In Books I-X the narrative closely follows the Biblical account down to the Babylonian captivity; XI carries on the story to Alexander the Great; XII to the death of Judas Maccabæus (161 B.C.); XIII contains the history of the Hasmonæan house to the death of Queen Alexandra (67 B.C.); XIV the intervention of Pompey and the Romans and the accession of Herod the Great (37 B.C.), whose reign (37-4 B.C.) fills XV, XVI and the first half of XVII; the rest of XVII comprises the reign of Archelaus (4 B.C. to A.D. 6); XVIII, XIX and XX cover the remainder of the period of the Gospels and the Acts, including notices of Quirinius, Pilate, Tiberius, Herod the Tetrarch, and the two later Herods; the greater part of XIX is occupied with a full, but irrelevant, account of the assassination of the emperor Gaius and the accession of Claudius (A.D. 41); XX summarizes the events to the outbreak of the war (A.D. 66).
As regards the historian's authorities for the first half of his work, the main source was the Greek Bible ("the Septuagint"), occasional use being made of the Hebrew. This was supplemented by (1) legends and commentary, drawn, in part at least, from Rabbinic tradition (Haggadah and Halachah); (2) Hellenistic reproductions of the Biblical history by Alexandrians such as Demetrius and Artapanus; (3) secular historians and non-Biblical documents such as Berosus, the annals of Tyre, etc. The number of authorities named under this last head is considerable, but it is probable that many of them were known to Josephus only through the great Universal History of Nicolas of Damascus, the friend of Herod the Great and Augustus, to which he is largely indebted throughout the whole of Ant. For the centuries following the Captivity his authorities are unfortunately scanty and of little value. From the Captivity to Antiochus Epiphanes his main sources are the LXX books of
