Customer Reviews

Josephus: The Essential Works

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The works of Josephus are the most important writings we have to understand the background and history of the Bible. Yet, trying to read Josephus' wordy prose is one of the most excruciating experiences I ever encountered.

Dr. Maier's translation and commentary on Josephus is one of 3 modern translations I own, but is the only one I have used for the last 5 years. It brought Josephus to life for me and allowed me to read and understand this valuable primary source.

Dr. Maier's work is generously accented with maps and illustrations and features a translation of Josephus that is abridged and therefore readable. Dr. Maier can be trusted to weed out the useless verbosity of the original text, as he is a leading scholar on early Roman Imperial history.

Sell your other versions of Josephus and buy this one and then you may actually start to use Josephus to accent your study of the Bible.

I have long owned a translation by Thackeray of the complete works of Josephus in nine volumes from the Loeb Classical Library. Later, I purchased this abridgement and translation by Paul L. Maier of Flavius Josephus' "Jewish Antiquities" and "The Jewish War" which will be useful to many. Please note, this book is available in a 1990 edition and a 1995 edition. Recently, I obtained a copy of "The New Complete Works of Josephus," with Maier as commentator and editor published in 1999. So, in large measure the question I will try to answer here is, who will be served by owning one or the other of these books. With one exception, I no longer recommend the Loeb series as they are superseded in my opinion by Maier's "new complete works." The exception would be for a scholar using these works for research where the multiple volumes format is very convenient albeit expensive. The "essential works" come in at four hundred and sixteen pages of easy to read prose. The "new complete works" is eleven hundred and fifty two pages long. Substantial extra material including Josephus's "Against Apion" and "Vita" are included along with useful commentary by Maier. The translation is the original to English by William Whiston from the 18th Century. However, Maier has brought it linguistically and grammatically up to date which makes it accessible to most readers.

Josephus is by far our most important ancient source outside of the Bible regarding the history of Judaism and the Israelites up until the end of the first great Jewish Revolt circa 70 CE. On the one hand, if what you are looking for is a narrative history that parallels the Bible through the Babylonian captivity plus a basic history of Judea thereafter up to about 70 CE including Judea's interactions with the Hellenistic Empires and the Roman Empire, the "essential works" should suffice. On the other hand, if you need to back check Josephus against other scholarly works or need substantially more detail in either the pre or post exilic eras, the "complete works" ought to be your choice. In the event that you do not accept the Bible as a reliable source of the pre-exilic history of Israel, the first two hundred pages of the "essential works" may amount to, at worst in the opinion of some readers, no more than a paraphrased rendition of sacral mythology.

That many if not most still view the Old Testament as an accurate presentation of history from the creation up to the Babylonian exile and the return should be self evident. Therefore, if you subscribe to the position that the Old Testament is historically relevant and you need to fill in the blanks from the exile to the end of the first great Jewish revolt against the Romans, the "essential works" will be an invaluable read. If your interests are scholarly in any way, the "new complete works" is mandatory. The "essential works" will be way too stripped out of detail to serve as a useful reference source. Furthermore, the extra material and commentary in the "new complete works" may provide you with a fuller appreciation of Josephus and his place in historiography. Regardless of which of the two books you choose to suit your purposes, you will be reading the work of a fine scholar and a most significant ancient historian. In my opinion, each work will be edifying to its appropriate audience. Just make sure you pick the right book to fit your needs.

This is a good introduction to the works of Josephus that are really quite crucial to understanding Second Temple Judaism, the Qumran sect, and the fate of the Jews in the War with Rome. Scholars of both history and religion alike will benefit from this book.

Having read the complete Bible in the past, reading the works of Josephus helped put some of the events in the old testament into better perspective and opened the door to some new thinking and understanding.
Not particularly an easy read, but then reading the Bible has always been challenging and Josephus' version as put together by the author Paul Maier is challenging as well and very educational.

G. D. Villalba

Some translations of Josephus are twice the size of the bible. Not so with "Josephus: The Essential Works by Flavius Josephus, Paul L. Maier." It's easy to understand, filled with maps and illustrations, and interesting enough to read like a novel. I keep it handy as a reference guide and use it alongside other study materials to help me make sense of Jewish history. Written for the layman, I have compared sections with the unabridged versions and found the translation to be simple, yet complete.

I purchased this volume for a graduate program in New Testament since it was required reading. To be upfront, I am studying Josephus at a fairly high level, so I had high expectations of this book going in. In fact, because I bought it used, I did not take note that it was a condensation of Josephus, so I was quite surprised and disappointed when it arrived. Nevertheless, I'll point out some strengths and weaknesses and then offer some recommendations.

First for the positives. The book is marketed for pastors who presumably would like a better idea of biblical backgrounds for their own ministries. With that goal in mind, the book probably meets its aim. The translation is simple, perhaps annoyingly so, but that makes for quick reading. There are copious pictures and side bars that point out aspects of Josephus's career and life, but mostly the pictures and sidebars serve the purpose of Bible backgrounds, not really backgrounds on Josephus himself. This material could be helpful for someone whose main interest is Bible study, not Josephus study.

Now for the negatives. The "condensation" (euphemism for abridgment?) will frustrate the more advanced reader. While it is easy to get through the book quickly, if your goal is to study Josephus and his writings, the condensation will only hinder that undertaking. For example, the author leaves out many speeches, saying in the introduction that they are obviously contrived. While it is true that Josephus did contrive the speeches he records, these portions are integral to the argument of his works. They afford him the opportunity to support his thesis. Another major frustration with the condensation is that the end of Antiquities is merged with the first two books of Jewish War. This downplays the differences between parallel accounts of the same events and people in either work, even though these are important for discerning Josephus' respective theses in each case. Further, as mentioned above, the side bars and pictures are nice, but again, if your goal is to understand Josephus, you will be disappointed.

The translation and condensation ultimately may do some disservice even to those who are reading Josephus for understanding the Bible or especially the New Testament. The author seems to tailor the text so that it follows what a modern Christian would most be interested in reading. Unfortunately this gives the reader the impression that Josephus doesn't have his own axes to grind but is merely relating historical facts. Further, with the speeches and some of the longer discourses removed, it is more difficult to understand Josephus' larger goals. This makes it very easy, then, to isolate Josephus' claims and to put them into the service of biblical interpretation. But this removes the important step of understanding Josephus' Roman environment, Roman audience, and rhetorical goals before relating his material to the Bible and its claims. (On this see Mason's Josephus and the New Testament, 2d ed., on which I am dependent.)

In the end, if you want an introductory reading of Josephus' two most important works, this book will serve you well. If you want to understand Josephus more on his own terms, then a full text option would be of more use. In addition, I would not recommend this volume as useful for biblical backgrounds. Instead, a more profitable way forward would be to use volumes such as Zondervan's Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, IVP's Bible Background Commentary, or IVP's Dictionary of New Testament Background. Such works would synthesize material found in this book and in Josephus in a much more efficient way for the pastor than would trying to read this book through. Also, for more on the relation of Josephus and the New Testament, see Mason's work Josephus and the New Testament. Mason's book seeks to pull Josephus away from being too quickly put into use for New Testament background study.

I ordered to use as a reference book to use in teaching a bible class. The reviews appeared to best suit my needs. I have not yet been able to use it, but feel it will be an aid in study and for presentation.

After reading 100 pages in about ten minutes, I wondered if Josephus really wrote as if he were a child. ie: Jack was a man. He lived in a house. He had a wife. He did something. Then, Jack died. Now replace Jack with Adam, Noah, Moses, Isaac, etc. The translator/editor takes far too much liberty with his abridgement and translation. I bought the unabridge version afterward. The writing in the full version is still easy to read and follow, but it gives a much more detailed and fuller story telling. I realize that the original is very long, and editing was necessary for this book. But, the sentence and paragraph structure was dumbed down too much. Also, the current editor adds too much correlation to Jesus. He may be unaware of this, but not all readers are Christian. I bought the book for Josephus' telling of Jewish history (as the title of Josephus' major works would indicate). Not Paul Maier's idea of what is important in Josephus' landmark undertaking.
I would recommend this book to a Christian parent who may want to supplment a child's reading of Biblical stories. I would not recommend this to an adult who is interested in expanding their knowledge of Biblical history.