JOSPEHUS

 English Translation (1737)

 "Dr. Whitby well observes, no small part of the evidence for the truth of the Christian religion does depend upon the 'completions' of the prophecies, and it is believed 'Josephus' history' furnishes a record of 'their exact completions' " (pg. 589)
 

William Whiston
(1667-1752)

Fellow of Cambridge college, Clare; Newton's successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Pioneer of  geology, and Creation Science; Expelled for speculative and controversial theology

Wars of the Jews - English Translation (1737) | BIO

• Jack Fruchtman, Jr. - Apocalyptic Politics: A Study in Late Eighteenth-Century English Republican Millennialism (1983) "In 1706, William Whiston, Boyle lecturer for 1707, declared in An Essay on the Revelation of Saint John that the beast would be slain as early as 1716.  When his prediction failed to materialize, he neither despaired nor changed his mined.  In the thiries and forties, he was still convined that the millennial paradise was imminent, perhaps only some twenty years off."

(On Daniel's Seventy Weeks)
"How general the reference of the prophecy then was to a future destruction of the city, appears from the express observation of Josephus, that even the zealots had no doubt of the correctness of this interpretation. The same interpretation is found also in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Gemarah." (P. 215.)

(On the Significance of A.D. 70):
"Josephus speaks so, that it is most evident he was fully satisfied that God was on the Romans' side, and made use of them now for the destruction of the Jews, which was for certain the true state of this matter, as the prophet Daniel first, and our Saviour himself afterwards had clearly foretold.

See Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 64, etc. (Wars of the Jews, VI,II,1)

"That these calamities of the Jews, who were our Savior’s murderers, were to be the greatest that had ever been s nee the beginning of the world, our Savior had directly foretold, Matthew 24:21; Mark 13:19; Luke 21:23, 24; and that they proved to be such accordingly, Josephus is here a most authentic witness." (Wars Preface, Footnotes, 5)

(On The Fulfillment of Deut. 28:68)
This was an eminent completion of God's ancient threatening by Moses, that if they apostatized from obedience to his laws, they should be "sold unto their enemies for bondmen and bondwomen." (Deut xviii. 68.) But one thing here is peculiarly remarkable, that Moses adds, - Though they should be "sold" for slaves, yet "no man should buy them;" i.e either they should have none to redeem them from this sale into slavery; or rather that the slaves to be sold should be more than were the purchasers of them, and so they should be sold for little or nothing; which is what Josephus here affirms to have been the case at this time." (Wars of the Jews, VI,VIII,2)

(On The Responsibility of the Jews for the Desolation - According to Daniel 9:26)
That these seditious Jews were the direct occasions of their own destruction, and of the conflagration of their city and temple, and that Titus earnestly and constantly laboured to save both, is here and everywhere most evident in Josephus." (Wars of the Jews, VI,II,4)

(On The "Seventy Weeks")
"This is a very remarkable day indeed, the seventeenth of Panemus, [Tammuz,] A.D. 70, when, according to Daniel's prediction, 606 years before, the Romans "In half a week caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease," Dan. ix. 27; for from the month of February, A.D. 66, about which time Vespasian entered on this war, to this very time, was just three years and a half.

See Bishop Lloyd's Tables of Chronology, published by Mr. Marshall, on this year. Nor is it to be omitted, what year nearly confirms this duration of the war, that four years before the war begun was somewhat above seven years five months before the destruction of Jerusalem, ch. 5. sect. 3." (Wars of the Jews, VI,II,1)

(On The Famines in the First Century)
"5. This further account of the benefactions of Izates and Helena to the Jerusalem Jews which Josephus here promises is, I think, no where performed by him in his present works. But of this terrible famine itself in Judea, take Dr. Hudson’s note here: — "This (says he) is that famine foretold by Agabus, Acts 11:28, which happened when Claudius was consul the fourth time; and not that other which happened when Claudius was consul the second time, and Cesina was his colleague, as Scaliger says upon Eusebius, p. 174." Now when Josephus had said a little afterward, ch. 5. sect. 2, that "Tiberius Alexander succeeded Cuspius Fadus as procurator," he immediately subjoins, that" under these procurators there happened a great famine in Judea." Whence it is plain that this famine continued for many years, on account of its duration under these two procurators. Now Fadus was not sent into Judea till after the death of king Agrippa, i.e. towards the latter end of the 4th year of Claudius; so that this famine foretold by Agabus happened upon the 5th, 6th, and 7th years of Claudius, as says Valesius on Euseb. II. 12. Of this famine also, and queen Helena’s supplies, and her monument, see Moses Churenensis, p. 144, 145, where it is observed in the notes that Pausanias mentions that her monument also. " (Antiquities Footnotes, p. 2049-2050)

(On The False Prophets in the First Century)
"Of these Jewish impostors and false prophets, with many other circumstances and miseries of the Jews, till their utter destruction, foretold by our Savior, see Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 58-75. Of this Egyptian impostor, and the number of his followers, in Josephus, see Acts 21:38. (Antiquities Footnotes, p. 2053)

(On The Relationship Between Rome and Jerusalem)
"22. We have here one eminent example of Nero’s mildness and goodness in his government towards the Jews, during the first five years of his reign, so famous in antiquity; we have perhaps another in Josephus’s own Life, sect. 3; and a third, though of a very different nature here, in sect. 9, just before. However, both the generous acts of kindness were obtained of Nero by his queen Poppea, who was a religious lady, and perhaps privately a Jewish proselyte, and so were not owing entirely to Nero’s own goodness." (Antiquities Footnotes, Book XX, Ch. 8 p. 2055)

(On Matthew 24:15, The Abomination of Desolation)
"Havercamp says here :- "This is a remarkable place; and Tertullian truly says that the entire religion of the Roman camp almost consisted in worshipping the ensigns, in swearing by the ensigns, and in preferring the ensigns before all the [other] gods." (Wars of the Jews, VI,VI,1)

"There may another very important, and very providential, reason be here assigned for this strange and foolish retreat of Cestius; which, if Josephus had been now a Christian, he might probably have taken notice of also; and that is, the affording the Jewish Christians in the city an opportunity of calling to mind the prediction and caution given them by Christ about thirty-three years and a half before, that "when they should see the abomination of desolation" [the idolatrous Roman armies, with the images of their idols in their ensigns, ready to lay Jerusalem desolate] "stand where it ought not;" or, "in the holy place;" or, "when they should see Jerusalem any one instance of a more unpolitic, but more providential, compassed with armies;" they should then "flee to the mound conduct than this retreat of Cestius visible during this whole rains." By complying with which those Jewish Christians fled the siege of Jerusalem; which yet was providentially such a "great to the mountains of Perea, and escaped this destruction. See tribulation, as had not been from the beginning of the world to that time; no, Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 69, 70. Nor was there, perhaps, nor ever should be."--Ibid. p. 70, 71." (Footnote to Wars, II, XIX, 6,7)

(On II Thessalonians 2:2)
"{Greek} is here, and in many other places of Josephus, immediately at hand; and is to be so expounded.    2 Thess. ii. 2, where some falsely pretended that St. Paul had said, either by word of mouth or by an epistle, or by both, "that the day of Christ was immediately at hand;" for still St. Paul did then plainly think that day not many years future." (Whiston's Josephus, Ant. bk. xviii. c. ix. sec. 2)

"Since Josephus still uses the Syro-Macedonian month Xanthicus for the Jewish month Nisan, this eighth, or, as Nicephorus reads it, this ninth of Xanthicus or Nisan was almost a week before the Passover, on the fourteenth; about which time we learn from St. John that many used to go 'out of the country to Jerusalem to purify themselves,' John 11:55, with 12:1; in agreement with Josephus also, B. V. ch. 3. sect. 1. And it might well be, that in the sight of these this extraordinary light might appear."  (6,5,3)