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The heart of Josephus — the ten books in which he leaves the biblical narrative behind and becomes our chief historian of the Second Temple era.
Volume 3 opens with Cyrus and the return to Zion and carries the story through Ezra and Nehemiah, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms, the decrees of Antiochus and the Hasmonean revolt, the rise and fall of the Hasmonean dynasty, the coming of Rome, the long and turbulent reign of Herod and his rebuilding of the Temple, and finally the Roman governors — closing on the eve of the revolt that would destroy Jerusalem.
These are the centuries the Talmud assumes but rarely narrates, and for most of them Josephus is the only continuous account that survives. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the high priesthood and its politics, Herod's Temple, the Jewish communities of Alexandria and Babylon, the slow collapse of Roman rule in Judea — nearly everything we know about them, we know from these pages.
Indispensable to anyone studying the Second Temple period, the Hasmoneans, or the world of Chazal.