16 A History of Judaism
Josephus went on to note in the same lament that, as a result of this
miscalculation by the Hasmonaeans, ‘the royal power which had for-
merly been bestowed on those who were High Priests by birth became
the privilege of commoners.’ He portrayed the accession to royal power
in Judaea of the Idumaean Herod the Great as a direct product of real-
politik in the Roman senate. The vote of the senate was followed
immediately by pagan sacrifices by Roman magistrates in order to ratify
the decree, which was deposited in the Roman Capitol; and Herod won
control of Jerusalem only with the aid of Roman forces. But despite
these inauspicious beginnings, and despite political insecurities caused
not least by the machinations of his own extensive family, Herod’s reign
was in some ways glorious, and the Jewish Temple was refashioned into
a magnificence which aroused wonder far beyond the Jewish world.^21
The fragility of Herod’s rule, which was founded largely on the fear
which his Jewish subjects felt for him and his secret police, became clear
with the eruption of a series of revolts upon his death. The Romans
sought to give authority to his descendants, and a small proportion of
his territories remained under their rule through to the time when
Josephus was writing. But ten years after his death Judaea itself
was entrusted to a Roman governor, with a brief to impose direct
rule, including a census for the extraction of the land tax. It was the
census which sparked an immediate uprising.
Josephus wrote with all too much hindsight about what he had seen
with his own eyes some decades later, when opposition to Roman rule
culminated in an exceptionally violent siege of Jerusalem and the total
destruction of Herod’s Temple. He sometimes wrote about this disaster
as if it had been inevitable, but in the course of his detailed narrative in
the last part of his great work, he also drew attention at times to indic-
ations to the contrary. Agrippa I, grandson of Herod, enjoyed a brief but
glorious reign as king of Judaea when Josephus was aged between four
and seven. It is unlikely to be accidental that the narrative of Agrippa’s
tortuous political career dominates the whole nineteenth book of Jos-
ephus’ Antiquities. Josephus’ history was intended to demonstrate how
glorious Jewish history had been – and, by implication, could be again,
once the Jews could be allowed to put behind them the disastrous war,
and Jerusalem, and its Temple, could be restored to their former glory.
How truthful was Josephus’ account of the origins and history of
the Jews? He insists at frequent intervals on his veracity and cites docu-
ments whenever he can to show the strength of his evidence, but there