Josephus’s Judean War

When the fourth‐century Church Father Eusebius needed proof that Judeans had forfeited their ancient heritage, he turned to Josephus’s Judean War. He quoted whole passages on the miseries of the Judeans, especially the cannibalism‐inducing famine that preceded Jerusalem’s destruction, because, he said, they had killed Christ (Hist. eccl. 2.6, 26; 3.5–6; see Chapter 23 by S. Inolowcki in this volume). Eusebius’s predecessors had used the Judean War with diffidence, preferring to borrow Apion’s polemics or to nibble off the bits of the Antiquities that mentioned Jesus, James, or the Baptist. Writing with the anxious confidence of the newly rising Church, by contrast, Eusebius took hold of Josephus’s famous history and boldly repurposed it. Who knew that the unimpeachably accredited Judean (3.9–10) actually proved Christian claims? Eusebius’s daring move launched Josephus’s posthumous career as honorary “Jew for Jesus” and single‐handedly rewrote the Companion to the New Testament. Like Eusebius’s History, Josephus’s Judean War would soon be translated into Latin, a treatment not accorded his other works for two centuries (the Life never), ensuring its accessibility in the Christian West.