Josephus and the cave

The Galilee is on the itinerary of most Jews and Christians visiting the Holy Land for the first or second time, but newcomers, or even veterans, rarely go to a modest site in the Lower Galilee called Yodfat, or in Greek, Jotapata. This is one of the many places in Israel (including Masada, Gamla, Jerusalem) which one should not visit without Josephus' Jewish War in hand. There is less to see there than at other sites, but it was there, in a cave, that the young Joseph son of Matthias, the precocious, aristocratic Jewish general, began the process of becoming Josephus the historian, prophet and theologian.

Jotapata today is marked by many caves and cisterns dating from the first century. There is an especially large cave which is shown to visitors as "The Cave", that is, the underground cavern in which the formative drama of Josephus' life was played out. The identification may be fabulous, but the story is not. Josephus himself is our only source for it (Jewish War, Book 3, chapters 341-391), but he has obviously given us some version of the truth. Although his story has been turned against him to incriminate him of the worst kind of treachery, he