After all these things, it is fitting not to be ignorant of Josephus himself, who contributed so much to the history before us, of whence and of what family he sprang. He again makes this clear, saying thus: “Josephus, son of Matthias, a priest from Jerusalem, who himself at the first warred against the Romans and was present of necessity at the later events.”
And he became, of the Jews of that time, the most renowned man, not only among his own countrymen but also among the Romans, so that he was honoured with the erection of a statue in the city of Rome, and the works he had laboured over were deemed worthy of the library.
He composed the whole archaeology of the Jews in twenty entire books, and the history of the Jewish war of his own time in seven; which works he testifies of himself that he delivered not only in the Greek tongue but also in his native language — a man worthy, on account of the rest, to be believed.
Two other works of his, worthy of attention, are also extant, concerning the antiquity of the Jews, in which he has composed refutations against Apion the grammarian, who at that time had written a treatise against the Jews, and against others who likewise had attempted to slander the ancestral customs of the Jewish nation.
In the former of these he sets down the number of the so-called canonical writings of the Old Testament, teaching in these very words which of them are beyond dispute among the Hebrews, as from ancient tradition: