Lessons about Jews from the Life of Josephus - Essay Example

It is widely known that no one can slave for two masters since they will tend to serve one and despise the other. Jewish culture was at the state of serving two masters since Josephus was a Soldier, a priest and at the same time a scholar. Could he be able to perform all the three roles for the Jews society with a significant success? In this article, I am going to analyze the lessons learned from the context and structure of the Jews during the writing of the life of Josephus.

According to the concept of the life of a soldier, he must be committed to his work, train diligently to tackle hardship, attacks and any ambush from enemies. The contrary was true about the Jewish society and specifically the Jewish Army. Joseph was not that steadfast to be appointed the commander of the forces of Jews since he had failed to persuade the Roman emperor to release the priests who had been held hostage by Nero. The Jewish people were not organized since they choose a very young inexperienced commander with conflicting roles in the society.

Another lesson learned from the Jewish people is that they failed to distinguish a priest, a scholar, and a soldiers roles. There is no connection between the functions of priests and troops in a nation. Jews did not have a ruler who was steadfast and who could offer sound decisions regarding military attempt to attack Rome. There were no investigations about the Roman Emperors Soldiers and combat strategies hence the Jews went blindly without a workable plan. Lack of planning is evident when Josephus returned home after accomplishing his mission in Rome. What exactly happened? Josephus was drafted into the role of the commander of the Galilee revolutionary forces it is also outlined that in the forces, he spent too much time dealing with internal factions than engaging in fights with the Roman army. The choice of Josephus into becoming the Galilee Revolutionary commander was the onset of the downfall of Jewish community and destruction of the Temple after the failure of the Jews to surrender to the Romans.

Also, amongst Jews were people with selfish gains like Josephus in the Army since the onset of the fight against the Roman combat group. From top to bottom of the soldiers were inexperienced, coward soldiers like Josephus who later made the all soldiers to hide instead of fighting Vespasian. The Jewish soldiers did not have skills of no retreat and no surrender since the Josephus the commander was a coward and a traitor to his community after accepting to release information about the formality of Jewish forces. Lack of plan, good leadership, training, and self-confidence had entangled the Jewish community hence made them be overpowered by Vespasian of Rome.

Therefore, the major points leaned from the Jews is that there was a poor choice of commanders in the forces, conflicting of roles since people served duo-roles like Josephus, lack of training among the forces, low-self motivation and having people traitors in the military. In addition, since Josephus offered an accurate vision of Vespasian, we learn that the Jews did not understand that Josephus was more of a priest than a soldier hence was not supposed to join the forces and release the information that Vespasian was to rise and conquer Jerusalem. The information that Vespasian would rise and conquer Jerusalem was reliable, and the Jews knew it, but they assumed and led to the destruction of the temple.

Work Cited

Goldberg, G J. The Life of Flavius Josephus, www.josephus.org/life.htm. Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.