Josephus Flavious Secret Agent First Century AD

Josephus Flavious Secret Agent First Century AD One of the Most Fascinating Characters in Ancient History was Josephus Flavius a Jew Hauled Back to Rome as a Slave Who Ended Up as an Adopted 'son' of Emperor Vespasian Lex Loeb Contributor Network . Josehus ,, himself may have been hauled back to Rome as a slave in the victory seen of spoils from the Temple of Jerusalem seen in the famous picture of the great manora recorded on the on the bas relief freize of the Arch of Titus. Josephus was taken back as a slave with other jewish slaves who would soon be building Vespasians's Coluseum in the center of Rome. Josephus was kind of brought back as a specimen sample like the indians employed in old American Wild West show. He rose to take the same of the imperial family as his last name as a freeed slave and ultimately had a statue of himself built to honor him in one of the forums of Rome. Who was this guy really? Josephus wrote many books some of which were lucky to survive the rise of christianity and the destruction of libaries following the fall of Rome. The Church sought to preserve the books of josephus because he recorded his version of the events that led to the destruction of herod's great temple and its incredibly lucrative looting by Titus. That was just some of the background that fasincated the Chruch plus possibly the only contemporary reference to Jesus in surivivn roman records and texts. The Romans were utterly facinated by the mysteries of the ancient middle east and Joshephus who was a fast learner and fluent in multiplpe languages not to mention able to read and write was rare in those times became a sort of wild west writer in his time. The Romans had difficulty understanding why the Jews rebelled against Rome for all practical purposes committing their own suicide. Rome had worked out an extremely lucrative deal with King Herod that made the whole rebellion incomprehsible to the Romans. Jews were relatively free men and not even the slaves of Rome which was more of the fate of people in other roman conquered lands and territiries. When Egypt fell to Agustus the ancient history of Egypt pretty much ended . That was not true in Jerusalem. The egyptians found themselves once again slaves to new masters and in Jeruslaem the Romans tolerated the strange foreign civilization so long as King Herod met his duty to provide a set percentage of taxable revenues. Harod built the greatest buildings that Israel had ever seen before in all of it's history with an amount of wealth that the Romans could only envy. Harod allowed Roman occupation or the Romans allowed Harod to rule in such a way that his building projects made Rome's seem almost secondary. You can see pictures of the Temple mount in Jeruslam with gigantic stones cut and fashioned to create a massive temple compound that had the deepth of wealth it was not built of Roman concrete but of real solid stone. Then after building the temple and a port that rivaled Ostia and places at Madsada and Herodium, The weath was so vast that Herod could fill the temple and homes gold and splendor rivaling or surpassing the best of Rome. Herod did it all without any major conquests the way Rome aquired substatnial weath. The secret of Harod was control of the Salt in the basin of the dead sea. Rome made its presense felt in Jerusalem mainly because of one commodity. It was salt. Salt was so valuable back in those ancient days as one of the first industrial chemicals and food preserviingi substance that it was used as money to pay legions of Roman Soldiers. Herod's first business was salt and the second was gold which he did mine but did not have to because the temple he built was attracted gifts of gold, salt and animals for sacrificial slaughter in such vast quantities that after being there to watch Herod build this bast temple complex and place out of thin air in a very short period of time and fill up iwth gold that was stamped out in to growing viiine of thin solid gold grape leaves stamped and hammered out of various foreign coins brough to the temple from the faithful from all points around the Rioman world. The golden vinesgrew out of the pores of the rocks in the walls of the temple giving ithe whole complex a shimmering golden light similar to the goldden dome of the mosque that now sits on top of Herod's temple mount in Jeruslem. .