What a fun read! Josephus gives his lineage, going back to Jonathan Maccabeus on his mother's side. He was born in AD37-38 in the first year of Caligula's reign. He studied with Bannus, who seems much like John the Baptist and I would gladly assume is Essene (although Steve Mason, the king of Josephus scholarship, disagrees).
We have the usual difficulty trusting Josephus, schmoozer extraordinaire. He and Philo both regularly skew their motives as well as those of their respective parties. Reading them at some points is like listening to a mother who makes excuses for a misbehaving child, even in the face of blatant and obvious guilt. With Josephus, he gives conflicting accounts even between his own writings!
Most interesting is a night shipwrecked at sea on the way to Rome (14-15). It sounds very much like Paul's shipwreck in Acts (with a few differences) and took place at around the same time.
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