Herodotus 'Antiquities Of The Jews'

In this Essay, I will distinguish the characteristics of a `history` by referring to the works of Herodotus’ ‘Histories’ and Josephus` ‘the Antiquities of the Jews´. I will do so by defining the term history and analysing and comparing both authors´ approaches to recording history. In ancient Greek, historia means “learning through research, narration of what is learned”1 the term is derived from historéō, meaning “to learn through research, to inquire”1, a verb stemming from hístōr meaning “one who knows, the expert, the judge”1. The more modern definition of history is “a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, culture or person”2. Both authors have different approaches of how

Herodotus, known as ´the first historian´ or ´the father of history´, was a Greek historian who wrote the nine-volume ´Histories´ circa 440 BC on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars 490 BC and 480-479 BC. The Greek believed that historia requires much research. Herodotus states that he records history “so that the actions of people will not fade with time”3. Herodotus reports only what he has been told by interviewing and collecting stories from various people, be they fact or fable, passed on from generation to generation. He wrote down different views and tried to verify them through recorded texts. Herodotus puts an emphasis on research and viewing events from different accounts. He also recorded stories that he himself did not believe. In Herodotus´ ´Histories´ he writes about the history and the origins of the conflict between Greece and Persia, an event that unlike most events written about, did not happen too long ago, as to romanticise it or riddle it with fiction, like the Trojan War circa 1189 BC. Furthermore, he did not incorporate the Gods and their influence into his writing, an example being the Trojan War, in which the

Josephus not only writes about historical and political proceedings but also religious accounts. Furthermore he also includes his own accounts of the War between the Jews and the Romans. He first fought against the Romans during the first Jewish-Roman War until his surrender to the Romans during 64 AD when he joined the Roman side, adopting the emperor´s family name Flavius. One of Josephus reasons for writing the ´Antiquities of the Jews´ was that he himself was part of it, saying “For since I was myself interested in that war which we Jews had with the Romans, and knew my self its particular actions, and what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw that others perverted the truth of those actions in their writings”6 leading him to write about his accounts for others twisted the truth about the event. Josephus also includes a lot of religious stories such as the story of Adam and Eve, Moses, and God’s power for rewarding the good and punishing the bad. His motives for writing his history, apart from being personally involved in the event, were to honour those involved, like emperor Vespasian, the purpose however for his work was to convey God’s providence of rewarding the righteous and punishing the