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I still think you have way too much faith in Josephus as a historian. This is classic history-written-by-the-victors; the Hasmoneans won, so they distributed propaganda to the effect that the other side were awful terrible people who wanted to do away with Judaism and were loyal to the famously evil Antiochus. Josephus accepted a lot of this stuff really uncritically, plus he was writing with his own slant to curry favour with the Romans, as you have observed.

Good point.

Lighting shabbat candles

...is the exception in the list you mention, with which I otherwise agree, as that came along much later. If you look at the ArtScroll translation of בַּמֶה מַדְלִיקִין, it talks about lighting the Shabbos lights, but the original Hebrew is in the singular: it's just talking about ensuring you have a light in the room where you're eating. Turning this into two candles and reciting a בְּרָכָה over them is well post-Mishnaic, possibly also post-Talmudic.