he simply assumes that, as a priest, he was expert. As an individual, he was more expert than most, but interpretation of scripture was, in his view, a priestly function. Later he describes ‘sacred scribes’ as rightly reading portents of Jerusalem’s destruction (War 6.291). The term hierogrammateus is more literally translated ‘priestly scribe’. Most of his other uses of the term refer to priests who were advisors to the Egyptian Pharaoh (Antiq. 2.205, 209, 234, 255). Expertise was expertise. Specialization