Saul and Josephus

The New Testament books begin with one identification. Saul of the epistles, called Paul, is taken to be Flavius Josephus. It is not offered as a side note. Once the historian and the apostle are the same man, the family in the gospels can be set beside the family in the histories.

The gospel calls the man who asks for the body Joseph of Arimathea. Josephus was Joseph bar Matthias. The names are read as one person: the man who went to Titus, after the fall of Jerusalem, and had the three crucified leaders taken down. In the Arthurian books, as they are read here, Joseph of Arimathea is a soldier of Vespasian, and the chronicle of those years is Josephus.

From that identification the rest of the trilogy follows. The king, the queen, and the war are no longer only inside the gospel. They are in Josephus, under the names the historian was prepared to write.