Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 4:06 pmI'm curious, is there anything to suggest that Josephus expected that there would be the Davidic Messiah who was still to come?
I think there are hints of it, yes. In his Antiquities of the Jews:
Book 7, Chapter 2:
2. When these things were brought to this conclusion, all the principal men of the Hebrew people came to David to Hebron, with the heads of thousands, and other rulers, and delivered themselves up to him, putting him in mind of the good-will they had borne to him in Saul's lifetime, and the respect they then had not ceased to pay him when he was captain of a thousand, as also that he was chosen of God by Samuel the prophet, he and his sons...
Samuel was the prophet who had anointed David as king (1 Samuel 16). Josephus describes the chosen as being David "and his sons".
Book 7, Chapter 4:
But God appeared to Nathan that very night, and commanded him to say to David... when he had lived a long life, there should be a temple built by a son of his, who should take the kingdom after him, and should be called Solomon, whom he promised to provide for, as a father provides for his
son, by preserving the kingdom for his son's posterity, and delivering it to them; but that he would still punish him, if he sinned, with diseases and barrenness of land. When David understood this from the prophet, and was overjoyful at this knowledge of the sure continuance of the dominion to his posterity, and that his house should be splendid, and very famous, he came to the ark, and fell down on his face, and began to adore God, and to return thanks to him for all his benefits, as well for those that he had already bestowed upon him in raising him from a low state, and from the employment of a shepherd, to so great dignity of dominion and glory; as for those also which he had promised to his posterity...
Might Josephus had thought that God's promise to David had failed in his descendants? Maybe. But he seems to be alluding to verses that suggest that God had promised David that his descendants would rule.