Josephus' Lineage

This graph of Josephus' lineage [right column] is a historical reconstruction based on information in the opening paragraph of his autobiography & other works. He claims to have recorded his genealogy "as I have found it described in the public records" [Life 1]. But when coordinated with historical information about the Hasmonean dynasty that he himself reports in his other works [left four columns] there are some obvious major generational discrepancies in his family tree. Josephus' count of his ancestors' generations would make him a fourth cousin of Herod's 2nd wife, Mariamne, who died sixty-eight years before he was born! Josephus' reports of his own experiences make it more probable that he was at most a sixth or, more likely, a seventh cousin of his near contemporary Herod Agrippa II, who was king of Iturea [southern Lebanon] in the decades surrounding the Jewish-Roman war of 66-70 CE.

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