.C. Burkitt.--_Jewish Quarterly Review_, Vol. X, p. 207.




CHAPTER II

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AND THE JEWISH SIBYL


Great national crises usually produce an historical literature. This is
more likely to happen with the nation that wins in a war than with the
nation that loses. Thus, in the Maccabean period, historical works
dealing with the glorious struggle and its triumphant termination were
written by Jews both in Hebrew and in Greek. After the terrible
misfortune which befell the Jews in the year 70, when Jerusalem sank
before the Roman arms never to rise again, little heart was there for
writing history. Jews sought solace in their existing literature rather
than in new productions, and the Bible and the oral traditions that were
to crystallize a century later into the Mishnah filled the national
heart and mind. Yet more than one Jew felt an impulse to write the
history of the dismal time. Thus the first complete books which appeared
in Jewish literature after the loss of nationality were historical works
written by two men, Justus and Josephus, both of whom bore an active
part in the most recent of the wars which they recorded. Justus of
Tiberias wrote in Greek a terse chronicle entitled, "History of the
Jewish Kings," and also a more detailed narrative of the "Jewish War"
with Rome. Both these books are known to us only from quotations. The
originals are entirely lost. A happier fate has preserved the works of
another Jewish historian of the same period, Flavius Josephus (38 to 95