Jerusalem’s Traitor: Josephus, Masada and the Fall of Judea

Description

When the Jews revolted against Rome in AD 66 Josephus, an aristocrat from Jerusalem, was made a general in his nation’s army, despite having been a favourite of Nero’s wife Poppaea. Captured by the Romans, he saved his life by a prophesy that their commander Vespasian would become emperor, and running a spy ring inside Jerusalem. Of vital importance to anyone interested in Jewish or early Christian history, he is our only source for the destruction of the Jewish capital and the Temple, for the Jews’s last stand at Masada, and for a war of extermination that amounted to a holocaust. He has also left us an mazingly frank portrait of himself and his colourful, sometimes nightmarish, life.