Fatherhood Quote by Flavius Josephus

A family brag dressed up as moral bookkeeping, this line shows Josephus doing what he does best: laundering personal credibility through the language of public virtue. He wants you to hear two kinds of authority at once. First, the inherited kind Matthias carries by “nobility,” a social fact that would matter to any elite audience in Jerusalem. Second, the harder, more legible kind: “righteousness,” the reputation that plays well not just with aristocrats but with a broader religious culture that prizes law, piety, and visible integrity. Josephus stacks them so righteousness looks like the “higher commendation,” as if he’s modestly demoting birthright even while benefiting from it.

The subtext is defensive. Josephus is a man writing after catastrophe: the Jewish revolt crushed, the Temple destroyed, and his own career shadowed by accusations of collaboration with Rome. In that climate, lineage and moral standing aren’t trivia; they’re preemptive evidence. By anchoring himself in a father “in great reputation in Jerusalem,” Josephus claims an insider’s seat in the most contested room in Jewish memory. “The greatest city we have” isn’t just civic pride. It’s a bid to make Jerusalem the measure of legitimacy, and to position his narrative as coming from the center rather than the margins.

Even the slightly fussy phrasing - “not only... but” - works like legal argumentation: a careful, cumulative case. Josephus is building ethos brick by brick, because he knows readers will question the witness before they weigh the testimony.