Book Review: The New Complete Works of Josephus

What do I think of this translation of the works of Flavius Josephus published by Kregel Publications?

The book starts off with an introduction by Paul L. Maier talking about the life and times of this 1st century AD Jewish historian and talks about his writings and the metions of James the brother of Jesus and of Jesus himself, discussing the two passages in which Jesus himself is metioned in his Jewish Antiquities(Book 18, passage 3, paragraph 63 and Book 20, passage 9, paragraph 200) and stating the first part was partly interpolated and now restored to what was most likely it's original form. This book is also loaded with some commentary by Paul L. Maier. It then moves on to all of the writings of Yosef bar Mattathyahu(in Aramaic) or ben Mattathias(in Hebrew) the name Josephus was born as.

The Translation and Commentary

The translation is absolutely wonderful even if a bit antiquited.  The Life is a good read, so is his other two works Jewish Antiquities and The Jewish War. The former is his massive work presenting the history of the Jewish people from the time of creation and the patriarchs(according to Josephus) all the way up to 70 AD and the time of the Jewish-Roman war against Rome. This gives us a lot of info about the events of the Old Testament era(to a certain extent), the intertestament era and the events of the New Testament era, the time of Jesus. His Antiquities is patterned after the 20 books Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The first ten of his Antiquities, the first 10 which cover the period up to the time of the Babylonian Captivity and the last 10 which cover the periods up until the time of the late first century AD. The commentaries are also enjoyable, I especially enjoyed the one in which the metions of Jesus in Josephus are discussed and how it's stated that the vast majority of scholars see the first metion of Jesus as authentic with some Christian additions to it. Another one that I enjoyed was the one that talked about the relationship between the Jews and the Romans and the one I enjoyed the most was on Herod I (37 - 4 BC) also known as Herod the Great. His other work The Jewish War is also a great read as well. It's much more than his battle diary, since it begins in the era of the Maccabean and goes up to the fall of Masada in the 70's AD. His next work is Againist Apion which is a apologetic work in defense of Judaism against it's critics. Despite it's name, it's only in the first have 2nd book that Josephus responds to the attacks of Apion. This is also a great read as well. I personally like Antiquities the most out of all of his works
.

My Overall Thoughts

This is an excellent book, with all of Josephus' writings accessible and translated. I especially Iike the intro by Paul L. Maier who's the now retired professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University. Most of the commentaries are informative and interesting and I like the front cover of the book. The writings of Josephus provide us with a lot of valuable info about the period between the Old Testament era and the New Testament era as well as the NT era as well among other things. This book also has some charts, photos, maps and illustrations of some the places Josephus describes.  I rate this book a 9/10.  Have a great Easter.