Josephus Closes His History of the Jewish People

Josephus ends his twenty-volume history of the Jewish people with a list, a boast, and a confession. The list is of every high priest from Aaron to the destruction of the Temple. The boast is that no one alive could have written this book but him. The confession is that it took him far longer than he expected.

In Antiquities XX, Josephus tallies eighty-three high priests spanning from the wilderness tabernacle to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Thirteen served during the wilderness period and the early settlement of the land. Eighteen served from Solomon's Temple through the Babylonian exile, a span of four hundred and sixty-six years. After the return from Babylon, fifteen more served during the period of Persian and Greek rule. Then came the Hasmoneans, who held both the kingship and the high priesthood simultaneously, a break from all previous tradition that lasted until Herod seized power and began appointing high priests at will, turning what had been a lifetime office into a political tool.

Under Herod and the Roman governors who followed, the high priesthood changed hands with disturbing frequency. Twenty-eight men held the office in roughly one hundred and seven years. The last was Phanas ben Samuel, a man Josephus despises. During the revolt, the Zealots chose Phanas by lot from a priestly family, even though he had no idea how to perform the duties. Josephus calls it a mockery of the office.

Then Josephus steps back and reflects on his own work. He has covered Jewish history from the creation of the world to the twelfth year of Nero's reign, drawing on the Hebrew scriptures, his own experience as a participant in the war, and records no other historian had access to. He claims the work contains sixty thousand lines. He says that if God permits, he will write a condensed version, plus a separate work on Jewish theology and the reasoning behind Jewish law. Whether he ever completed those projects, no one knows. The Antiquities ends here, at the edge of the war that would consume everything Josephus spent twenty books describing.