“With us, then, there are not myriads of books, discordant and conflicting, but only two and twenty, containing the record of all time, which are justly believed to be divine.”
“And of these, five are those of Moses, which contain the laws and the tradition of the origin of mankind, down to his own death. This period falls little short of three thousand years.”
“And from the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, who was king of the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets who came after Moses wrote what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life.”
“And from Artaxerxes until our own time everything has indeed been recorded, but it has not been deemed worthy of the like credit with what went before, because the exact succession of the prophets did not continue.”
“And it is plain in deed how we approach our own writings; for though so great an age has already passed, no one has dared to add anything to them, nor to take anything from them, nor to alter anything; but it is inborn in all Jews, straightway from their very first birth, to regard them as decrees of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, gladly to die for them.”
Let these things also of the writer be here usefully set forth. Another not ignoble labour has also been accomplished by the man, concerning the sovereignty of reason, which some have entitled “Maccabean,” in that it contains the struggles of those Hebrews who, in the so-called Maccabean writings, played the man on behalf of piety toward the Deity.
And at the end of the twentieth book of the Antiquities the same man indicates that he had purposed to compose in four books, according to the ancestral opinions of the Jews, concerning God and his being, and concerning the laws — why, according to them, some things are permitted to be done and others are forbidden. And the same man makes mention, in his own writings, of yet other matters that he had laboured over.
In addition to these, it is reasonable also to cite the words which he has set down at the very close of the Antiquities, for the confirmation of the testimony we have received from him. Indeed, in attacking Justus of Tiberias, who like himself had attempted to write a history of the same times, on the ground that he had not written the truth, and having brought many other charges against the man, he adds these very words:
“Yet I did not fear for my own writing in the same way as you, but I delivered the books to the emperors themselves, when the events were all but still before men's eyes. For I was conscious to myself of having preserved the tradition of the truth; wherefore, expecting to obtain a testimony to it, I was not disappointed.”
“And to many others also I delivered the history, some of whom had themselves been present at the war, such as King Agrippa and certain of his kinsmen.”
“For the emperor Titus so wished that the knowledge of these deeds should be handed down to men from these works alone, that, having inscribed the books with his own hand, he commanded them to be published; and King Agrippa wrote sixty-two letters, bearing witness to the tradition of the truth.” Of these Josephus quotes two. But let the matters concerning him be set forth thus far; let us now go on to what follows.