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Did you know that the dramatic events of 70 A.D., including the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, were witnessed and chronicled by the Jewish historian Josephus—yet remain largely unknown in many Christian circles?

Join us as we explore with Dr. Ward Sanford, author of the Cry for Jerusalem historical fiction series, how he transforms Josephus’s dense accounts into gripping novels set from 63 to 70 A.D., blending meticulous history with just enough fictional dialogue and characters to bring the first-century world to life.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode.

Marlin Detweiler:
Welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us a multi-career gentleman named Ward Sanford. He'll explain that in just a moment. But his joining us here is because of some books that he's written. But Ward, welcome.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Thank you, Marlin. It's good to be here.

Marlin Detweiler:
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your family, your education, your career, which will help us understand the statement that I made about having kind of a multi-faceted career.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. I grew up in the Midwest, in northern Indiana, and attended Purdue University and majored in the field of geology, of all things. And then went to graduate school at Penn State.

Marlin Detweiler:
I grew up not far from Penn State, right east of there.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
And got a job with the U.S. Geological Survey specializing in what they call hydrogeology, which is groundwater. And so we work, it's a very applied field. We work with states and cities and whoever is trying to use aquifers to get their water supplies from and contamination of aquifers and everything. So I did research in that field for 39 years and just recently retired.

Marlin Detweiler:
I've been retired now.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
I am almost retired.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay. LinkedIn would have told me otherwise.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah, I'm not sure LinkedIn is updated. Right. I took the buyout, so I'm not working, but almost getting paid.

Marlin Detweiler:
So are you a doge?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
I was a doge. That was a doge? Yes, doge volunteer.

Marlin Detweiler:
Very good.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
They were supposed to pay me through the rest of the year, but currently my paychecks have gotten interrupted, and my retirement paperwork is on hold.

So I guess we'll see. But yeah, I've been a Christian since school age, and even in the last 12 years, I've been part-time Christian counselor. Okay, very good. In my Christian faith as well.

Marlin Detweiler:
Very good.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
So had that perspective of science and being a Christian at the same time.

Marlin Detweiler:
So after you finished your PhD at Penn State, was that when you moved to the Washington, DC

Dr. Ward Sanford:
So the headquarters of the Geological Survey is in Fairfax County and in Reston. That's where we live.

Marlin Detweiler:
Very good, very good. Well, you have written a series that we're going to talk about in just a minute that is historic fiction around Josephus, focused on the first century, especially events around 70 A.D. Yes. But before we talk about that with some detail, tell us about your interest and what thoughts developed as you pursued writing historic fiction.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
So I've always been interested in Jerusalem. I visited Jerusalem in the year 2000, got interested in what people were saying about the Temple Mount, for example, and started seeing a lot of people either quoting Josephus for their particular view or dismissing him if they didn't like what he said. Right. So I'm like, well, that doesn't help me there.

So I decided maybe I'll try to read Josephus for myself. But if you've ever tried to do that, you pick up this big book called The Works of Josephus and you're like, wow, this is pretty dense. And it's like reading an intense history book that was written in English 300 years ago. But then I found a more modern English translation of his book called The Jewish Wars by Bob Beasley.

So I bought that, and I found this is actually much more readable. So I managed to start reading that and was amazed at the stories and the drama and the details that were presented. Because what I hadn't realized was that Josephus was not just a historian, but was intimately involved in all of the things that were happening at the time period between the Jews and the Romans.

So it's just an incredible inside perspective of everything that was going on in detail. And I was just always wondering why I never heard these stories before.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, let me back us up for just a moment before we pursue that much further, because I want to set the stage a little bit here about the whole category of historic fiction.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
And hear you talk about the perspective that you took. Veritas Press, a curriculum provider for classical Christian education, has had a lot of recommendations over the decades that we have been in business in historic fiction. And one of the things that we have observed about historic fiction is you have a broad continuum with two extremes that can be troubling.

I mentioned to you before we went on the air, the one extreme I think is well represented by a Campus Crusade, now Crew, production of the Jesus Film, where they concluded that they would not have any words come out of Jesus’ mouth that weren't recorded in Scripture. And my observation of that was the problem of making Jesus have what misled us, the viewer, the personality of Jesus, as if he were someone that spent a lot of time walking around and not interacting verbally with the people they came in contact with. I understood the value of what they were doing.

But it created another problem. The other extreme is taking great liberties in what might have been but could have significant influence on the real history that was going on. Right. And they do that. It's almost maybe this would be the other extreme—the Hollywood version of storytelling of true stories—because they like to make them a little bit more.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
How do you take on historic fiction as a category in the books that you wrote?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. Yeah, I can really speak to that. First of all, I say when someone says historical fiction, that could mean two separate end members as well. That could mean, well, I'm going to write in the time period, for example, maybe of the Civil War, but all of my characters are fictional. That could be called historical fiction.

Yeah. Another thing you might want to write about is the assassination of President Lincoln or something. And there's a whole lot of detail of history that you're trying to follow as closely as possible with very little additional input, only where necessary. Those are probably the two end members.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yep, I like that.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
My set of novels are set beginning in 63 A.D. through 70 A.D. So not only are they after the life of Jesus, they actually pick up where the New Testament ends, right where Paul ends up going to Rome. So in my situation, I'm not having to think about, am I going to actually quote Scripture or have verbiage out of Scripture, because Scripture was already written at the time.

However, it uses heavily the writings of Josephus, which give a lot of history in detail. So my perspective is I want to preserve and present as much of the history that Josephus presented because it's so incredible. You just don't want to miss out on these things. Right? So I include as much of that as possible.

On the other hand, you want to make a story that's interesting and dramatic enough that people want to read it and want to continue to read it. So you need to add a little bit of dialog and maybe two to three fictional characters in there as well.

Marlin Detweiler:
Fill out the story later, in sports metaphor?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
A commentator in sports or a little bit of artistic license.

Marlin Detweiler:
The color commentator is the one bringing a little bit of life to them.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. Right. So another rule I would say is I'm not going to include anything in the story that is clearly contradicted by what Josephus wrote as history. But for example, there are five main characters in the story, one of them being Josephus himself, who is called Yosef throughout the story because he wrote so much of it. A lot of it is about his story, which is incredible in itself. But also let me say that this story, this novel series as

widely interesting to a wide variety of audiences. Right. So I didn't want to make this novel series pro-Christian or pro-Jewish or even pro-Roman. We have several characters; a couple of them are Roman, a couple of them are Jewish. One is a Syrian who interacts a lot with each other.

And you're just reading a story in history and not trying to sell you one thing or another. However, religion is a big deal back then. And so they constantly discuss who are these Christians. They run into Christian characters. One of our characters actually runs into Paul in prison, you know, so there's a lot of that going on.

At the same time, yeah. So for example, Josephus tells us about his parents. He had an older brother named Matthew; he's one of the characters. But we decided we wanted to give him a younger sister. Right. So there's a major character that's his younger sister. He never said he had a sister, but it didn't say he didn't have a sister either.

Marlin Detweiler:
So not a contradiction, right? Known factual content.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Many know factual content and research.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Nor a fictionalization of something that might even dramatically influence it because again that would be of impact. But things to just flesh out, right. A full screen, so to speak.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. That seems to me to be the most effective way of fictionalizing and providing good readable content. Right. Many students enjoy the homeschool community, and the classical Christian education school community eats up historical fiction when it's done well.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
And I actually say, some of my best fans are high school students and high school girls who love reading this because there are a couple strong female characters in there, you know, that they love to follow.

Marlin Detweiler:
So yeah. Interesting. Where would you say your philosophy on communicating through historical fiction came from? Did it develop as you worked on it, or did you have a pretty good sense of, I can't go in either extreme as we described them earlier?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah, I would say I had that from the beginning. I've read a number of historical fictions myself. You know, I was probably influenced by Ken Follett, his stories. I mean, those are the examples of, well, this is set in World War II, but all the characters are fictional. But it made me love historical fiction in a way that I learned history this way.

Right. I read something I said, was that really true? And then you want to go look it up, and you're like, oh, I guess that was true, right?

Marlin Detweiler:
Being as easy as it is to look up too, you can do it. You could literally do it while reading.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Exactly. Type in a question and you get your answer.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, that’s fun. You know, there are a lot of pros and cons of what technology has done, but the availability of immediate, the immediacy of information is one that I've really grown to enjoy.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yes, myself as well. Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I'm going to change the order a little bit. I want to hear how your eschatology developed as a result of your writing, but let's go back into the books. So what problem were you trying to solve, or what was the motivation for what you did in the writing of the books?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
So I guess my motivation in writing the books came from reading the incredible dramatic and complex detailed things that went on in those years between, say, 65 and 70 A.D. and wondering, being in church for 50 years, why I never heard these things.

Marlin Detweiler:
Give us some examples.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Well, I figured the Romans just showed up in 70 A.D. because of a rebellion and destroyed Jerusalem. Then I learned that actually they tried this in 66, and the Jews kicked them out. So the Jews were independent from 66 to 70 A.D. It's like this is a key fact. How come I never knew that? The fact that Josephus was so involved, how he got captured by the Romans, and his thought process of how he ended up seeing himself sort of as a self-appointed liaison trying to save Jerusalem by getting Jerusalem to surrender so that the Romans wouldn't destroy it. Then, of course, he failed. And what that made him look like is one of our Jewish colleagues going over to the other side, probably giving them secret information.

So he became a traitor to the Jews for centuries. But at the same time, he wrote so much history of the Jews. We wouldn't know nearly as much about that whole time period if it wasn't for him who was the only one that wrote down all the history.

Marlin Detweiler:
So when would he have been considered this term traitor? You talked about it being a strategic move, but when would that have been the case?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
So he was—let's see. The Jews kicked out the Romans in 66. Rome started fighting back. Well, they first made the mistake of only sending one legion to try to capture Jerusalem. Then Nero was the emperor, right? He said, well, they're not going to get away with that. So he sent a better general, Vespasian, with four legions, and Vespasian being wise.

And he saw what happened to the first legion. They got ambushed when they tried to leave Jerusalem. He said, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm just going to take my time and clean up all the towns in Judea and so on. The only resistance left is Jerusalem. So at that point, Josephus is because he had been to Rome.

You know, he's a very well-educated Jew. He's fluent in Latin and Greek. Okay. So he can speak with the Romans. So they sent him up to Galilee because that's where the Romans first attacked, and that's where he ended up surviving a siege and getting captured by the Romans.

Marlin Detweiler:
So as you, this was motivated by your own personal interest?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
And by the expansion of understanding of the first century, which is so important. And I'm like you, I grew up in an environment. I grew up a Christian but in an environment that had so little appreciation for providing that historic context. And that's been the nature of Christianity, unfortunately, for a long time. It's one of the things that we are trying to build.

I've often joked that the modern Christian church sometimes acts like nothing happened from the closing of the canon until Billy Graham. And the reformed community, of which I'm a part, might look at it this way. Nothing happened from the closing of the canon until Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right.

Marlin Detweiler:
And the idea of a robust understanding of how God has worked providentially over all of time is very important, and the first century is obviously one of the most significant historic contexts that I'm referring to.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right.

Marlin Detweiler:
I'm curious what you've learned beyond what you said about 66 and 70. The examples, I think, will be really interesting to our audience.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. So I should say, yeah, as I was writing this and picking up on some of these things, I started writing a series of blogs on my website. So this is cryforjerusalem.com. There's a whole blog series, things I would learn either about the time period, little nuggets I thought I ought to put out there.

Yeah, or even some of the psychological things that were happening that showed up in Josephus’ writings of like, wow, where did this come from? You know, Josephus describes miraculous things that were happening in those last few years that sound pretty eschatological or things that Jesus might have been talking about. You know, the people at the time thought were omens of things that were happening. You know, a comet appeared in the sky with its tail pointed toward the Earth that was bright for people to see for many months. People thought this was some sort of sword hanging over the city or something.

And there was another character that he describes who’s interesting. His name was also Yeshua, not the Yeshua we all know, but he went around the city for years saying nothing but “Woe to Jerusalem, woe to Jerusalem.” These lines like the present-day prophet of doom, walking around the cities for a few years just saying that.

There’s people like, who’s this weirdo? You know, what is he doing there? So yeah, a lot of things like that. And I talk about these kinds of things in my blogs.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Fascinating. So you've written the books. Describe the series. It's a series of four books. It's about the first century, but I can't take it any further than that. Please fill it in for us.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah. It starts in late 63. Josephus has been asked to go to Rome to help free some priests that were taken there. This is true history. He's on a ship. He gets shipwrecked at sea. That’s actually something he mentions. Of course, this is my time to develop the characters. And he meets many of the main characters. They're on a raft together out in the sea.

But then he goes and discovers that there's this Roman noblewoman who was with them, turns out to be the best friend of Nero's wife. Cleo is her name, short for Cleopatra. She's actually mentioned in history and—

Marlin Detweiler:
As a friend of Nero's wife?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
As a friend of his wife, Parfait. So they get introduced to the emperor and all of this and that. That's about the time the Great Fire of Rome happened. So, they're there to witness the Great Fire of Rome. And I actually put a quote in from Revelation that's very interesting, where John says, “Woe to Babylon, the city that sits on seven hills, you will be consumed by fire.”

And I'm like, wow. Well, Rome was consumed by fire. This is kind of interesting. Is that a coincidence? I don't know.

Marlin Detweiler:
Pretty prophetic sounding at the moment.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah, so Nero hires this, his tax collector. Actually, because of this fire, Rome was very short on funds. Nero needed to raise more money, so he brought in his favorite tax collector. His name is Guess he is Floris. He ends up being the antagonist of our story because he goes to be the governor of Judea.

This is true. This is all things that Josephus wrote. And he basically decides he's going to try to confiscate a lot of gold out of the Jewish temple because he knows that this place has got a huge treasury. So he basically unprovoked, really, attacks Jerusalem and tries to steal the treasure. This is what really kicked off the whole rebellion.

The rebels, who were many at the time, had had enough, and they kicked the Romans out of Jerusalem in 66. And then we follow our characters through the coming years. What's interesting is Rome wasn't able to go and immediately retake Jerusalem. Another thing that was happening at the time was there was a civil war, and they call it the Year of the Four Emperors because when Nero died, it left a vacuum.

And there was a battle for who was going to be emperor, and eventually what turns out to be really curious and a prophetic thing that happened is that Josephus, when he was captured, was brought before Vespasian. And he cites this what we would consider a messianic prophecy. He says, I saw this vision, and there was one coming to Israel who would be ruler of the whole world.

And we're like, well, we know who that is. But he says that person was you, Vespasian. You're going to be ruler of the whole world. Well, this was curious enough phrasing that he didn't have him killed. He just kept him around, and oddly, surely enough, two years later, Vespasian becomes emperor. So suddenly they have a whole new respect for Josephus.

They actually set him free from his chains, but he decides to take on this role of liaison. I'm not sure where we started with that.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, that is fascinating. Now, what would you say that you learned from your research and writing that the, well, we might say typical American Christian is probably ignorant about? What are the big takeaways? You know, it's one thing. One of the reasons I didn't like history when I was a student is because my teachers didn't make it relevant.

Make it relevant for us. What did you learn that really helps us appreciate where we are today as a result?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Well, another of my desires for this series was to really underscore and support the historical Jesus and the historical early church, right?

Marlin Detweiler:
You mean paint an accurate picture?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah. The disciples, the apostles really lived at the time. In fact, I take a little bit of maybe a little bit of liberty, but I had some ideas that the Gospels were actually written at the time. The prophecy Jesus made about the destruction of Jerusalem, what they were aware that they were made aware of at the time.

And it was very instrumental in the whole fall of Jerusalem. So, what Peter, there's just a whole lot that we don't know. We don't know what you don't know, right? And there's just a whole lot that went on there that I would say, like, I bet a Christian 50 years in many different church circles, none of which teach this stuff.

Maybe Catholics talk about this stuff. I got the feeling that a lot of times the early church fathers' writings and stuff get ignored by Protestants because we were so focused on sticking with the Bible that we don't read some of this stuff that really anchors down the early church.

Marlin Detweiler:
Obviously it's not God's Word, but it's believable, right?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
It's believable. I was reading Eusebius, who was a historian about the early three hundreds. He gives really good explanations for things that I had never read before. I'm like, well, why don't we read these guys, you know?

Marlin Detweiler:
So let me in closing spend a few minutes on something that I think our audience would really like to hear: the research, the writing, the interest that this gave you. How did it shape you with regard to what you believe about eschatology? What you believe about the book of Revelation and about what was happening then versus what might be in the future?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. Well, I certainly came across a lot of materials and things and explanations that I would say pretty much convinced me that many, probably not all, but many of the apocalyptic sort of forecasts were actually fulfilled right in 70 AD. And I wrote some blogs about these.

There's a lot of people out there if you don't realize it. For example, even the year 63 to 70, or seven years. I wrote a blog about how you could take the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and make sense of them, right? In those years, you know, they talk about famine. I mean, a million Jews died of famine in Jerusalem.

All things that Jesus predicted. And I realized, and I think I thought about this before the Olivet Discourse, his disciples are asking him. He just tells them that the temple is about to be destroyed. And the disciples ask him, well, when is that going to happen? And when will be the sign of the end times? Because in their mind it's the same thing. They don't know any better.

Marlin Detweiler:
Which was part of our problem today. End times has taken on a definition that it didn't have at this point, hasn't it?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah. And so when I read Jesus answering these questions, he may be answering two different questions without specifying which one he's answering. He's answering about 70 A.D., but there might be things he's describing that are future age end times.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. I remember a theologian friend who became convinced during his adult life of the idea that much of the Book of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century, around 70 A.D. And he would say that he believed that roughly 90% of it was fulfilled. Does that resonate with what you?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Well, it resonates that I know people who hold to that position.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Would you agree with that number?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
I've read Revelation enough times that I'm not going to plant my flag on a number.

Marlin Detweiler:
Fair enough.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Like reading the evidence for and against it. Well, there's so much symbology in Revelation I'm not sure I'm going to know in my lifetime. Which is which. But I grew up in the 70s with the late great Planet Earth.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
And I've been hearing these things are going to be fulfilled every few years my entire life. So I've stopped.

Marlin Detweiler:
There's a lot of history before Hal Lindsey doing the same thing.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yeah. People weren't aware of.

Marlin Detweiler:
And I think one of the takeaways from talking to you and hearing your experience is for us to recognize that we've got to be very open to a very different way of looking at the world in which we live. Then all of this is written to us when it's fairly obvious that it was written to them, and to be understood by us in that context.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Right. I love the phrase: the Bible was written for us, but not to us.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. That's good.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Meaning, the direct audience was living at the time, not 2000 years later. So yeah, we have to keep that in mind.

Marlin Detweiler:
Where this has been wonderful. Tell us the name of your series for people that are interested in getting it. Go find it.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Yes. The whole series is called Cry for Jerusalem. It's a series of four books. It's available on Amazon. Or if you type in that title, it'll take you right to Amazon. It's available in paperback. It's on Kindle. I hired a British voice actor. He's narrated the whole thing on Audible if you like listening. It's all very good too.

Marlin Detweiler:
Ward Sanford, thank you so much.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Thank you, Marlin.

Marlin Detweiler:
And one quick question: is our water supply safe?

Dr. Ward Sanford:
For the most part, yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yes. Very good. We don't have time to pursue that. Right? Right. So much.

Dr. Ward Sanford:
Okay. Thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:
And folks, thank you for joining us on another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. We hope to see you next time.