Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian of a priestly family, who wrote largely in Greek, although his native language was Aramaic; indeed it was in this language that he wrote his account of the war against the Romans, a war in which he played an active role, and which ended in the sack of the Temple in Jerusalem. This work was written after 70AD, and translated into Greek. His work on Jewish history, the Jewish Antiquities, was written in Greek, and in part gives a much fuller account of the events up to 66AD, the year in which he had returned to Judaea after a period in Rome. Both works are hugely important for Jewish history, and as a 'classical' Jewish account of the earliest years of Christianity served, and still serve, as a counterweight to the exclusively Christian account of the period.