I'm Officaly Returning to this blog

Good morning guys and gals. I'm officaly returning to this blog after about an 3 year hiatus. I'm planning on updating this blog and posting about various subjects, such as ancient and medieval history, the history of religion(religious history, especially the history of Christianity), and other things as well.  I especially plan on using this blog to be an corrective to the false claims about ancient and medieval history that abound in certain "documentary" films. Stay tune for future posts guys.

Came back from to the South Holland library

I just came back from the South Holland Public Library today guys and I got two new books Mesopotamia: Invention of the City and The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC. I'm actually revisiting the former since I got this book about three years ago but lacked the will to finish reading it whereas with the latter I've about more than halfway through the book. I've been reading the latter book by Adrian Goldsworthy ever since I went back to the library after not going there for a couple of years. During the time that I've stopped going to my neighborhood's library, I've been going downtown to the bookstore Barnes and Nobles which has been where I've got some of my books like The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The New Complete Works of Josephus and a translation of Herodotus' The Histories with a introduction by Donald Lateiner. I've also gotten some of my other books from various other places like Amazon from which I got my copy of Richard Bauckham's Jesus: A Very Short Introduction and Walter Burkert's Greek Religion and Ancient Mystery Cults which are both fascinating reads along with my copy of The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft from there as well. The book The Oxford History of the Bibical World came from my cousin R.C. Rowdy from Mississippi which I visited with my dad and some of my other family members in late June and early July of 2014. 

Now that I'm going back to my neighborhood's library, I've been reading the books they have on classical history like The Oxford Classical Dictionary, skimmed through some of Adrian Goldsworthly's other book like Ceaser: Life of a Colossus. I may also ask them if they can get a copy of the Loeb Classical Library translation of books 18 and 19 of Josephus' Jewish Antiquities later on along with possibly asking them if they can get a copy of the LCL translation of his The Jewish War. Anyway, that's it for now.

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
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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.