The Wars of the Jews

The Wars of the Jews, or Flavius Josephus's Books of the History of the Jewish War against the Romans, is a book by first-century Roman-Jewish historian, Josephus. Decsribed as 'perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history', it is divided into seven books and starts with a summary of Jewish history. Books I and II cover the capture of Jerusalem in 168 BC, to the first stages of the First Jewish–Roman War. The next five books cover the war, which happened under the rule of the Roman generals Vespasian and Titus, to the death of the last Sicarii (a splinter group of Jewish zealots who strongly opposed the Roman occupation of Judea). The book remains a valuable work for scholars and Josephus's narratives are seen to be reasonably reliable.