By Flavius Josephus
Contact Truthnet
Josephus:
The War of the Jews
Preface
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AGAINST APION1
JOSEPHUS’S DISCOURSE TO THE GREEKS
|
THE WARS OF THE JEWS |
1. I have already observed more than once, that this History of the Jewish War was Josephus’s first work, and published about A.D. 75, when he was but thirty-eight years of age; and that when he wrote it, he was not thoroughly acquainted with several circumstances of history from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, with which it begins, till near his own times, contained in the first and former part of the second book, and so committed many involuntary errors therein. That he published his Antiquities eighteen years afterward, in the thirteenth year of Domitian, A.D. 93, when he was much more completely acquainted with those ancient times, and after he had perused those most authentic histories, the First Book of Maccabees, and the Chronicles of the Priesthood of John Hyrcanus, etc. That accordingly he then reviewed those parts of this work, and gave the public a more faithful, complete, and accurate account of the facts therein related; and honestly corrected the errors he bad before run into. 2. Who these Upper Barbarians, remote from the sea, were, Josephus himself will inform us, sect. 2, viz. the Parthians and Babylonians, and remotest Arabians [of the Jews among them]; besides the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians. Whence we also learn that these Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, [or at least the Jews among them,] as also the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians, understood Josephus’s Hebrew, or rather Chaldaic, books of The Jewish War, before they were put into the Greek language. 3. That these calamities of the Jews, who were our Savior’s murderers, were to be the greatest that had ever been s nee the beginning of the world, our Savior had directly foretold, Matthew 24:21; Mark 13:19; Luke 21:23, 24; and that they proved to be such accordingly, Josephus is here a most authentic witness. 4. Titus. 2058 5. These seven, or rather five, degrees of purity, or purification, are enumerated hereafter, B. V. ch. 5. sect. 6. The Rabbins make ten degrees of them, as Reland there informs us. 2059 WAR BOOK 1 FOOTNOTES 1. I see little difference in the several accounts in Josephus about the Egyptian temple Onion, of which large complaints are made by his commentators. Onias, it seems, hoped to have:made it very like that at Jerusalem, and of the same dimensions; and so he appears to have really done, as far as he was able and thought proper. Of this temple, see Antiq. B. XIII. ch. 3. sect. 1-3, and Of the War, B. VII. ch. 10. sect. 8. 2. Why this John, the son of Simon, the high priest and governor of the Jews, was called Hyrcanus, Josephus no where informs us; nor is he called other than John at the end of the First Book of the Maccabees. However, Sixtus Seuensis, when he gives us an epitome of the Greek version of the book here abridged by Josephus, or of the Chronicles of this John Hyrcanus, then extant, assures us that he was called Hyrcanus from his conquest of one of that name. See Authent. Rec. Part I. p. 207. But of this younger Antiochus, see Dean Aldrich’s note here. 3. Josephus here calls this Antiochus the last of the Seleucidae, although there remained still a shadow of another king of that family, Antiochus Asiaticus, or Commagenus, who reigned, or rather lay hid, till Pompey quite turned him out, as Dean Aldrich here notes from Appian and Justin. 4. Matthew 16:19; 18:18. Here we have the oldest and most authentic Jewish exposition of binding and loosing, for punishing or absolving men, not for declaring actions lawful or unlawful, as some more modern Jews and Christians vainly pretend. 5. Strabo, B. XVI. p. 740, relates, that this Selene Cleopatra was besieged by Tigranes, not in Ptolemais, as here, but after she had left Syria, in Seleucia, a citadel in Mesopotamia; and adds, that when he had kept her a while in prison, he put her to death. Dean Aldrich supposes here that Strabo contradicts Josephus, which does not appear to me; for although Josephus says both here and in the Antiquities, B. XIII. ch. 16. sect. 4, that Tigranes besieged her now in Ptolemais, and that he took the city, as the Antiquities inform us, yet does he no where intimate that he now took 2060 the queen herself; so that both the narrations of Strabo and Josephus may still be true notwithstanding. 6. That this Antipater, the father of Herod the Great was an Idumean, as Josephus affirms here, see the note on Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 15. sect. 2. It is somewhat probable, as Hapercamp supposes, and partly Spanheim also, that the Latin is here the truest; that Pompey did him Hyrcanus, as he would have done the others from Aristobulus, sect. 6, although his remarkable abstinence from the 2000 talents that were in the Jewish temple, when he took it a little afterward, ch. 7. sect. 6, and Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 4. sect. 4, will to Greek all which agree he did not take them. 7. Of the famous palm trees and balsam about Jericho and Engaddl, see the notes in Havercamp’s edition, both here and B. II. ch. 9. sect. 1. They are somewhat too long to be transcribed in this place. 8. Thus says Tacitus: Cn. Pompelna first of all subdued the Jews, and went into their temple, by right of conquest, Hist. B. V. ch. 9. Nor did he touch any of its riches, as has been observed on the parallel place of the Antiquities, B. XIV. ch. 4. sect. 4, out of Cicero himself. 9. The coin of this Gadara, still extant, with its date from this era, is a certain evidence of this its rebuilding by Pompey, as Spanheim here assures us. 10. Take the like attestation to the truth of this submission of Aretas, king of Arabia, to Scaurus the Roman general, in the words of Dean Aldrich. “Hence (says he) is derived that old and famous Denarius belonging to the Emillian family [represented in Havercamp’s edition], wherein Aretas appears in a posture of supplication, and taking hold of a camel’s bridle with his left hand, and with his right hand presenting a branch of the frankincense tree, with this inscription, M. SCAURUS EX S.C.; and beneath, REX ARETAS.” 11. This citation is now wanting. 12. What is here noted by Hudson and Spanheim, that this grant of leave to rebuild the walls of the cities of Judea was made by Julius Caesar, not as here to Antipater, but to Hyrcanas, Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 8. sect. 5, has hardly an appearance of a contradiction; Antipater being now perhaps 2061 considered only as Hyrcanus’s deputy and minister; although he afterwards made a cipher of Hyrcanus, and, under great decency of behavior to him, took the real authority to himself. 13. Or twenty-five years of age. See note on Antiq. B. I. ch. 12. sect. 3; and on B. XIV. ch. 9. sect. 2; and Of the War, B. II. ch. 11. sect. 6; and Polyb. B. XVII. p. 725. Many writers of the Roman history give an account of this murder of Sextus Caesar, and of the war of Apamia upon that occasion. They are cited in Dean Aldrich’s note. 14. In the Antiquities, B. XIV. ch. 11. sect. 1, the duration of the reign of Julius Caesar is three years six months; but here three years seven months, beginning nightly, says Dean Aldrich, from his second dictatorship. It is probable the real duration might be three years and between six and seven months. 15. It appears evidently by Josephus’s accounts, both here and in his Antiquities, B. XIV. ch. 11. sect. 2, that this Cassius, one of Caesar’s murderers, was a bitter oppressor, and exactor of tribute in Judea. These seven hundred talents amount to about three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and are about half the yearly revenues of king Herod afterwards. See the note on Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 11. sect. 4. It also appears that Galilee then paid no more than one hundred talents, or the seventh part of the entire sum to be levied in all the country. 16. Here we see that Cassius set tyrants over all Syria; so that his assisting to destroy Caesar does not seem to have proceeded from his true zeal for public liberty, but from a desire to be a tyrant himself. 17. Phasaelus and Herod. 18. This large and noted wood, or woodland, belonging to Carmel, called apago by the Septuagint, is mentioned in the Old Testament, 2 Kings 19:23; Isaiah 37:24, and by I Strabo, B. XVI. p. 758, as both Aldrich and Spanheim here remark very pertinently. 19. These accounts, both here and Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 13. sect. 5, that the Parthians fought chiefly on horseback, and that only some few of their soldiers were free-men, perfectly agree with Trogus Pompeius, in Justin, B. XLI. 2, 3, as Dean Aldrich well observes on this place. 2062 20. Mariamac here, in the copies. 21. This Brentesium or Brundusium has coin still preserved, on which is written, as Spanheim informs us. 22. This Dellius is famous, or rather infamous, in the history of Mark Antony, as Spanheim and Aldrich here note, from the coins, from Plutarch and Dio. 23. This Sepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee, so often mentioned by Josephus, has coins still remaining, as Spanheim here informs us. 24. This way of speaking, “after forty days,” is interpreted by Josephus himself, “on the fortieth day,” Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 15. sect. 4. In like manner, when Josephus says, ch. 33. sect. 8, that Herod lived “after” he had ordered Antipater to be slain “five days;” this is by himself interpreted, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 8. sect. 1, that he died “on the fifth day afterward.” So also what is in this book, ch. 13. sect. 1, “after two years,” is, Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 13. sect. 3, “on the second year.” And Dean Aldrich here notes that this way of speaking is familiar to Josephus. 25. This Samosata, the metropolis of Commagena, is well known from its coins, as Spanheim here assures us. Dean Aldrich also confirms what Josephus here notes, that Herod was a great means of taking the city by Antony, and that from Plutarch and Dio. 26. That is, a woman, not, a man. 27. This death of Antigonus is confirmed by Plutarch and. Straho; the latter of whom is cited for it by Josephus himself, Antiq. B. XV. ch. 1. sect. 2, as Dean Aldrich here observes. 28. This ancient liberty of Tyre and Sidon under the Romans, taken notice of by Josephus, both here and Antiq. B. XV. ch. 4. sect. 1, is confirmed by the testimony of Sirabe, B. XVI. p. 757, as Dean Aldrich remarks; although, as he justly adds, this liberty lasted but a little while longer, when Augtus took it away from them. 29. This seventh year of the reign of Herod [from the conquest or death of Antigonus], with the great earthquake in the beginning of the same spring, which are here fully implied to be not much before the fight at 2063 Actium, between Octavius and Antony, and which is known from the Roman historians to have been in the beginning of September, in the thirty-first year before the Christian era, determines the chronology of Josephus as to the reign of Herod, viz. that he began in the year 37, beyond rational contradiction. Nor is it quite unworthy of our notice, that this seventh year of the reign of Herod, or the thirty-first before the Christian era, contained the latter part of a Sabbatic year, on which Sabbatic year, therefore, it is plain this great earthquake happened in Judea. 30. This speech of Herod is set down twice by Josephus, here and Antiq. B. XV. ch. 5. sect. 3, to the very same purpose, but by no means in the same words; whence it appears that the sense was Herod’s, but the composition Josephus’s. 31. Since Josephus, both here and in his Antiq. B. XV. ch. 7. sect. 3, reckons Gaza, which had been a free city, among the cities given Herod by Augustus, and yet implies that Herod had made Costobarus a governor of it before, Antiq. B. XV. ch. 7. sect. 9, Hardain has some pretense for saying that Josephus here contradicted himself. But perhaps Herod thought he had sufficient authority to put a governor into Gaza, after he was made tetrarch or king, in times of war, before the city was entirely delivered into his hands by Augustus. 32. This fort was first built, as it is supposed, by John Hyrcanus; see Prid. at the year 107; and called “Baris,” the Tower or Citadel. It was afterwards rebuilt, with great improvements, by Herod, under the government of Antonius, and was named from him “the Tower of Antoni;” and about the time when Herod rebuilt the temple, he seems to have put his last hand to it. See Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 5. sect. 4; Of the War, B. I. ch. 3. sect. 3; ch. 5. sect. 4. It lay on the northwest side of the temple, and was a quarter as large. 33. That Josephus speaks truth, when he assures us that the haven of this Cesarea was made by Herod not less, nay rather larger, than that famous haven at Athens, called the Pyrecum, will appear, says Dean Aldrich, to him who compares the descriptions of that at Athens in Thucydides and Pausanias, with this of Cesarea in Josephus here, and in the Antiq. B. XV. ch. 9. sect. 6, and B. XVII. ch. 9. sect. 1. 2064 34. These buildings of cities by the name of Caesar, and institution of solemn games in honor of Augustus Caesar, as here, and in the Antiquities, related of Herod by Josephus, the Roman historians attest to, as things then frequent in the provinces of that empire, as Dean Aldrich observes on this chapter. 35. There were two cities, or citadels, called Herodium, in Judea, and both mentioned by Josephus, not only here, but Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 13. sect. 9; B. XV. ch. 9. sect. 6; Of the War, B. I. ch. 13. sect. 8; B. III. ch. 3. sect. 5. One of them was two hundred, and the other sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem. One of them is mentioned by Pliny, Hist. Nat. B. V. ch. 14., as Dean Aldrich observes here. 36. Here seems to be a small defect in the copies, which describe the wild beasts which were hunted in a certain country by Herod, without naming any such country at all. 37. Here is either a defect or a great mistake in Josephus’s present copies or memory; for Mariamne did not now reproach Herod with this his first injunction to Joseph to kill her, if he himself were slain by Antony, but that he had given the like command a second time to Soemus also, when he was afraid of being slain by Augustus. Antiq. B. XV. ch. 3. sect. 5, etc. 38. That this island Eleusa, afterward called Sebaste, near Cilicia, had in it the royal palace of this Archclaus, king of Cappadocia, Strabo testifies, B. XV. p. 671. Stephanus of Byzantiam also calls it “an island of Cilicia, which is now Sebaste;” both whose testimonies are pertinently cited here by Dr. Hudson. See the same history, Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 10. sect. 7. 39. That it was an immemorial custom among the Jews, and their forefathers, the patriarchs, to have sometimes more wives or wives and concubines, than one at the same the and that this polygamy was not directly forbidden in the law of Moses is evident; but that polygamy was ever properly and distinctly permitted in that law of Moses, in the places here cited by Dean Aldrich, Deuteronomy 17:16, 17, or 21:15, or indeed any where else, does not appear to me. And what our Savior says about the common Jewish divorces, which may lay much greater claim to such a 2065 permission than polygamy, seems to me true in this case also; that Moses, “for the hardness of their hearts,” suffered them to have several wives at the same time, but that “from the beginning it was not so,” Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:5. 40. This vile fellow, Eurycles the Lacedemonian, seems to have been the same who is mentioned by Plutarch, as (twenty-live years before) a companion to Mark Antony, and as living with Herod; whence he might easily insinuate himself into the acquaintance of Herod’s sons, Antipater and Alexander, as Usher, Hudson, and Spanheim justly suppose. The reason why his being a Spartan rendered him acceptable to the Jews as we here see he was, is visible from the public records of the Jews and Spartans, owning those Spartans to be of kin to the Jews, and derived from their common ancestor Abraham, the first patriarch of the Jewish nation, Antiq. B. XII. ch. 4. sect. 10; B. XIII. ch. 5. sect. 8; and 1 Macc. 12:7. 41. See the preceding note. 42. Dean Aldrich takes notice here, that these nine wives of Herod were alive at the same time; and that if the celebrated Mariamne, who was now dead, be reckoned, those wives were in all ten. Yet it is remarkable that he had no more than fifteen children by them all. 43. To prevent confusion, it may not be amiss, with Dean Aldrich, to distinguish between four Josephs in the history of Herod. 1. Joseph, Herod’s uncle, and the [second] husband of his sister Salome, slain by Herod, on account of Mariamne. 2. Joseph, Herod’s quaestor, or treasurer, slain on the same account. 3. Joseph, Herod’s brother, slain in battle against Antigonus. 4. Joseph, Herod’s nephew, the husband of Olympias, mentioned in this place. 44. These daughters of Herod, whom Pheroras’s wife affronted, were Salome and Roxana, two virgins, who were born to him of his two wives, Elpide and Phedra. See Herod’s genealogy, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 1. sect. 3. 2066 45. This strange obstinacy of Pheroras in retaining his wife, who was one of a low family, and refusing to marry one nearly related to Herod, though he so earnestly desired it, as also that wife’s admission to the counsels of the other great court ladies, together with Herod’s own importunity as to Pheroras’s divorce and other marriage, all so remarkable here, or in the Antiquities XVII. ch. 2. sect. 4; and ch. 3. be well accounted for, but on the supposal that Pheroras believed, and Herod suspected, that the Pharisees’ prediction, as if the crown of Judea should be translated from Herod to Pheroras’s posterity and that most probably to Pheroras’s posterity by this his wife, also would prove true. See Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 2. sect. 4; and ch. 3. sect. 1. 46. This Tarentum has coins still extant, as Reland informs us here in his note. 47. A lover of his father. 48. Since in these two sections we have an evident account of the Jewish opinions in the days of Josephus, about a future happy state, and the resurrection of the dead, as in the New Testament, John 11:24, I shall here refer to the other places in Josephus, before he became a catholic Christian, which concern the same matters. Of the War, B. II. ch. 8. sect. 10, 11; B. III. ch. 8. sect. 4; B. VII. ch. 6. sect. 7; Contr. Apion, B. II. sect. 30; where we may observe, that none of these passages are in his Books of Antiquities, written peculiarly for the use of the Gentiles, to whom he thought it not proper to insist on topics so much out of their way as these were. Nor is this observation to be omitted here, especially on account of the sensible difference we have now before us in Josephus’s reason of the used by the Rabbins to persuade their scholars to hazard their lives for the vindication of God’s law against images, by Moses, as well as of the answers those scholars made to Herod, when they were caught, and ready to die for the same; I mean as compared with the parallel arguments and answers represented in the Antiquities, B. XVII. ch. 6. sect, 2, 3. A like difference between Jewish and Gentile notions the reader will find in my notes on Antiquities, B. III. ch. 7. sect. 7; B. XV. ch. 9. sect. 1. See the like also in the case of the three Jewish sects in the Antiquities, B. XIII. ch. 5. sect. 9, and ch. 10. sect. 4, 5; 2067 B. XVIII. ch. 1. sect. 5; and compared with this in his Wars of the Jews, B. II. ch. 8. sect. 2-14. Nor does St. Paul himself reason to Gentiles at Athens, Acts 17:16-34, as he does to Jews in his Epistles. 2068 WAR BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES 1. Hear Dean Aldrich’s note on this place: “The law or Custom of the Jews (says he) requires seven days’ mourning for the dead, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 8. sect. 4; whence the author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, ch. 22:12, assigns seven days as the proper time of mourning for the dead, and, ch. 38:17, enjoins men to mourn for the dead, that they may not be evil spoken of; for, as Josephus says presently, if any one omits this mourning [funeral feast], he is not esteemed a holy person. How it is certain that such a seven days’ mourning has been customary from times of the greatest antiquity, Genesis 1:10. Funeral feasts are also mentioned as of considerable antiquity, Ezekiel 24:17; Jeremiah 16:7; Prey. 31:6; Deuteronomy 26:14; Josephus, Of the War B. III. ch. 9. sect. 5. 2. This holding a council in the temple of Apollo, in the emperor’s palace at Rome, by Augustus, and even the building of this temple magnificently by himself in that palace, are exactly agreeable to Augustus, in his elder years, as Aldrich and from Suttonius and Propertius. 3. Here we have a strong confirmation that it was Xerxes, and not Artaxerxes, under whom the main part of the Jews returned out of the Babylonian captivity, i.e. in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The same thing is in the Antiquities, B. XI. ch.6 4. This practice of the Essens, in refusing to swear, and esteeming swearing in ordinary occasions worse than perjury, is delivered here in general words, as are the parallel injunctions of our Savior, Matthew 6:34; 23:16; and of St. James, 5:12; but all admit of particular exceptions for solemn causes, and on great and necessary occasions. Thus these very Essens, who here do so zealously avoid swearing, are related, in the very next section, to admit none till they take tremendous oaths to perform their several duties to God, and to their neighbor, without supposing they thereby break this rule, Not to swear at all. The case is the same in Christianity, as we learn from the Apostolical Constitutions, which although they agree with Christ and St. James, in forbidding to swear in general, ch. 5:12; 6:2, 3; yet do they explain it elsewhere, by avoiding to swear falsely, and to swear often and in vain, ch. 2:36; and again, by “not 2069 swearing at all,” but withal adding, that “if that cannot be avoided, to swear truly,” ch. 7:3; which abundantly explain to us the nature of the measures of this general injunction. 5. This mention of the “names of angels,” so particularly preserved by the Essens, (if it means more than those “messengers” which were employed to bring, them the peculiar books of their Sect,) looks like a prelude to that “worshipping of angels,” blamed by St. Paul, as superstitious and unlawful, in some such sort of people as these Essens were, Colossians 2:8; as is the prayer to or towards the sun for his rising every morning, mentioned before, sect. 5, very like those not much later observances made mention of in the preaching of Peter, Authent. Rec. Part II. p. 669, and regarding a kind of worship of angels, of the month, and of the moon, and not celebrating the new moons, or other festivals, unless the moon appeared. Which, indeed, seems to me the earliest mention of any regard to the phases in fixing the Jewish calendar, of which the Talmud and later Rabbins talk so much, and upon so very little ancient foundation. 6. Of these Jewish or Essene (and indeed Christian) doctrines concerning souls, both good and bad, in Hades, see that excellent discourse, or homily, of our Josephus concerning Hades, at the end of the volume. 7. Dean Aldrich reckons up three examples of this gift of prophecy in several of these Essens out of Josephus himself, viz. in the History of the War, B. I. ch. 3. sect. 5, Judas foretold the death of Antigonus at Strato’s Tower; B. II. ch. 7. sect. 3, Simon foretold that Archelaus should reign but nine or ten years; and Antiq. B. XV. ch. 10. sect. 4, 5, Menuhem foretold that Herod should be king, and should reign tyrannically, and that for more than twenty or even thirty years. All which came to pass accordingly. 8. There is so much more here about the Essens than is cited from Josephus in Porphyry and Eusebius, and yet so much less about the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two other Jewish sects, than would naturally be expected in proportion to the Essens or third sect, nay, than seems to be referred to by himself elsewhere, that one is tempted to suppose Josephus had at first written less of the one, and more of the two others, than his present copies afford us; as also, that, by some unknown accident, our present copies are here made up of the larger edition in the first case, and of the smaller in the second. See the note in Havercamp’s 2070 edition. However, what Josephus says in the name of the Pharisees, that only the souls of good men go out of one body into another, although all souls be immortal, and still the souls of the bad are liable to eternal punishment; as also what he says afterwards, Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 1. sect. 3, that the soul’s vigor is immortal, and that under the earth they receive rewards or punishments according as their lives have been virtuous or vicious in the present world; that to the bad is allotted an eternal prison, but that the good are permitted to live again in this world; are nearly agreeable to the doctrines of Christianity. Only Josephus’s rejection of the return of the wicked into other bodies, or into this world, which he grants to the good, looks somewhat like a contradiction to St. Paul’s account of the doctrine of the Jews, that they “themselves allowed that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust,” Acts 24:15. Yet because Josephus’s account is that of the Pharisees, and St. Patti’s that of the Jews in general, and of himself the contradiction is not very certain. 9. We have here, in that Greek MS. which was once Alexander Petavius’s, but is now in the library at Leyden, two most remarkable additions to the common copies, though declared worth little remark by the editor; which, upon the mention of Tiberius’s coming to the empire, inserts first the famous testimony of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ, as it stands verbatim in the Antiquities, B. XVIII. ch. 3. sect. 3, with some parts of that excellent discourse or homily of Josephus concerning Hades, annexed to the work. But what is here principally to be noted is this, that in this homily, Josephus having just mentioned Christ, as “God the Word, and the Judge of the world, appointed by the Father,” etc., adds, that “he had himself elsewhere spoken about him more nicely or particularly.” 10. This use of corban, or oblation, as here applied to the sacred money dedicated to God in the treasury of the temple, illustrates our Savior’s words, Mark 7:11, 12. 11. Tacitus owns that Caius commanded the Jews to place his effigies in their temple, though he be mistaken when he adds that the Jews thereupon took arms. 12. This account of a place near the mouth of the river Belus in Phoenicia, whence came that sand out of which the ancients made their 2071 glass, is a known thing in history, particularly in Tacitus and Strabo, and more largely in Pliny. 13. This Memnon had several monuments, and one of them appears, both by Strabo and Diodorus, to have been in Syria, and not improbably in this very place. 14. Reland notes here, that the Talmud in recounting ten sad accidents for which the Jews ought to rend their garments, reckons this for one, “When they hear that the law of God is burnt.” 15. This Ummidius, or Numidius, or, as Tacitus calls him, Vinidius Quadratus, is mentioned in an ancient inscription, still preserved, as Spanhelm here informs us, which calls him Urnmidius Quadratus. 16. Take the character of this Felix (who is well known from the Acts of the Apostles, particularly from his trembling when St. Paul discoursed of “righteousness, chastity, and judgment to come,” Acts 24:5; and no wonder, when we have elsewhere seen that he lived in adultery with Drusilla, another man’s wife, (Antiq. B. XX. ch. 7. sect. 1)in the words of Tacitus, produced here by Dean Aldrich: “Felix exercised,” says Tacitas, “the authority of a king, with the disposition of a slave, and relying upon the great power of his brother Pallas at court, thought he might safely be guilty of all kinds of wicked practices.” Observe also the time when he was made procurator, A.D. 52; that when St. Paul pleaded his cause before him, A.D. 58, he might have been “many years a judge unto that nation,” as St. Paul says he had then been, Acts 24:10. But as to what Tacitus here says, that before the death of Cumanus, Felix was procurator over Samaria only, does not well agree with St. Paul’s words, who would hardly have called Samaria a Jewish nation. In short, since what Tacitus here says is about countries very remote from Rome, where he lived; since what he says of two Roman procurators, the one over Galilee, the other over Samaria at the same time, is without example elsewhere; and since Josephus, who lived at that very time in Judea, appears to have known nothing of this procuratorship of Felix, before the death of Cureanus; I much suspect the story itself as nothing better than a mistake of Tacitus, especially when it seems not only omitted, but contradicted by Josephus; as any one may find that compares their histories together. Possibly Felix might have been a subordinate judge among the Jews some time before 2072 under Cureanus, but that he was in earnest a procurator of Samaria before I do not believe. Bishop Pearson, as well as Bishop Lloyd, quote this account, but with a doubtful clause: confides Tacito, “If we may believe Tacitus.” Pears. Anhal. Paulin. p. 8; Marshall’s Tables, at A.D. 49. 17. i.e. Herod king of Chalcis. 18. Not long after this beginning of Florus, the wickedest of all the Roman procurators of Judea, and the immediate occasion of the Jewish war, at the twelfth year of Nero, and the seventeenth of Agrippa, or A.D. 66, the history in the twenty books of Josephus’s Antiquities ends, although Josephus did not finish these books till the thirteenth of Domitian, or A.D. 93, twenty-seven years afterward; as he did not finish their Appendix, containing an account of his own life, till Agrippa was dead, which happened in the third year of Trajan, or A. D. 100, as I have several times observed before. 19. Here we may note, that three millions of the Jews were present at the passover, A.D. 65; which confirms what Josephus elsewhere informs us of, that at a passover a little later they counted two hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred paschal lambs, which, at twelve to each lamb, which is no immoderate calculation, come to three millions and seventy-eight thousand. See B. VI. ch. 9. sect. 3. 20. Take here Dr. Hudson’s very pertinent note. “By this action,” says he, “the killing of a bird over an earthen vessel, the Jews were exposed as a leprous people; for that was to be done by the law in the cleansing of a leper, Leviticus 14. It is also known that the Gentiles reproached the Jews as subject to the leprosy, and believed that they were driven out of Egypt on that account. This that eminent person Mr. Reland suggested to me.” 21. Here we have examples of native Jews who were of the equestrian order among the Romans, and so ought never to have been whipped or crucified, according to the Roman laws. See almost the like case in St. Paul himself, Acts 22:25-29. 22. This vow which Bernice (here and elsewhere called queen, not only as daughter and sister to two kings, Agrippa the Great, and Agrippa junior, but the widow of Herod king of Chalcis) came now to accomplish 2073 at Jerusalem was not that of a Nazarite, but such a one as religious Jews used to make, in hopes of any deliverance from a disease, or other danger, as Josephus here intimates. However, these thirty days’ abode at Jerusalem, for fasting and preparation against the oblation of a proper sacrifice, seems to be too long, unless it were wholly voluntary in this great lady. It is not required in the law of Moses relating to Nazarites, Numbers 6., and is very different from St. Paul’s time for such preparation, which was but one day, Acts 21:26. So we want already the continuation of the Antiquities to afford us light here, as they have hitherto done on so many occasions elsewhere. Perhaps in this age the traditions of the Pharisees had obliged the Jews to this degree of rigor, not only as to these thirty days’ preparation, but as to the going barefoot all that time, which here Bernice submitted to also. For we know that as God’s and our Savior’s yoke is usually easy, and his burden comparatively light, in such positive injunctions, Matthew 11:30, so did the scribes and Pharisees sometimes “bind upon men heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne,” even when they themselves “would not touch them with one of their fingers,” Matthew 23:4; Luke 11:46. However, Noldius well observes, De Herod. No. 404, 414, that Juvenal, in his sixth satire, alludes to this remarkable penance or submission of this Bernice to Jewish discipline, and jests upon her for it; as do Tacitus, Dio, Suetonius, and Sextus Aurelius mention her as one well known at Rome. — Ibid. 23. I take this Bezetha to be that small hill adjoining to the north side of the temple, whereon was the hospital with five porticoes or cloisters, and beneath which was the sheep pool of Bethesda; into which an angel or messenger, at a certain season, descended, and where he or they who were the “first put into the pool” were cured, John 5:1 etc. This situation of Bezetha, in Josephus, on the north side of the temple, and not far off the tower Antonia, exactly agrees to the place of the same pool at this day; only the remaining cloisters are but three. See Maundrel, p. 106. The entire buildings seem to have been called the New City, and this part, where was the hospital, peculiarly Bezetha or Bethesda. See ch. 19. sect. 4. 24. In this speech of king Agrippa we have an authentic account of the extent and strength of the Roman empire when the Jewish war began. And this speech with other circumstances in Josephus, demonstrate how wise and how great a person Agrippa was, and why Josephus elsewhere calls 2074 him a most wonderful or admirable man, Contr. Ap. I. 9. He is the same Agrippa who said to Paul,” Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian,” Acts 26;28; and of whom St. Paul said, “He was expert in all the customs and questions of the Jews,” yet. 3. See another intimation of the limits of the same Roman empire, Of the War, B. III. ch. 5. sect. 7. But what seems to me very remarkable here is this, that when Josephus, in imitation of the Greeks and Romans, for whose use he wrote his Antiquities, did himself frequently he into their they appear, by the politeness of their composition, and their flights of oratory, to be not the real speeches of the persons concerned, who usually were no orators, but of his own elegant composure, the speech before us is of another nature, full of undeniable facts, and composed in a plain and unartful, but moving way; so it appears to be king Agrippa’s own speech, and to have been given Josephus by Agrippa himself, with whom Josephus had the greatest friendship. Nor may we omit Agrippa’s constant doctrine here, that this vast Roman empire was raised and supported by Divine Providence, and that therefore it was in vain for the Jews, or any others, to think of destroying it. Nor may we neglect to take notice of Agrippa’s solemn appeal to the angels here used; the like appeals to which we have in St. Paul, 1 Timothy 5:22, and by the apostles in general, in the form of the ordination of bishops, Constitut. Apost. VIII. 4. 25. Julius Caesar had decreed that the Jews of Jerusalem should pay an annual tribute to the Romans, excepting the city Joppa, and for the sabbatical year; as Spanheim observes from the Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 10. sect. 6. 26. Of this Sohemus we have mention made by Tacitus. We also learn from Dio that his father was king of the Arabians of Iturea, [which Iturea is mentioned by St. Luke, ch. 3:1.] both whose testimonies are quoted here by Dr. Hudson. See Noldius, No. 371. 27. Spanheim notes on the place, that this later Antiochus, who was called Epiphaues, is mentioned by Dio, LIX. p. 645, and that he is mentioned by Josephus elsewhere twice also, B.V. ch. 11. sect. 3; and Antiq. B. XIX. ch. 8. sect. I. 28. Here we have an eminent example of that Jewish language, which Dr. Wail truly observes, we several times find used in the sacred writings; 2075 I mean, where the words “all” or” whole multitude,”etc. are used for much the greatest part only; but not so as to include every person, without exception; for when Josephus had said that “the whole multitude” [all the males] of Lydda were gone to the feast of tabernacles, he immediately adds, that, however, no fewer than fifty of them appeared, and were slain by the Romans. Other examples somewhat like this I have observed elsewhere in Josephus, but, as I think, none so remarkable as this. See Wall’s Critical Observations on the Old Testament, p. 49, 50. 29. We have also, in this and the next section, two eminent facts to be observed, viz. the first example, that I remember, in Josephus, of the onset of the Jews’ enemies upon their country when their males were gone up to Jerusalem to one of their three sacred festivals; which, during the theocracy, God had promised to preserve them from, Exodus 34:24. The second fact is this, the breach of the sabbath by the seditions Jews in an offensive fight, contrary to the universal doctrine and practice of their nation in these ages, and even contrary to what they themselves afterward practiced in the rest of this war. See the note on Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 2. sect. 4. 30. There may another very important, and very providential, reason be here assigned for this strange and foolish retreat of Cestius; which, if Josephus had been now a Christian, he might probably have taken notice of also; and that is, the affording the Jewish Christians in the city an opportunity of calling to mind the prediction and caution given them by Christ about thirty-three years and a half before, that “when they should see the abomination of desolation” [the idolatrous Roman armies, with the images of their idols in their ensigns, ready to lay Jerusalem desolate] “stand where it ought not;” or, “in the holy place;” or, “when they should see Jerusalem any one instance of a more unpolitic, but more providential, compassed with armies;” they should then “flee to the mound conduct than this retreat of Cestius visible during this whole rains.” By complying with which those Jewish Christians fled I siege of Jerusalem; which yet was providentially such a “great to the mountains of Perea, and escaped this destruction. See tribulation, as had not been from the beginning of the world to that time; no, Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 69, 70. Nor was there, perhaps, nor ever should be.” — Ibid. p. 70, 71. 2076 31. From this name of Joseph the son of Gorion, or Gorion the son of Joseph, as B. IV. ch. 3. sect. 9, one of the governors of Jerusalem, who was slain at the beginning of the tumults by the zealots, B. IV. ch. 6. sect. 1, the much later Jewish author of a history of that nation takes his title, and yet personates our true Josephus, the son of Matthias; but the cheat is too gross to be put upon the learned world. 32. We may observe here, that the Idumeans, as having been proselytes of justice since the days of John Hyrcanus, during about one hundred and ninety-five years, were now esteemed as part of the Jewish nation, and these provided of a Jewish commander accordingly. See the note upon Antiq. B. XIII.. ch. 9. sect. 1. 33. We see here, and in Josephus’s account of his own life, sect. 14, how exactly he imitated his legislator Moses, or perhaps only obeyed what he took to be his perpetual law, in appointing seven lesser judges, for smaller causes, in particular cities, and perhaps for the first hearing of greater causes, with the liberty of an appeal to seventy-one supreme judges, especially in those causes where life and death were concerned; as Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 14; and of his Life, sect. 14. See also Of the War, B. IV. ch. 5. sect. 4. Moreover, we find, sect. 7, that he imitated Moses, as well as the Romans, in the number and distribution of the subaltern officers of his army, as Exodus 18:25; Deuteronomy 1:15; and in his charge against the offenses common among soldiers, as Denteronomy 13:9; in all which he showed his great wisdom and piety, and skillful conduct in martial affairs. Yet may we discern in his very high character of Artanus the high priest, B. IV. ch. 5. sect. 2, who seems to have been the same who condemned St. James, bishop of Jerusalem, to be stoned, under Albinus the procurator, that when he wrote these books of the War, he was not so much as an Ebionite Christian; otherwise he would not have failed, according to his usual custom, to have reckoned this his barbarous murder as a just punishment upon him for that his cruelty to the chief, or rather only Christian bishop of the circumcision. Nor, had he been then a Christian, could he immediately have spoken so movingly of the causes of the destruction of Jerusalem, without one word of either the condemnation of James, or crucifixion of Christ, as he did when he was become a Christian afterward. 2077 34. I should think that an army of sixty thousand footmen should require many more than two hundred and fifty horsemen; and we find Josephus had more horsemen under his command than two hundred and fifty in his future history. I suppose the number of the thousands is dropped in our present copies. 35. I cannot but think this stratagem of Josephus, which is related both here and in his Life, sect. 32, 33, to be one of the finest that ever was invented and executed by any warrior whatsoever. 2078 WAR BOOK 3 NOTES 1. Take the confirmation of this in the words of Suetonius, here produced by Dr. Hudson: “In the reign of Claudius,” says he, “Vespasian, for the sake of Narcissus, was sent as a lieutenant of a legion into Germany. Thence he removed into Britain “battles with the enemy.” In Vesp. sect. 4. We may also here note from Josephus, that Claudius the emperor, who triumphed for the conquest of Britain, was enabled so to do by Vespasian’s conduct and bravery, and that he is here styled “the father of Vespasian.” 2. Spanheim and Reland both agree, that the two cities here esteemed greater than Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, were Rome and Alexandria; nor is there any occasion for doubt in so plain a case. 3. This description of the exact symmetry and regularity of the Roman army, and of the Roman encampments, with the sounding their trumpets, etc. and order of war, described in this and the next chapter, is so very like to the symmetry and regularity of the people of Israel in the wilderness, (see Description of the Temples, ch. 9.,) that one cannot well avoid the supposal, that the one was the ultimate pattern of the other, and that the tactics of the ancients were taken from the rules given by God to Moses. And it is thought by some skillful in these matters, that these accounts of Josephus, as to the Roman camp and armor, and conduct in war, are preferable to those in the Roman authors themselves. 4. I cannot but here observe an Eastern way of speaking, frequent among them, but not usual among us, where the word “only” or “alone” is not set down, but perhaps some way supplied in the pronunciation. Thus Josephus here says, that those of Jotapata slew seven of the Romans as they were marching off, because the Romans’ retreat was regular, their bodies were covered over with their armor, and the Jews fought at some distance; his meaning is clear, that these were the reasons why they slew only, or no more than seven. I have met with many the like examples in the Scriptures, in Josephus, etc.; but did not note down the particular places. This observation ought to be borne in mind upon many occasions. 2079 5. These public mourners, hired upon the supposed death of Josephus, and the real death of many more, illustrate some passages in the Bible, which suppose the same custom, as Matthew 11:17, where the reader may consult the notes of Grotius. 6. Of this Cesarea Philippi (twice mentioned in our New Testament, Matthew 16:13; Mark 8;27)there are coins still extant, Spanheim here informs us. 7. I do not know where to find the law of Moses here mentioned by Josephus, and afterwards by Eleazar, 13. VII. ch. 8. sect. 7, and almost implied in B. I. ch. 13. sect. 10, by Josephus’s commendation of Phasaelus for doing so; I mean, whereby Jewish generals and people were obliged to kill themselves, rather than go into slavery under heathens. I doubt this would have been no better than “self-murder;” and I believe it was rather some vain doctrine, or interpretation, of the rigid Pharisees, or Essens, or Herodiaus, than a just consequence from any law of God delivered by Moses. 7. It may be worth our while to observe here, that near this lake of Gennesareth grapes and figs hang on the trees ten months of the year. We may observe also, that in Cyril of Jerusalem, Cateehes. 18. sect. 3, which was delivered not long before Easter, there were no fresh leaves of fig trees, nor bunches of fresh grapes in Judea; so that when St. Mark says, ch. 11. ver. 13, that our Savior, soon after the same time of the year, came and “found leaves” on a fig tree near Jerusalem, but “no figs, because the time of” new “figs” ripening “was not yet,” he says very true; nor were they therefore other than old leaves which our Savior saw, and old figs which he expected, and which even with us commonly hang on the trees all winter long. 8. This is the most cruel and barbarous action that Vespasian ever did in this whole war, as he did it with great reluctance also. It was done both after public assurance given of sparing the prisoners’ lives, and when all knew and confessed that these prisoners were no way guilty of any sedition against the Romans. Nor indeed did Titus now give his consent, so far as appears, nor ever act of himself so barbarously; nay, soon after this, Titus grew quite weary of shedding blood, and of punishing the innocent with the guilty, and gave the people of 2080 Gischala leave to keep the Jewish sabbath, B. IV. ch. 2. sect. 3, 5, in the midst of their siege. Nor was Vespasian disposed to do what he did, till his officers persuaded him, and that from two principal topics, viz. that nothing could be unjust that was done against Jews; and that when both cannot be consistent, advantage must prevail over justice. Admirable court doctrines these! 2081 WAR BOOK 4 FOOTNOTES 1. Here we have the exact situation of of Jeroboam’s “at the exit of Little Jordan into Great Jordan, near the place called Daphne, but of old Dan. See the note in Antiq. B. VIII. ch. 8. sect. 4. But Reland suspects flint here we should read Dan instead of there being no where else mention of a place called Daphne. 2. These numbers in Josephus of thirty furlongs’ ascent to the top of Mount Tabor, whether we estimate it by winding and gradual, or by the perpendicular altitude, and of twenty-six furlongs’ circumference upon the top, as also fifteen furlongs for this ascent in Polybius, with Geminus’s perpendicular altitude of almost fourteen furlongs, here noted by Dr. Hudson, do none of’ them agree with the authentic testimony of Mr. Maundrell, an eye-witness, p. 112, who says he was not an hour in getting up to the top of this Mount Tabor, and that the area of the top is an oval of about two furlongs in length, and one in breadth. So I rather suppose Josephus wrote three furlongs for the ascent or altitude, instead of thirty; and six furlongs for the circumference at the top, instead of twenty-six, — since a mountain of only three furlongs perpendicular altitude may easily require near an hour’s ascent, and the circumference of an oval of the foregoing quantity is near six furlongs. Nor certainly could such a vast circumference as twenty-six furlongs, or three miles and a quarter, at that height be encompassed with a wall, including a trench and other fortifications, (perhaps those still remaining, ibid.) in the small interval of forty days, as Josephus here says they were by himself. 3. This name Dorcas in Greek, was Tabitha in Hebrew or Syriac, as Acts 9:36. Accordingly, some of the manuscripts set it down here Tabetha or Tabeta. Nor can the context in Josephus be made out by supposing the reading to have been this: “The son of Tabitha; which, in the language of our country, denotes Dorcas” [or a doe]. 4. Here we may discover the utter disgrace and ruin of the high priesthood among the Jews, when undeserving, ignoble, and vile persons were advanced to that holy office by the seditious; which sort of high priests, as Josephus well remarks here, were thereupon obliged to comply 2082 with and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus, Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all whom we shall meet with in Josephus’s future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high priest after Phannias, till Jerusalem was taken and destroyed. 5. This tribe or course of the high priests, or priests, here called Eniachim, seems to the learned Mr. Lowth, one well versed in Josephus, to be that 1 Chronicles 24:12, “the course of Jakim,” where some copies have” the course of Eliakim;” and I think this to be by no means an improbable conjecture. 6. This Symeon, the son of Gamaliel, is mentioned as the president of the Jewish sanhedrim, and one that perished in the destruction of Jerusalem, by the Jewish Rabbins, as Reland observes on this place. He also tells us that those Rabbins mention one Jesus the son of Gamala, as once a high priest, but this long before the destruction of Jerusalem; so that if he were the same person with this Jesus the son of Gamala, Josephus, he must have lived to be very old, or they have been very bad chronologers. 7. It is worth noting here, that this Ananus, the best of the Jews at this time, and the high priest, who was so very uneasy at the profanation of the Jewish courts of the temple by the zealots, did not however scruple the profanation of the “court of the Gentiles;” as in our Savior’s days it was very much profaned by the Jews; and made a market-place, nay, a “den of thieves,” without scruple, Matthew 21:12, 13; Mark 11:15-17. Accordingly Josephus himself, when he speaks of the two inner courts, calls them both hagia or holy places; but, so far as I remember, never gives that character of the court of the Gentiles. See B. V. ch. 9. sect. 2. 8. This appellation of Jerusalem given it here by Simon, the general of the Idumeans, “the common city” of the Idumeans, who were proselytes of justice, as well as of the original native Jews, greatly confirms that maxim of the Rabbins, here set down by Reland, that “Jerusalem was not assigned, or appropriated, to the tribe of Benjamin or Judah, but every tribe had equal right to it [at their coming to worship there at the several 2083 festivals].” See a little before, ch. 3. sect. 3, or “worldly worship,” as the author to the Hebrews calls the sanctuary, “a worldly sanctuary.” 9. Some commentators are ready to suppose that this” Zacharias, the son of Baruch,” here most unjustly slain by the Jews in the temple, was the very same person with “Zacharias, the son of Barachias,” whom our Savior says the Jews “slew between the temple and the altar,” Matthew 23:35. This is a somewhat strange exposition; since Zechariah the prophet was really “the son of Barachiah,” and “grandson of Iddo, Zechariah 1:1; and how he died, we have no other account than that before us in St. Matthew: while this “Zacharias” was “the son of Baruch.” Since the slaughter was past when our Savior spake these words, the Jews had then already slain him; whereas this slaughter of “Zacharias, the son of Baruch,” in Josephus, was then about thirty-four years future. And since the slaughter was “between the temple and the altar,” in the court of the priests, one of the most sacred and remote parts of the whole temple; while this was, in Josephus’s own words, in the middle of the temple, and much the most probably in the court of Israel only (for we have had no intimation that the zealots had at this time profaned the court of the priests. See B. V. ch. 1. sect. 2). Nor do I believe that our Josephus, who always insists on the peculiar sacredness of the inmost court, and of the holy house that was in it, would have omitted so material an aggravation of this barbarous murder, as perpetrated in. a place so very holy, had that been the true place of it. See Antiq. B. XI. ch. 7. sect. 1, and the note here on B. V. ch. 1. sect. 2. 10. This prediction, that the city (Jerusalem) should then “be taken, and the sanctuary burnt, by right of war, when a sedition should invade Jews, and their own hands should pollute that temple;” or, as it is B. VI. ch. 2. sect. 1, “when any one should begin to slay his countrymen in the city;” is wanting in our present copies of the Old Testament. See Essay on the Old Test. p. 104-112. But this prediction, as Josephus well remarks here, though, with the other predictions of the prophets, it was now laughed at by the seditious, was by their very means soon exactly fulfilled. However, I cannot but here take notice of Grotius’s positive assertion upon Matthew 26:9, here quoted by Dr. Hudson, that “it ought to be taken for granted, as a certain truth, that many predictions of the Jewish prophets were preserved, not in writing, but by memory.” Whereas, it 2084 seems to me so far from certain, that I think it has no evidence nor probability at all. 11. By these hiera, or “holy places,” as distinct from cities, must be meant “proseuchae,” or “houses of prayer,” out of cities; of which we find mention made in the New Testament and other authors. See Luke 6:12; Acts 16:13, 16; Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 10. sect. 23; his Life, sect. 51. “In qua te quero proseucha?” Juvenal Sat. III. yet. 296. They were situated sometimes by the sides of rivers, Acts 16:13, or by the sea-side, Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 10. sect. 23. So did the seventy-two interpreters go to pray every morning by the sea-side before they went to their work, B. XII. ch. 2. sect. 12. 12. Gr. Galatia, and so everywhere. 13. Whether this Somorrhon, or Somorrha, ought not to be here written Gomorrha, as some MSS. in a manner have it, (for the place meant by Josephus seems to be near Segor, or Zoar, at the very south of the Dead Sea, hard by which stood Sodom and Gomorrha,) cannot now be certainly determined, but seems by no means improbable. 14. This excellent prayer of Elisha is wanting in our copies, 2 Kings 2:21, 22, though it be referred to also in the Apostolical Constitutions, B. VII. ch. 37., and the success of it is mentioned in them all. 15. See the note on B. V. ch. 13. sect. 6. 16. Of these Roman affairs and tumults under Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, here only touched upon by Josephus, see Tacitus, Suelonius, and Dio, more largely. However, we may observe with Ottius, that Josephus writes the name of the second of them not Otto, with many others, but Otho, with the coins. See also the note on ch. 11. sect. 4. 17. Some of the ancients call this famous tree, or grove, an oak others, a turpentine tree, or grove. It has been very famous in all the past ages, and is so, I suppose, at this day; and that particularly for an eminent mart or meeting of merchants there every year, as the travelers inform us. 18. Puetonius differs hardly three days from Josephus, and says Otho perished on the ninety-fifth day of his reign. In Anthon. See the note on ch. 11. sect. 4. 2085 19. This beginning and ending the observation of the Jewish seventh day, or sabbath, with a priest’s blowing of a trumpet, is remarkable, and no where else mentioned, that I know of. Nor is Reland’s conjecture here improbable, that this was the very place that has puzzled our commentators so long, called “Musach Sabbati,” the “Covert of the Sabbath,” if that be the true reading, 2 Kings 16:18, because here the proper priest stood dry, under a “covering,” to proclaim the beginning and ending of every Jewish sabbath. 20. The Roman authors that now remain say Vitellius had children, whereas Josephus introduces here the Roman soldiers in Judea saying he had none. Which of these assertions was the truth I know not. Spanheim thinks he hath given a peculiar reason for calling Vitellius “childless,” though he really had children, Diss. de Num. p. 649, 650; to which it appears very difficult to give our assent. 21. This brother of Vespasian was Flavius Sabinus, as Suetonius informs us, in Vitell. sect. 15, and in Vespas. sect. 2. He is also named by Josephus presently ch. 11. sect; 4. 22. It is plain by the nature of the thing, as well as by Josephus and Eutropius, that Vespasian was first of all saluted emperor in Judea, and not till some time afterward in Egypt. Whence Tacitus’s and Suetonius’s present copies must be correct text, when they both say that he was first proclaimed in Egypt, and that on the calends of July, while they still say it was the fifth of the Nones or Ides of the same July before he was proclaimed in Judea. I suppose the month they there intended was June, and not July, as the copies now have it; nor does Tacitus’s coherence imply less. See Essay on the Revelation, p. 136. 23. Here we have an authentic description of the bounds and circumstances of Egypt, in the days of Vespasian and Titus. 24. As Daniel was preferred by Darius and Cyrus, on account of his having foretold the destruction of the Babylonian monarchy by their means, and the consequent exaltation of the Medes and Persians, Daniel 5:6 or rather, as Jeremiah, when he was a prisoner, was set at liberty, and honorably treated by Nebuzaradan, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, on account of his having foretold the destruction of Jerusalem by the 2086 Babylonians, Jeremiah 40:1-7; so was our Josephus set at liberty, and honorably treated, on account of his having foretold the advancement of Vespasian and Titus to the Roman empire. All these are most eminent instances of the interposition of Divine Providence. and of the certainty of Divine predictions in the great revolutions of the four monarchies. Several such-like examples there are, both in the sacred and other histories, as in the case of Joseph in Egypt. and of Jaddua the high priest, in the days of Alexander the Great, etc. 25. This is well observed by Josephus, that Vespasian, in order to secure his success, and establish his government at first, distributed his offices and places upon the foot of justice, and bestowed them on such as best deserved them, and were best fit for them. Which wise conduct in a mere heathen ought to put those rulers and ministers of state to shame, who, professing Christianity, act otherwise, and thereby expose themselves and their kingdoms to vice and destruction. 26. The numbers in Josephus, ch. 9. sect. 2, 9, for Galba seven months seven days, for Otho three months two days, and here for Vitellius eight months five days, do not agree with any Roman historians, who also disagree among themselves. And, indeed, Sealiger justly complains, as Dr. Hudson observes on ch. 9. sect. 2, that this period is very confused and uncertain in the ancient authors. They were probably some of them contemporary together for some time; one of the best evidences we have, I mean Ptolemy’s Canon, omits them all, as if they did not all together reign one whole year, nor had a single Thoth, or new-year’s day, (which then fell upon August 6,) in their entire reigns. Dio also, who says that Vitellius reigned a year within ten days, does yet estimate all their reigns together at no more than one year, one month, and two days. 27. There are coins of this Casian Jupiter still extant. 2087 WAR BOOK 5 FOOTNOTES 1. This appears to be the first time that the zealots ventured to pollute this most sacred court of the temple, which was the court of the priests, wherein the temple itself and the altar stood. So that the conjecture of those that would interpret that Zacharias, who was slain “between the temple and the altar” several months before, B. IV. ch. 5. sect. 4, as if he were slain there by these zealots, is groundless, as I have noted on that place already. 2. The Levites. 3. This is an excellent reflection of Josephus, including his hopes of the restoration of the Jews upon their repentance, See Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 46, which is the grand “Hope of Israel,” as Manasseh-ben-Israel, the famous Jewish Rabbi, styles it, in his small but remarkable treatise on that subject, of which the Jewish prophets are every where full. See the principal of those prophecies collected together at the end of the Essay on the Revelation, p. 822, etc. 4. This destruction of such a vast quantity of corn and other provisions, as was sufficient for many years. was the direct occasion of that terrible famine, which consumed incredible numbers of Jews in Jerusalem during its siege. Nor probably could the Romans have taken this city, after all, had not these seditious Jews been so infatuated as thus madly to destroy, what Josephus here justly styles, “The nerves of their power.” 5. This timber, we see, was designed for the rebuilding those twenty additional cubits of the holy house above the hundred, which had fallen down some years before. See the note on Antiq. B. XV. ch. 11. sect. 3. 6. There being no gate on the west, and only on the west, side of the court of the priests, and so no steps there, this was the only side that the seditious, under this John of Gischala, could bring their engines close to the cloisters of that court end-ways, though upon the floor of the court of Israel. See the scheme of that temple, in the description of the temples hereto belonging. 2088 7. We may here note, that Titus is here called “a king,” and “Caesar,” by Josephus, even while he was no more than the emperor’s son, and general of the Roman army, and his father Vespasian was still alive; just as the New Testament says “Archelaus reigned,” or “was king,” Matthew 2:22, though he was properly no more than ethnarch, as Josephus assures us, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 11. sect. 4; Of the War, B. II. ch. 6. sect. 3. Thus also the Jews called the Roman emperors “kings,” though they never took that title to themselves:” We have no king but Caesar,” John 19:15. “Submit to the king as supreme,” 1 Peter 2:13, 17; which is also the language of the Apostolical Constitutions, II. II, 31; IV. 13; V. 19; VI. 2, 25; VII. 16; VIII. 2, 13; and elsewhere in the New Testament, Matthew 10:18; 17:25; 1 Timothy 2:2; and in Josephus also; though I suspect Josephus particularly esteemed Titus as joint king with his father ever since his divine dreams that declared them both such, B. III. ch. 8. sect. 9. 8. This situation of the Mount of Olives, on the east of Jerusalem, at about the distance of five or six furlongs, with the valley of Cedron interposed between that mountain and the city, are things well known both in the Old and New Testament, in Josephus elsewhere, and in all the descriptions of Palestine. 9. Here we see the true occasion of those vast numbers of Jews that were in Jerusalem during this siege by Titus, and perished therein; that the siege began at the feast of the passover, when such prodigious multitudes of Jews and proselytes of the gate were come from all parts of Judea, and from other countries, in order to celebrate that great festival. See the note B. VI. ch. 9. sect. 3. Tacitus himself informs us, that the number of men, women, and children in Jerusalem, when it was besieged by the Romans, as he had been informed. This information must have been taken from the Romans: for Josephus never recounts the numbers of those that were besieged, only he lets us know, that of the vulgar, carried dead out of the gates, and buried at the public charges, was the like number of 600,000, ch. viii. sect. 7. However, when Cestius Gallus came first to the siege, that sum in Tacitus is no way disagreeable to Josephus’s history, though they were become much more numerous when Titus encompassed the city at the passover. As to the number that perished during this siege, Josephus assures us, as we shall see hereafter, they were 1,100,000, besides 97,000 2089 captives. But Tacitus’s history of the last part of this siege is not now extant; so we cannot compare his parallel numbers with those of Josephus. 10. Perhaps, says Dr. Hudson, here was that gate, called the “Gate of the Corner,” in 2 Chronicles 26:9. See ch. 4. sect. 2 11. These dove-courts in Josephus, built by Herod the Great, are, in the opinion of Reland, the very same that are mentioned by the Talmudists, and named by them “Herod’s dove courts.” Nor is there any reason to suppose otherwise, since in both accounts they were expressly tame pigeons which were kept in them. 12. See the description of the temples hereto belonging, ch. 15. But note, that what Josephus here says of the original scantiness of this Mount Moriah, that it was quite too little for the temple, and that at first it held only one cloister or court of Solomon’s building, and that the foundations were forced to be added long afterwards by degrees, to render it capable of the cloisters for the other courts, etc., is without all foundation in the Scriptures, and not at all confirmed by his exacter account in the Antiquities. All that is or can be true here is this, that when the court of the Gentiles was long afterward to be encompassed with cloisters, the southern foundation for these cloisters was found not to be large or firm enough, and was raised, and that additional foundation supported by great pillars and arches under ground, which Josephus speaks of elsewhere, Antiq. B. XV. ch. 11. sect. 3, and which Mr. Maundrel saw, and describes, p. 100, as extant under ground at this day. 13. What Josephus seems here to mean is this: that these pillars, supporting the cloisters in the second court, had their foundations or lowest parts as deep as the floor of the first or lowest court; but that so far of those lowest parts as were equal to the elevation of the upper floor above the lowest were, and must be, hidden on the inside by the ground or rock itself, on which that upper court was built; so that forty cubits visible below were reduced to twenty-five visible above, and implies the difference of their heights to be fifteen cubits. The main difficulty lies here, how fourteen or fifteen steps should give an ascent of fifteen cubits, half a cubit seeming sufficient for a single step. Possibly there were fourteen or fifteen steps at the partition wall, and fourteen or fifteen more thence into 2090 the court itself, which would bring the whole near to the just proportion. See sect. 3, infra. But I determine nothing. 14. These three guards that lay in the tower of Antonia must be those that guarded the city, the temple, and the tower of Antonia. 15. What should be the meaning of this signal or watchword, when the watchmen saw a stone coming from the engine, “THE STONE COMETH,” or what mistake there is in the reading, I cannot tell. The MSS., both Greek and Latin, all agree in this reading; and I cannot approve of any groundless conjectural alteration of the text from ro to lop, that not the son or a stone, but that the arrow or dart cometh; as hath been made by Dr. Hudson, and not corrected by Havercamp. Had Josephus written even his first edition of these books of the war in pure Hebrew, or had the Jews then used the pure Hebrew at Jerusalem, the Hebrew word for a son is so like that for a stone, ben and eben, that such a correction might have been more easily admitted. But Josephus wrote his former edition for the use of the Jews beyond Euphrates, and so in the Chaldee language, as he did this second edition in the Greek language; and bar was the Chaldee word for son, instead of the Hebrew ben, and was used not only in Chaldea, etc. but in Judea also, as the New Testament informs us. Dio lets us know that the very Romans at Rome pronounced the name of Simon the son of Giora, Bar Poras for Bar Gioras, as we learn from Xiphiline, p. 217. Reland takes notice, “that many will here look for a mystery, as though the meaning were, that the Son of God came now to take vengeance on the sins of the Jewish nation;” which is indeed the truth of the fact, but hardly what the Jews could now mean; unless possibly by way of derision of Christ’s threatening so often made, that he would come at the head of the Roman army for their destruction. But even this interpretation has but a very small degree of probability. If I were to make an emendation by mere conjecture, I would read instead of, though the likeness be not so great as in lo; because that is the word used by Josephus just before, as has been already noted on this very occasion, while, an arrow or dart, is only a poetical word, and never used by Josephus elsewhere, and is indeed no way suitable to the occasion, this engine not throwing arrows or darts, but great stones, at this time. 2091 16. Josephus supposes, in this his admirable speech to the Jews, that not Abraham only, but Pharaoh king of Egypt, prayed towards a temple at Jerusalem, or towards Jerusalem itself, in which were Mount Sion and Mount Moriah, on which the tabernacle and temple did afterwards stand; and this long before either the Jewish tabernacle or temple were built. Nor is the famous command given by God to Abraham, to go two or three days’ journey, on purpose to offer up his son Isaac there, unfavorable to such a notion. 17. Note here, that Josephus, in this his same admirable speech, calls the Syrians, nay, even the Philistines, on the most south part of Syria, Assyrians; which Reland observes as what was common among the ancient writers. Note also, that Josephus might well put the Jews in mind, as he does here more than once, of their wonderful and truly miraculous deliverance from Sennacherib, king of Assyria, while the Roman army, and himself with them, were now encamped upon and beyond that very spot of ground where the Assyrian army lay seven hundred and eighty years before, and which retained the very name of the Camp of the Assyrians to that very day. See chap. 7. sect. 3, and chap. 12. sect. 2. 18. This drying up of the Jerusalem fountain of Siloam when the Jews wanted it, and its flowing abundantly when the enemies of the Jews wanted it, and these both in the days of Zedekiah and of Titus, (and this last as a certain event well known by the Jews at that time, as Josephus here tells them openly to their faces,) are very remarkable instances of a Divine Providence for the punishment of the Jewish nation, when they were grown very wicked, at both those times of the destruction of Jerusalem. 19. Reland very properly takes notice here, how justly this judgment came upon the Jews, when they were crucified in such multitudes together, that the Romans wanted room for the crosses, and crosses for the bodies of these Jews, since they had brought this judgment on themselves by the crucifixion of their Messiah. 20. Josephus, both here and before, B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 4, esteems the land of Sodom, not as part of the lake Asphaltiris, or under its waters, but near it only, as Tacitus also took the same notion from him, Hist. V. ch. 6. 7, which the great Reland takes to be the very truth, both in his 2092 note on this place, and in his Palestina, tom. I. p. 254-258; though I rather suppose part of that region of Pentapolis to be now under the waters of the south part of that sea, but perhaps not the whole country. 2093 WAR BOOK 6 FOOTNOTES 1. Reland notes here, very pertinently, that the tower of Antonia stood higher than the floor of the temple or court adjoining to it; and that accordingly they descended thence into the temple, as Josephus elsewhere speaks also. See Book VI. ch. 2. sect. 5. 2. In this speech of Titus we may clearly see the notions which the Romans then had of death, and of the happy state of those who died bravely in war, and the contrary estate of those who died ignobly in their beds by sickness. Reland here also produces two parallel passages, the one out of Atonia Janus Marcellinus, concerning the Alani, lib. 31, that “they judged that man happy who laid down his life in battle;” the other of Valerius Maximus, lib. 11. ch. 6, who says, “that the Cimbri and Celtiberi exulted for joy in the army, as being to go out of the world gloriously and happily.” 3. See the note on p. 809. 4. No wonder that this Julian, who had so many nails in his shoes, slipped upon the pavement of the temple, which was smooth, and laid with marble of different colors. 5. This was a remarkable day indeed, the seventeenth of Paneruns. [Tamuz,] A.D. 70, when, according to Daniel’s prediction, six hundred and six years before, the Romans “in half a week caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease,” Daniel 9:27. For from the month of February, A.D. 66, about which time Vespasian entered on this war, to this very time, was just three years and a half. See Bishop Lloyd’s Tables of Chronology, published by Mr. Marshall, on this year. Nor is it to be omitted, what year nearly confirms this duration of the war, that four years before the war begun was somewhat above seven years five months before the destruction of Jerusalem, ch. 5. sect. 3. 6. The same that in the New Testament is always so called, and was then the common language of the Jews in Judea, which was the Syriac dialect. 2094 7. Our present copies of the Old Testament want this encomium upon king Jechoniah or Jehoiachim, which it seems was in Josephus’s copy. 8. Of this oracle, see the note on B. IV. ch. 6. sect. 3. Josephus, both here and in many places elsewhere, speaks so, that it is most evident he was fully satisfied that God was on the Romans’ side, and made use of them now for the destruction of that wicked nation of the Jews; which was for certain the true state of this matter, as the prophet Daniel first, and our Savior himself afterwards, had clearly foretold. See Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 64, etc. 9. Josephus had before told us, B. V. ch. 13. sect. 1, that this fourth son of Matthias ran away to the Romans “before” his father’s and brethren’s slaughter, and not “after” it, as here. The former account is, in all probability, the truest; for had not that fourth son escaped before the others were caught and put to death, he had been caught and put to death with them. This last account, therefore, looks like an instance of a small inadvertence of Josephus in the place before us. 10. Of this partition-wall separating Jews and Gentiles, with its pillars and inscription, see the description of the temples, ch. 15. 11. That these seditious Jews were the direct occasions of their own destruction, and of the conflagration of their city and temple, and that Titus earnestly and constantly labored to save both, is here and every where most evident in Josephus. 12. Court of the Gentiles. 13. Court of Israel. 14. Of the court of the Gentiles. 15. What Josephus observes here, that no parallel examples had been recorded before this time of such sieges, wherein mothers were forced by extremity of famine to eat their own children, as had been threatened to the Jews in the law of Moses, upon obstinate disobedience, and more than once fulfilled, (see my Boyle’s Lectures, p. 210-214,) is by Dr. Hudson supposed to have had two or three parallel examples in later ages. He might have had more examples, I suppose, of persons on ship-board, or in 2095 a desert island, casting lots for each others’ bodies; but all this was only in cases where they knew of no possible way to avoid death themselves but by killing and eating others. Whether such examples come up to the present case may be doubted. The Romans were not only willing, but very desirous, to grant those Jews in Jerusalem both their lives and their liberties, and to save both their city and their temple. But the zealots, the rubbers, and the seditious would hearken to no terms of submission. They voluntarily chose to reduce the citizens to that extremity, as to force mothers to this unnatural barbarity, which, in all its circumstances, has not, I still suppose, been hitherto paralleled among the rest of mankind. 16. These steps to the altar of burnt-offering seem here either an improper and inaccurate expression of Josephus, since it was unlawful to make ladder steps; (see description of the temples, ch. 13., and note on Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 5;) or else those steps or stairs we now use were invented before the days of Herod the Great, and had been here built by him; though the later Jews always deny it, and say that even Herod’s altar was ascended to by an acclivity only. 17. This Perea, if the word be not mistaken in the copies, cannot well be that Perea which was beyond Jordan, whose mountains were at a considerable distance from Jordan, and much too remote from Jerusalem to join in this echo at the conflagration of the temple; but Perea must be rather some mountains beyond the brook Cedron, as was the Mount of Olives, or some others about such a distance from Jerusalem; which observation is so obvious, that it is a wonder our commentators here take no notice of it. 18. Reland I think here judges well, when he interprets these spikes (of those that stood on the top of the holy house) with sharp points; they were fixed into lead, to prevent the birds from sitting there, and defiling the holy house; for such spikes there were now upon it, as Josephus himself hath already assured us, B. V. ch. 5. sect. 6. 19. Reland here takes notice, that these Jews, who had despised the true Prophet, were deservedly abused and deluded by these false ones. 2096 20. Whether Josephus means that this star was different from that comet which lasted a whole year, I cannot certainly determine. His words most favor their being different one from another. 21. Since Josephus still uses the Syro-Macedonian month Xanthicus for the Jewish month Nisan, this eighth, or, as Nicephorus reads it, this ninth of Xanthicus or Nisan was almost a week before the passover, on the fourteenth; about which time we learn from St. John that many used to go “out of the country to Jerusalem to purify themselves,” John 11:55, with 12:1; in agreement with Josephus also, B. V. ch. 3. sect. 1. And it might well be, that in the sight of these this extraordinary light might appear. 22. This here seems to be the court of the priests. 23. Both Reland and Havercamp in this place alter the natural punctuation and sense of Josephus, and this contrary to the opinion of Valesilus and Dr. Hudson, lest Josephus should say that the Jews built booths or tents within the temple at the feast of tabernacles; which the later Rabbins will not allow to have been the ancient practice: but then, since it is expressly told us in Nehemiah, ch. 8:16, that in still elder times “the Jews made booths in the courts of the house of God” at that festival, Josephus may well be permitted to say the same. And indeed the modern Rabbins are of very small authority in all such matters of remote antiquity. 24. Take Havercamp’s note here: “This (says he) is a remarkable place; and Tertullian truly says in his Apologetic, ch. 16. p. 162, that the entire religion of the Roman camp almost consisted in worshipping the ensigns, in swearing by the ensigns, and in preferring the ensigns before all the [other] gods.” See what Havercamp says upon that place of Tertullian. 25. This declaring Titus imperator by the soldiers, upon such signal success, and the slaughter of such a vast number of enemies, was according to the usual practice of the Romans in like cases, as Reland assures us on this place. 26. The Jews of later times agree with Josephus, that there were hiding-places or secret chambers about the holy house, as Reland here informs us, where he thinks he has found these very walls described by them. 2097 27. Spanheim notes here, that the Romans used to permit the Jews to collect their sacred tribute, and send it to Jerusalem; of which we have had abundant evidence in Josephus already on other occasions. 28. This innumerable multitude of Jews that were “sold” by the Romans was an eminent completion of God’s ancient threatening by Moses, that if they apostatized from the obedience to his laws, they should be “sold unto their enemies for bond-men and bond-women,” Deuteronomy 28;68. See more especially the note on ch. 9. sect. 2. But one thing is here peculiarly remarkable, that Moses adds, Though they should be “sold” for slaves, yet “no man should buy them;” i.e. either they should have none to redeem them from this sale into slavery; or rather, that the slaves to be sold should be more than were the purchasers for them, and so they should be sold for little or nothing; which is what Josephus here affirms to have been the case at this time. 29. What became of these spoils of the temple that escaped the fire, see Josephus himself hereafter, B. VII. ch. 5. sect. 5, and Reland de Spoliis Templi, p. 129-138. 30. These various sorts of spices, even more than those four which Moses prescribed, Exodus 31:34, we see were used in their public worship under Herod’s temple, particularly cinnamon and cassia; which Reland takes particular notice of, as agreeing with the latter testimony of the Talmudists. 31. See the several predictions that the Jews, if they became obstinate in their idolatry and wickedness, should be sent again or sold into Egypt for their punishment, Deuteronomy 28:68; Jeremiah 44:7; Hosea 8:13; 9:3; 9:4, 5; 2 Samuel 15:10-13; with Authentic Records, Part I. p. 49, 121; and Reland Painest And, tom. II. p. 715. 32. The whole multitude of the Jews that were destroyed during the entire seven years before this time, in all the countries of and bordering on Judea, is summed up by Archbishop Usher, from Lipsius, out of Josephus, at the year of Christ 70, and amounts to 1,337,490. Nor could there have been that number of Jews in Jerusalem to be destroyed in this siege, as will be presently set down by Josephus, but that both Jews and proselytes of justice were just then come up out of the other countries of 2098 Galilee, Samaria, Judea, and Perea and other remoter regions, to the passover, in vast numbers, and therein cooped up, as in a prison, by the Roman army, as Josephus himself well observes in this and the next section, and as is exactly related elsewhere, B. V. ch. 3. sect. 1 and ch. 13. sect. 7. 33. This number of a company for one paschal lamb, between ten and twenty, agrees exactly with the number thirteen, at our Savior’s last passover. As to the whole number of the Jews that used to come up to the passover, and eat of it at Jerusalem, see the note on B. II. ch. 14. sect. 3. This number ought to be here indeed just ten times the number of the lambs, or just 2,565,(D0, by Josephus’s own reasoning; whereas it is, in his present copies, no less than 2,700,(D0, which last number is, however, nearest the other number in the place now cited, which is 3,000,000. But what is here chiefly remarkable is this, that no foreign nation ever came thus to destroy the Jews at any of their solemn festivals, from the days of Moses till this time, but came now upon their apostasy from God, and from obedience to him. Nor is it possible, in the nature of things, that in any other nation such vast numbers should be gotten together, and perish in the siege of any one city whatsoever, as now happened in Jerusalem. 34. Besides these five here enumerated, who had taken Jerusalem of old, Josephus, upon further recollection, reckons a sixth, Antiq. B. XII. Ch i. sect 1, who should have been inserted in the second place; I mean Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. 2099 WAR BOOK 7 FOOTNOTES 1. Why the great Bochart should say, (De Phoenic. Colon. B. II. ch. iv.,) that” there are in this clause of Josephus as many mistakes as words,” I do by no means understand. Josephus thought Melchisedek first built, or rather rebuilt and adorned, this city, and that it was then called Salem, as Psalm 76:2; afterwards came to be called Jerusalem; and that Melchisedek, being a priest as well as a king, built to the true God therein a temple, or place for public Divine worship and sacrifice; all which things may be very true for aught we know to the contrary. And for the word, or temple, as if it must needs belong to the great temple built by Solomon long afterward, Josephus himself uses, for the small tabernacle of Moses, Antiq. B. III. ch. 6. sect. 4; see also Antiq. B. lit. ch. 6. sect. 1; as he here presently uses, for a large and splendid synagogue of the Jews at Antioch, B. VII. ch. 3. sect. 3. 2. This Tereutius Rufus, as Reland in part observes here, is the same person whom the Talmudists call Turnus Rufus; of whom they relate, that “he ploughed up Sion as a field, and made Jerusalem become as heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high Idaces of a forest;” which was long before foretold by the prophet Micah, ch. 3:12, and quoted from him in the prophecies of Jeremiah, ch. 26:18. 3. See Ecclesiastes 8:11. 4. This Berytus was certainly a Roman colony, and has coins extant that witness the same, as Hudson and Spanheim inform us. See the note on Antiq. B. XVI: ch. 11. sect. 1. 5. The Jews at Antioch and Alexandria, the two principal cities in all the East, had allowed them, both by the Macedonians, and afterwards by the Romans, a governor of their own, who was exempt from the jurisdiction of the other civil governors. He was called sometimes barely “governor,” sometimes “ethnarch,” and [at Alexandria] “alabarch,” as Dr. Hudson takes notice on this place out of Fuller’s Miscellanies. They had the like governor or governors allowed them at Babylon under their captivity there, as the history of Susanna implies. 2100 6. This Classicus, and Civilis, and Cerealis are names well known in Tacitus; the two former as moving sedition against the Romans, and the last as sent to repress them by Vespasian, just as they are here described in Josephus; which is the case also of Fontellis Agrippa and Rubrius Gallup, i, sect. 3. But as to the very favorable account presently given of Domitian, particularly as to his designs in this his Gallic and German expedition, it is not a little contrary to that in Suetonius, Vesp. sect. 7. Nor are the reasons unobvious that might occasion this great diversity: Domitian was one of Josephus’s patrons, and when he published these books of the Jewish war, was very young, and had hardly begun those wicked practices which rendered him so infamous afterward; while Suetonius seems to have been too young, and too low in life, to receive any remarkable favors from him; as Domitian was certainly very lewd and cruel, and generally hated, when Puetonius wrote about him. 7. Since in these latter ages this Sabbatic River, once so famous, which, by Josephus’s account here, ran every seventh day, and rested on six, but according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. 31. II, ran perpetually on six days, and rested every seventh, (though it no way appears by either of their accounts that the seventh day of this river was the Jewish seventh day or sabbath,) is quite vanished, I shall add no more about it: only see Dr. Hudson’s note. In Varenius’s Geography, i, 17, the reader will find several instances of such periodical fountains and. rivers, though none of their periods were that of a just week as of old this appears to have been. 8. Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian. 9. See the representations of these Jewish vessels as they still stand on Titus’s triumphal arch at Rome, in Reland’s very curious book de Spoliis Ternpli, throughout. But what, things are chiefly to be noted are these: (1.) That Josephus says the candlestick here carried in this triumph was not thoroughly like that which was used in the temple, which appears in the number of the little knobs and flowers in that on the triumphal arch not well agreeing with Moses’s description, Exodus 25:31-36. (2.) The smallness of the branches in Josephus compared with the thickness of those on that arch. (3.) That the Law or Pentateuch does not appear on that arch at all, though Josephus, an eye-witness, assures us that it was 2101 carried in this procession. All which things deserve the consideration of the inquisitive reader. 10. Spanheim observes here, that in Graceia Major and Sicily they had rue prodigiously great and durable, like this rue at Macherus, 11. This strange account of the place and root Baaras seems to have been taken from the magicians, and the root to have been made use of in the days of Josephus, in that superstitious way of casting out demons, supposed by him to have been derived from king Solomon; of which we have already seen he had a great opinion, Antiq. B. VIII. ch. 2. sect. 5. We also may hence learn the true notion Josephus had of demons and demoniacs, exactly like that of the Jews and Christians in the New Testament, and the first four centuries. See Antiq. B. I. ch. 8. sect. 2; B. XI, ch. 2. sect. 3. 12. It is very remarkable that Titus did not people this now desolate country of Judea, but ordered it to be all sold; nor indeed is it properly peopled at this day, but lies ready for its old inhabitants the Jews, at their future restoration. See Literal Accomplishment of Prophecies, p. 77. 13. That the city Emmaus, or Areindus, in Josephus and others which was the place of the government of Julius Africanus were slain, to the number of one thousand seven hundred, as were the women and the children made slaves. But as Bassus thought he must perform the covenant he had made with those that had surrendered the citadel, he let them go, and restored Eleazar to them, in the beginning of the third century, and which he then procured to be rebuilt, and after which rebuilding it was called Nicopolis, is entirely different from that Emmaus which is mentioned by St. Luke 24;13; see Reland’s Paleestina, lib. II. p. 429, and under the name Ammaus also. But he justly thinks that that in St. Luke may well be the same with his Ammaus before us, especially since the Greek copies here usually make it sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem, as does St. Luke, though the Latin copies say only thirty. The place also allotted for these eight hundred soldiers, as for a Roman garrison, in this place, would most naturally be not so remote from Jerusalem as was the other Emmaus, or Nicopolis. 2102 14. Pliny and others confirm this strange paradox, that provisions laid up against sieges will continue good for a hundred ears, as Spanheim notes upon this place. 15. The speeches in this and the next section, as introduced under the person of this Eleazar, are exceeding remarkable, and oil the noblest subjects, the contempt of death, and the dignity and immortality of the soul; and that not only among the Jews, but among the Indians themselves also; and are highly worthy the perusal of all the curious. It seems as if that philosophic lady who survived, ch. 9. sect. 1, 2, remembered the substance of these discourses, as spoken by Eleazar, and so Josephus clothed them in his own words: at the lowest they contain the Jewish notions on these heads, as understood then by our Josephus, and cannot but deserve a suitable regard from us. 16. See B. II. ch. 20. sect. 2, where the number of the slain is but 10,000. 17. Reland here sets down a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish Rabbins, “We are born that we may die, and die that we may live.’ 18. Since Josephus here informs us that some of these Sicarii, or ruffians, went from Alexandria (which was itself in Egypt, in a large sense) into Egypt, and Thebes there situated, Reland well observes, from Vossius, that Egypt sometimes denotes Proper or Upper Egypt, as distinct from the Delta, and the lower parts near Palestine. Accordingly, as he adds, those that say it never rains in Egypt must mean the Proper or Upper Egypt, because it does sometimes rain in the other parts. See the note on Antiq. B. II. ch. 7. sect. 7, and B. III. ch. 1. sect. 6. 19. Of this temple of Onias’s building in Egypt, see the notes on Antiq. B. XIII. ch. 3. sect. 1. But whereas it is elsewhere, both of the War, B. I. ch. 1. sect. 1, and in the Antiquities as now quoted, said that this temple was like to that at Jerusalem, and here that it was not like it, but like a tower, sect. 3, there is some reason to suspect the reading here, and that either the negative particle is here to be blotted out, or the word entirely added. 20. We must observe, that Josephus here speaks of Antiochus who profaned the temple as now alive, when Onias had leave given them |