AGAINST APION.

1

By Flavius Josephus

Translated by William Whiston

CONTENTS

BOOK 1.

APION BOOK 1 FOOTNOTES

BOOK II.

APION BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES

BOOK 1.

1. I Suppose that by my books of the Antiquity of the Jews, most excellent
Epaphroditus, 2
have made it evident to those who peruse them, that our Jewish nation is
of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own
originally; as also, I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this
country wherein we now live. Those Antiquities contain the history of five
thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated
by me into the Greek tongue. However, since I observe a considerable
number of people giving ear to the reproaches that are laid against us by
those who bear ill-will to us, and will not believe what I have written
concerning the antiquity of our nation, while they take it for a plain
sign that our nation is of a late date, because they are not so much as
vouchsafed a bare mention by the most famous historiographers among the
Grecians. I therefore have thought myself under an obligation to write
somewhat briefly about these subjects, in order to convict those that
reproach us of spite and voluntary falsehood, and to correct the ignorance
of others, and withal to instruct all those who are desirous of knowing
the truth of what great antiquity we really are. As for the witnesses whom
I shall produce for the proof of what I say, they shall be such as are
esteemed to be of the greatest reputation for truth, and the most skillful
in the knowledge of all antiquity by the Greeks themselves. I will also
show, that those who have written so reproachfully and falsely about us
are to be convicted by what they have written themselves to the contrary.
I shall also endeavor to give an account of the reasons why it hath so
happened, that there have not been a great number of Greeks who have made
mention of our nation in their histories. I will, however, bring those
Grecians to light who have not omitted such our history, for the sake of
those that either do not know them, or pretend not to know them already.

2. And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those men,
who suppose that we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are
inquiring about the most ancient facts, and must inform ourselves of their
truth from them only, while we must not believe ourselves nor other men;
for I am convinced that the very reverse is the truth of the case. I mean
this,—if we will not be led by vain opinions, but will make inquiry
after truth from facts themselves; for they will find that almost all
which concerns the Greeks happened not long ago; nay, one may say, is of
yesterday only. I speak of the building of their cities, the inventions of
their arts, and the description of their laws; and as for their care about
the writing down of their histories, it is very near the last thing they
set about. However, they acknowledge themselves so far, that they were the
Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians (for I will not now reckon
ourselves among them) that have preserved the memorials of the most
ancient and most lasting traditions of mankind; for almost all these
nations inhabit such countries as are least subject to destruction from
the world about them; and these also have taken especial care to have
nothing omitted of what was [remarkably] done among them; but their
history was esteemed sacred, and put into public tables, as written by men
of the greatest wisdom they had among them. But as for the place where the
Grecians inhabit, ten thousand destructions have overtaken it, and blotted
out the memory of former actions; so that they were ever beginning a new
way of living, and supposed that every one of them was the origin of their
new state. It was also late, and with difficulty, that they came to know
the letters they now use; for those who would advance their use of these
letters to the greatest antiquity pretend that they learned them from the
Phoenicians and from Cadmus; yet is nobody able to demonstrate that they
have any writing preserved from that time, neither in their temples, nor
in any other public monuments. This appears, because the time when those
lived who went to the Trojan war, so many years afterward, is in great
doubt, and great inquiry is made, whether the Greeks used their letters at
that time; and the most prevailing opinion, and that nearest the truth,
is, that their present way of using those letters was unknown at that
time. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to be
genuine among them ancienter than Homer’s Poems, who must plainly he
confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that even he
did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was preserved in
songs, and they were put together afterward, and that this is the reason
of such a number of variations as are found in them. 3 As for those
who set themselves about writing their histories, I mean such as Cadmus of
Miletus, and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others that may be mentioned as
succeeding Acusilaus, they lived but a little while before the Persian
expedition into Greece. But then for those that first introduced
philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and divine among
them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and Thales, all with
one consent agree, that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and
Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the things which are
supposed to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and they have much ado
to believe that the writings ascribed to those men are genuine.

3. How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to be so
proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are acquainted
with antiquity, and that have delivered the true accounts of those early
times after an accurate manner? Nay, who is there that cannot easily
gather from the Greek writers themselves, that they knew but little on any
good foundation when they set to write, but rather wrote their histories
from their own conjectures? Accordingly, they confute one another in their
own books to purpose, and are not ashamed. to give us the most
contradictory accounts of the same things; and I should spend my time to
little purpose, if I should pretend to teach the Greeks that which they
know better than I already, what a great disagreement there is between
Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their genealogies; in how many eases
Acusilaus corrects Hesiod: or after what manner Ephorus demonstrates
Hellanicus to have told lies in the greatest part of his history; as does
Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and the succeeding writers do to
Timeus, and all the later writers do to Herodotus nor could Timeus agree
with Antiochus and Philistius, or with Callias, about the Sicilian
History, no more than do the several writers of the Athide follow one
another about the Athenian affairs; nor do the historians the like, that
wrote the Argolics, about the affairs of the Argives. And now what need I
say any more about particular cities and smaller places, while in the most
approved writers of the expedition of the Persians, and of the actions
which were therein performed, there are so great differences? Nay,
Thucydides himself is accused of some as writing what is false, although
he seems to have given us the exactest history of the affairs of his own
time. 4

4. As for the occasions of so great disagreement of theirs, there may be
assigned many that are very probable, if any have a mind to make an
inquiry about them; but I ascribe these contradictions chiefly to two
causes, which I will now mention, and still think what I shall mention in
the first place to be the principal of all. For if we remember that in the
beginning the Greeks had taken no care to have public records of their
several transactions preserved, this must for certain have afforded those
that would afterward write about those ancient transactions the
opportunity of making mistakes, and the power of making lies also; for
this original recording of such ancient transactions hath not only been
neglected by the other states of Greece, but even among the Athenians
themselves also, who pretend to be Aborigines, and to have applied
themselves to learning, there are no such records extant; nay, they say
themselves that the laws of Draco concerning murders, which are now extant
in writing, are the most ancient of their public records; which Draco yet
lived but a little before the tyrant Pisistratus. 5 For as to the
Arcadians, who make such boasts of their antiquity, what need I speak of
them in particular, since it was still later before they got their
letters, and learned them, and that with difficulty also. 6

5. There must therefore naturally arise great differences among writers,
when they had no original records to lay for their foundation, which might
at once inform those who had an inclination to learn, and contradict those
that would tell lies. However, we are to suppose a second occasion besides
the former of these contradictions; it is this: That those who were the
most zealous to write history were not solicitous for the discovery of
truth, although it was very easy for them always to make such a
profession; but their business was to demonstrate that they could write
well, and make an impression upon mankind thereby; and in what manner of
writing they thought they were able to exceed others, to that did they
apply themselves, Some of them betook themselves to the writing of
fabulous narrations; some of them endeavored to please the cities or the
kings, by writing in their commendation; others of them fell to finding
faults with transactions, or with the writers of such transactions, and
thought to make a great figure by so doing. And indeed these do what is of
all things the most contrary to true history; for it is the great
character of true history that all concerned therein both speak and write
the same things; while these men, by writing differently about the same
things, think they shall be believed to write with the greatest regard to
truth. We therefore [who are Jews] must yield to the Grecian writers as to
language and eloquence of composition; but then we shall give them no such
preference as to the verity of ancient history, and least of all as to
that part which concerns the affairs of our own several countries.

6. As to the care of writing down the records from the earliest antiquity
among the Egyptians and Babylonians; that the priests were intrusted
therewith, and employed a philosophical concern about it; that they were
the Chaldean priests that did so among the Babylonians; and that the
Phoenicians, who were mingled among the Greeks, did especially make use of
their letters, both for the common affairs of life, and for the delivering
down the history of common transactions, I think I may omit any proof,
because all men allow it so to be. But now as to our forefathers, that
they took no less care about writing such records, [for I will not say
they took greater care than the others I spoke of,] and that they
committed that matter to their high priests and to their prophets, and
that these records have been written all along down to our own times with
the utmost accuracy; nay, if it be not too bold for me to say it, our
history will be so written hereafter;—I shall endeavor briefly to
inform you.

7. For our forefathers did not only appoint the best of these priests, and
those that attended upon the Divine worship, for that design from the
beginning, but made provision that the stock of the priests should
continue unmixed and pure; for he who is partaker of the priesthood must
propagate of a wife of the same nation, without having any regard to
money, or any other dignities; but he is to make a scrutiny, and take his
wife’s genealogy from the ancient tables, and procure many witnesses to
it. 7
And this is our practice not only in Judea, but wheresoever any body of
men of our nation do live; and even there an exact catalogue of our
priests’ marriages is kept; I mean at Egypt and at Babylon, or in any
other place of the rest of the habitable earth, whithersoever our priests
are scattered; for they send to Jerusalem the ancient names of their
parents in writing, as well as those of their remoter ancestors, and
signify who are the witnesses also. But if any war falls out, such as have
fallen out a great many of them already, when Antiochus Epiphanes made an
invasion upon our country, as also when Pompey the Great and Quintilius
Varus did so also, and principally in the wars that have happened in our
own times, those priests that survive them compose new tables of genealogy
out of the old records, and examine the circumstances of the women that
remain; for still they do not admit of those that have been captives, as
suspecting that they had conversation with some foreigners. But what is
the strongest argument of our exact management in this matter is what I am
now going to say, that we have the names of our high priests from father
to son set down in our records for the interval of two thousand years; and
if any of these have been transgressors of these rules, they are
prohibited to present themselves at the altar, or to be partakers of any
other of our purifications; and this is justly, or rather necessarily
done, because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer,
nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets
that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they
learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what
hath happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also.

8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing
from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only
twenty-two books, 8 which contain the records of all
the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five
belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin
of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three
thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign
of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who
were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen
books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the
conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since
Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like
authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been
an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have
given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do;
for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as
either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make
any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and
from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines,
and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them. For
it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and
frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds
upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against
our laws and the records that contain them; whereas there are none at all
among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on that account, no, nor
in case all the writings that are among them were to be destroyed; for
they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the
inclinations of those that write them; and they have justly the same
opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present
generation bold enough to write about such affairs, wherein they were not
present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those
that knew them; examples of which may be had in this late war of ours,
where some persons have written histories, and published them, without
having been in the places concerned, or having been near them when the
actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and
insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of
Histories.

9. As for myself, I have composed a true history of that whole war, and of
all the particulars that occurred therein, as having been concerned in all
its transactions; for I acted as general of those among us that are named
Galileans, as long as it was possible for us to make any opposition. I was
then seized on by the Romans, and became a captive. Vespasian also and
Titus had me kept under a guard, and forced me to attend them continually.
At the first I was put into bonds, but was set at liberty afterward, and
sent to accompany Titus when he came from Alexandria to the siege of
Jerusalem; during which time there was nothing done which escaped my
knowledge; for what happened in the Roman camp I saw, and wrote down
carefully; and what informations the deserters brought [out of the city],
I was the only man that understood them. Afterward I got leisure at Rome;
and when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of some
persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue, and by these means I
composed the history of those transactions. And I was so well assured of
the truth of what I related, that I first of all appealed to those that
had the supreme command in that war, Vespasian and Titus, as witnesses for
me, for to them I presented those books first of all, and after them to
many of the Romans who had been in the war. I also sold them to many of
our own men who understood the Greek philosophy; among whom were Julius
Archelaus, Herod [king of Chalcis], a person of great gravity, and king
Agrippa himself, a person that deserved the greatest admiration. Now all
these men bore their testimony to me, that I had the strictest regard to
truth; who yet would not have dissembled the matter, nor been silent, if
I, out of ignorance, or out of favor to any side, either had given false
colors to actions, or omitted any of them.

10. There have been indeed some bad men, who have attempted to calumniate
my history, and took it to be a kind of scholastic performance for the
exercise of young men. A strange sort of accusation and calumny this!
since every one that undertakes to deliver the history of actions truly
ought to know them accurately himself in the first place, as either having
been concerned in them himself, or been informed of them by such as knew
them. Now both these methods of knowledge I may very properly pretend to
in the composition of both my works; for, as I said, I have translated the
Antiquities out of our sacred books; which I easily could do, since I was
a priest by my birth, and have studied that philosophy which is contained
in those writings: and for the History of the War, I wrote it as having
been an actor myself in many of its transactions, an eye-witness in the
greatest part of the rest, and was not unacquainted with any thing
whatsoever that was either said or done in it. How impudent then must
those deserve to be esteemed that undertake to contradict me about the
true state of those affairs! who, although they pretend to have made use
of both the emperors’ own memoirs, yet could not they he acquainted with
our affairs who fought against them.

11. This digression I have been obliged to make out of necessity, as being
desirous to expose the vanity of those that profess to write histories;
and I suppose I have sufficiently declared that this custom of
transmitting down the histories of ancient times hath been better
preserved by those nations which are called Barbarians, than by the Greeks
themselves. I am now willing, in the next place, to say a few things to
those that endeavor to prove that our constitution is but of late time,
for this reason, as they pretend, that the Greek writers have said nothing
about us; after which I shall produce testimonies for our antiquity out of
the writings of foreigners; I shall also demonstrate that such as cast
reproaches upon our nation do it very unjustly.

12. As for ourselves, therefore, we neither inhabit a maritime country,
nor do we delight in merchandise, nor in such a mixture with other men as
arises from it; but the cities we dwell in are remote from the sea, and
having a fruitful country for our habitation, we take pains in cultivating
that only. Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children
well; and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life
to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of
piety that have been delivered down to us. Since, therefore, besides what
we have already taken notice of, we have had a peculiar way of living of
our own, there was no occasion offered us in ancient ages for intermixing
among the Greeks, as they had for mixing among the Egyptians, by their
intercourse of exporting and importing their several goods; as they also
mixed with the Phoenicians, who lived by the sea-side, by means of their
love of lucre in trade and merchandise. Nor did our forefathers betake
themselves, as did some others, to robbery; nor did they, in order to gain
more wealth, fall into foreign wars, although our country contained many
ten thousands of men of courage sufficient for that purpose. For this
reason it was that the Phoenicians themselves came soon by trading and
navigation to be known to the Grecians, and by their means the Egyptians
became known to the Grecians also, as did all those people whence the
Phoenicians in long voyages over the seas carried wares to the Grecians.
The Medes also and the Persians, when they were lords of Asia, became well
known to them; and this was especially true of the Persians, who led their
armies as far as the other continent [Europe]. The Thracians were also
known to them by the nearness of their countries, and the Scythians by the
means of those that sailed to Pontus; for it was so in general that all
maritime nations, and those that inhabited near the eastern or western
seas, became most known to those that were desirous to be writers; but
such as had their habitations further from the sea were for the most part
unknown to them which things appear to have happened as to Europe also,
where the city of Rome, that hath this long time been possessed of so much
power, and hath performed such great actions in war, is yet never
mentioned by Herodotus, nor by Thucydides, nor by any one of their
contemporaries; and it was very late, and with great difficulty, that the
Romans became known to the Greeks. Nay, those that were reckoned the most
exact historians [and Ephorus for one] were so very ignorant of the Gauls
and the Spaniards, that he supposed the Spaniards, who inhabit so great a
part of the western regions of the earth, to be no more than one city.
Those historians also have ventured to describe such customs as were made
use of by them, which they never had either done or said; and the reason
why these writers did not know the truth of their affairs was this, that
they had not any commerce together; but the reason why they wrote such
falsities was this, that they had a mind to appear to know things which
others had not known. How can it then be any wonder, if our nation was no
more known to many of the Greeks, nor had given them any occasion to
mention them in their writings, while they were so remote from the sea,
and had a conduct of life so peculiar to themselves?

13. Let us now put the case, therefore, that we made use of this argument
concerning the Grecians, in order to prove that their nation was not
ancient, because nothing is said of them in our records: would not they
laugh at us all, and probably give the same reasons for our silence that I
have now alleged, and would produce their neighbor nations as witnesses to
their own antiquity? Now the very same thing will I endeavor to do; for I
will bring the Egyptians and the Phoenicians as my principal witnesses,
because nobody can complain Of their testimony as false, on account that
they are known to have borne the greatest ill-will towards us; I mean this
as to the Egyptians in general all of them, while of the Phoenicians it is
known the Tyrians have been most of all in the same ill disposition
towards us: yet do I confess that I cannot say the same of the Chaldeans,
since our first leaders and ancestors were derived from them; and they do
make mention of us Jews in their records, on account of the kindred there
is between us. Now when I shall have made my assertions good, so far as
concerns the others, I will demonstrate that some of the Greek writers
have made mention of us Jews also, that those who envy us may not have
even this pretense for contradicting what I have said about our nation.

14. I shall begin with the writings of the Egyptians; not indeed of those
that have written in the Egyptian language, which it is impossible for me
to do. But Manetho was a man who was by birth an Egyptian, yet had he made
himself master of the Greek learning, as is very evident; for he wrote the
history of his own country in the Greek tongue, by translating it, as he
saith himself, out of their sacred records; he also finds great fault with
Herodotus for his ignorance and false relations of Egyptian affairs. Now
this Manetho, in the second book of his Egyptian History, writes
concerning us in the following manner. I will set down his very words, as
if I were to bring the very man himself into a court for a witness: “There
was a king of ours whose name was Timaus. Under him it came to pass, I
know not how, that God was averse to us, and there came, after a
surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, and had
boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and with ease
subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a battle with them. So when
they had gotten those that governed us under their power, they afterwards
burnt down our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and used
all the inhabitants after a most barbarous manner; nay, some they slew,
and led their children and their wives into slavery. At length they made
one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis; he also lived at Memphis,
and made both the upper and lower regions pay tribute, and left garrisons
in places that were the most proper for them. He chiefly aimed to secure
the eastern parts, as fore-seeing that the Assyrians, who had then the
greatest power, would be desirous of that kingdom, and invade them; and as
he found in the Saite Nomos, [Sethroite,] a city very proper for this
purpose, and which lay upon the Bubastic channel, but with regard to a
certain theologic notion was called Avaris, this he rebuilt, and made very
strong by the walls he built about it, and by a most numerous garrison of
two hundred and forty thousand armed men whom he put into it to keep it.
Thither Salatis came in summer time, partly to gather his corn, and pay
his soldiers their wages, and partly to exercise his armed men, and
thereby to terrify foreigners. When this man had reigned thirteen years,
after him reigned another, whose name was Beon, for forty-four years;
after him reigned another, called Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven
months; after him Apophis reigned sixty-one years, and then Janins fifty
years and one month; after all these reigned Assis forty-nine years and
two months. And these six were the first rulers among them, who were all
along making war with the Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually to
destroy them to the very roots. This whole nation was styled Hycsos, that
is, Shepherd-kings: for the first syllable Hyc, according to the sacred
dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd; but this according to the
ordinary dialect; and of these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that
these people were Arabians.” Now in another copy it is said that this word
does not denote Kings, but, on the contrary, denotes Captive Shepherds,
and this on account of the particle Hyc; for that Hyc, with the
aspiration, in the Egyptian tongue again denotes Shepherds, and that
expressly also; and this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more
agreeable to ancient history. [But Manetho goes on]: “These people, whom
we have before named kings, and called shepherds also, and their
descendants,” as he says, “kept possession of Egypt five hundred and
eleven years.” After these, he says, “That the kings of Thebais and the
other parts of Egypt made an insurrection against the shepherds, and that
there a terrible and long war was made between them.” He says further,
“That under a king, whose name was Alisphragmuthosis, the shepherds were
subdued by him, and were indeed driven out of other parts of Egypt, but
were shut up in a place that contained ten thousand acres; this place was
named Avaris.” Manetho says, “That the shepherds built a wall round all
this place, which was a large and a strong wall, and this in order to keep
all their possessions and their prey within a place of strength, but that
Thummosis the son of Alisphragmuthosis made an attempt to take them by
force and by siege, with four hundred and eighty thousand men to lie
rotund about them, but that, upon his despair of taking the place by that
siege, they came to a composition with them, that they should leave Egypt,
and go, without any harm to be done to them, whithersoever they would; and
that, after this composition was made, they went away with their whole
families and effects, not fewer in number than two hundred and forty
thousand, and took their journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, for
Syria; but that as they were in fear of the Assyrians, who had then the
dominion over Asia, they built a city in that country which is now called
Judea, and that large enough to contain this great number of men, and
called it Jerusalem.” 9 Now Manetho, in another book of
his, says, “That this nation, thus called Shepherds, were also called
Captives, in their sacred books.” And this account of his is the truth;
for feeding of sheep was the employment of our forefathers in the most
ancient ages 10 and as they led such a wandering
life in feeding sheep, they were called Shepherds. Nor was it without
reason that they were called Captives by the Egyptians, since one of our
ancestors, Joseph, told the king of Egypt that he was a captive, and
afterward sent for his brethren into Egypt by the king’s permission. But
as for these matters, I shall make a more exact inquiry about them
elsewhere. 11

15. But now I shall produce the Egyptians as witnesses to the antiquity of
our nation. I shall therefore here bring in Manetho again, and what he
writes as to the order of the times in this case; and thus he speaks:
“When this people or shepherds were gone out of Egypt to Jerusalem,
Tethtoosis the king of Egypt, who drove them out, reigned afterward
twenty-five years and four months, and then died; after him his son
Chebron took the kingdom for thirteen years; after whom came Amenophis,
for twenty years and seven months; then came his sister Amesses, for
twenty-one years and nine months; after her came Mephres, for twelve years
and nine months; after him was Mephramuthosis, for twenty-five years and
ten months; after him was Thmosis, for nine years and eight months; after
him came Amenophis, for thirty years and ten months; after him came Orus,
for thirty-six years and five months; then came his daughter Acenchres,
for twelve years and one month; then was her brother Rathotis, for nine
years; then was Acencheres, for twelve years and five months; then came
another Acencheres, for twelve years and three months; after him Armais,
for four years and one month; after him was Ramesses, for one year and
four months; after him came Armesses Miammoun, for sixty-six years and two
months; after him Amenophis, for nineteen years and six months; after him
came Sethosis, and Ramesses, who had an army of horse, and a naval force.
This king appointed his brother, Armais, to be his deputy over Egypt.” [In
another copy it stood thus: “After him came Sethosis, and Ramesses, two
brethren, the former of whom had a naval force, and in a hostile manner
destroyed those that met him upon the sea; but as he slew Ramesses in no
long time afterward, so he appointed another of his brethren to be his
deputy over Egypt.] He also gave him all the other authority of a king,
but with these only injunctions, that he should not wear the diadem, nor
be injurious to the queen, the mother of his children, and that he should
not meddle with the other concubines of the king; while he made an
expedition against Cyprus, and Phoenicia, and besides against the
Assyrians and the Medes. He then subdued them all, some by his arms, some
without fighting, and some by the terror of his great army; and being
puffed up by the great successes he had had, he went on still the more
boldly, and overthrew the cities and countries that lay in the eastern
parts. But after some considerable time, Armais, who was left in Egypt,
did all those very things, by way of opposition, which his brother had
forbid him to do, without fear; for he used violence to the queen, and
continued to make use of the rest of the concubines, without sparing any
of them; nay, at the persuasion of his friends he put on the diadem, and
set up to oppose his brother. But then he who was set over the priests of
Egypt wrote letters to Sethosis, and informed him of all that had
happened, and how his brother had set up to oppose him: he therefore
returned back to Pelusium immediately, and recovered his kingdom again.
The country also was called from his name Egypt; for Manetho says, that
Sethosis was himself called Egyptus, as was his brother Armais called
Danaus.”

16. This is Manetho’s account. And evident it is from the number of years
by him set down belonging to this interval, if they be summed up together,
that these shepherds, as they are here called, who were no other than our
forefathers, were delivered out of Egypt, and came thence, and inhabited
this country, three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaus came to
Argos; although the Argives look upon him 12 as their
most ancient king Manetho, therefore, hears this testimony to two points
of the greatest consequence to our purpose, and those from the Egyptian
records themselves. In the first place, that we came out of another
country into Egypt; and that withal our deliverance out of it was so
ancient in time as to have preceded the siege of Troy almost a thousand
years; but then, as to those things which Manetbo adds, not from the
Egyptian records, but, as he confesses himself, from some stories of an
uncertain original, I will disprove them hereafter particularly, and shall
demonstrate that they are no better than incredible fables.

17. I will now, therefore, pass from these records, and come to those that
belong to the Phoenicians, and concern our nation, and shall produce
attestations to what I have said out of them. There are then records among
the Tyrians that take in the history of many years, and these are public
writings, and are kept with great exactness, and include accounts of the
facts done among them, and such as concern their transactions with other
nations also, those I mean which were worth remembering. Therein it was
recorded that the temple was built by king Solomon at Jerusalem, one
hundred forty-three years and eight months before the Tyrians built
Carthage; and in their annals the building of our temple is related; for
Hirom, the king of Tyre, was the friend of Solomon our king, and had such
friendship transmitted down to him from his forefathers. He thereupon was
ambitious to contribute to the splendor of this edifice of Solomon, and
made him a present of one hundred and twenty talents of gold. He also cut
down the most excellent timber out of that mountain which is called
Libanus, and sent it to him for adorning its roof. Solomon also not only
made him many other presents, by way of requital, but gave him a country
in Galilee also, that was called Chabulon. 13 But there
was another passion, a philosophic inclination of theirs, which cemented
the friendship that was betwixt them; for they sent mutual problems to one
another, with a desire to have them unriddled by each other; wherein
Solomon was superior to Hirom, as he was wiser than he in other respects:
and many of the epistles that passed between them are still preserved
among the Tyrians. Now, that this may not depend on my bare word, I will
produce for a witness Dius, one that is believed to have written the
Phoenician History after an accurate manner. This Dius, therefore, writes
thus, in his Histories of the Phoenicians: “Upon the death of Abibalus,
his son Hirom took the kingdom. This king raised banks at the eastern
parts of the city, and enlarged it; he also joined the temple of Jupiter
Olympius, which stood before in an island by itself, to the city, by
raising a causeway between them, and adorned that temple with donations of
gold. He moreover went up to Libanus, and had timber cut down for the
building of temples. They say further, that Solomon, when he was king of
Jerusalem, sent problems to Hirom to be solved, and desired he would send
others back for him to solve, and that he who could not solve the problems
proposed to him should pay money to him that solved them. And when Hirom
had agreed to the proposals, but was not able to solve the problems, he
was obliged to pay a great deal of money, as a penalty for the same. As
also they relate, that one OEabdemon, a man of Tyre, did solve the
problems, and propose others which Solomon could not solve, upon which he
was obliged to repay a great deal of money to Hirom.” These things are
attested to by Dius, and confirm what we have said upon the same subjects
before.

18. And now I shall add Menander the Ephesian, as an additional witness.
This Menander wrote the Acts that were done both by the Greeks and
Barbarians, under every one of the Tyrian kings, and had taken much pains
to learn their history out of their own records. Now when he was writing
about those kings that had reigned at Tyre, he came to Hirom, and says
thus: “Upon the death of Abibalus, his son Hirom took the kingdom; he
lived fifty-three years, and reigned thirty-four. He raised a bank on that
called the Broad Place, and dedicated that golden pillar which is in
Jupiter’s temple; he also went and cut down timber from the mountain
called Libanus, and got timber Of cedar for the roofs of the temples. He
also pulled down the old temples, and built new ones; besides this, he
consecrated the temples of Hercules and of Astarte. He first built
Hercules’s temple in the month Peritus, and that of Astarte when he made
his expedition against the Tityans, who would not pay him their tribute;
and when he had subdued them to himself, he returned home. Under this king
there was a younger son of Abdemon, who mastered the problems which
Solomon king of Jerusalem had recommended to be solved.” Now the time from
this king to the building of Carthage is thus calculated: “Upon the death
of Hirom, Baleazarus his son took the kingdom; he lived forty-three years,
and reigned seven years: after him succeeded his son Abdastartus; he lived
twenty-nine years, and reigned nine years. Now four sons of his nurse
plotted against him and slew him, the eldest of whom reigned twelve years:
after them came Astartus, the son of Deleastartus; he lived fifty-four
years, and reigned twelve years: after him came his brother Aserymus; he
lived fifty-four years, and reigned nine years: he was slain by his
brother Pheles, who took the kingdom and reigned but eight months, though
he lived fifty years: he was slain by Ithobalus, the priest of Astarte,
who reigned thirty-two years, and lived sixty-eight years: he was
succeeded by his son Badezorus, who lived forty-five years, and reigned
six years: he was succeeded by Matgenus his son; he lived thirty-two
years, and reigned nine years: Pygmalion succeeded him; he lived fifty-six
years, and reigned forty-seven years. Now in the seventh year of his
reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city Carthage in
Libya.” So the whole time from the reign of Hirom, till the building of
Carthage, amounts to the sum of one hundred fifty-five years and eight
months. Since then the temple was built at Jerusalem in the twelfth year
of the reign of Hirom, there were from the building of the temple, until
the building of Carthage, one hundred forty-three years and eight months.
Wherefore, what occasion is there for alleging any more testimonies out of
the Phoenician histories [on the behalf of our nation], since what I have
said is so thoroughly confirmed already? and to be sure our ancestors came
into this country long before the building of the temple; for it was not
till we had gotten possession of the whole land by war that we built our
temple. And this is the point that I have clearly proved out of our sacred
writings in my Antiquities.

19. I will now relate what hath been written concerning us in the Chaldean
histories, which records have a great agreement with our books in oilier
things also. Berosus shall be witness to what I say: he was by birth a
Chaldean, well known by the learned, on account of his publication of the
Chaldean books of astronomy and philosophy among the Greeks. This Berosus,
therefore, following the most ancient records of that nation, gives us a
history of the deluge of waters that then happened, and of the destruction
of mankind thereby, and agrees with Moses’s narration thereof. He also
gives us an account of that ark wherein Noah, the origin of our race, was
preserved, when it was brought to the highest part of the Armenian
mountains; after which he gives us a catalogue of the posterity of Noah,
and adds the years of their chronology, and at length comes down to
Nabolassar, who was king of Babylon, and of the Chaldeans. And when he was
relating the acts of this king, he describes to us how he sent his son
Nabuchodonosor against Egypt, and against our land, with a great army,
upon his being informed that they had revolted from him; and how, by that
means, he subdued them all, and set our temple that was at Jerusalem on
fire; nay, and removed our people entirely out of their own country, and
transferred them to Babylon; when it so happened that our city was
desolate during the interval of seventy years, until the days of Cyrus
king of Persia. He then says, “That this Babylonian king conquered Egypt,
and Syria, and Phoenicia, and Arabia, and exceeded in his exploits all
that had reigned before him in Babylon and Chaldea.” A little after which
Berosus subjoins what follows in his History of Ancient Times. I will set
down Berosus’s own accounts, which are these: “When Nabolassar, father of
Nabuchodonosor, heard that the governor whom he had set over Egypt, and
over the parts of Celesyria and Phoenicia, had revolted from him, he was
not able to bear it any longer; but committing certain parts of his army
to his son Nabuchodonosor, who was then but young, he sent him against the
rebel: Nabuchodonosor joined battle with him, and conquered him, and
reduced the country under his dominion again. Now it so fell out that his
father Nabolassar fell into a distemper at this time, and died in the city
of Babylon, after he had reigned twenty-nine years. But as he understood,
in a little time, that his father Nabolassar was dead, he set the affairs
of Egypt and the other countries in order, and committed the captives he
had taken from the Jews, and Phoenicians, and Syrians, and of the nations
belonging to Egypt, to some of his friends, that they might conduct that
part of the forces that had on heavy armor, with the rest of his baggage,
to Babylonia; while he went in haste, having but a few with him, over the
desert to Babylon; whither, when he was come, he found the public affairs
had been managed by the Chaldeans, and that the principal person among
them had preserved the kingdom for him. Accordingly, he now entirely
obtained all his father’s dominions. He then came, and ordered the
captives to be placed as colonies in the most proper places of Babylonia;
but for himself, he adorned the temple of Belus, and the other temples,
after an elegant manner, out of the spoils he had taken in this war. He
also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside, and so
far restored Babylon, that none who should besiege it afterwards might
have it in their power to divert the river, so as to facilitate an
entrance into it; and this he did by building three walls about the inner
city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls he built of burnt
brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. So when he had thus fortified
the city with walls, after an excellent manner, and had adorned the gates
magnificently, he added a new palace to that which his father had dwelt
in, and this close by it also, and that more eminent in its height, and in
its great splendor. It would perhaps require too long a narration, if any
one were to describe it. However, as prodigiously large and as magnificent
as it was, it was finished in fifteen days. Now in this palace he erected
very high walks, supported by stone pillars, and by planting what was
called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he
rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This
he did to please his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and
was fond of a mountainous situation.”

20. This is what Berosus relates concerning the forementioned king, as he
relates many other things about him also in the third book of his Chaldean
History; wherein he complains of the Grecian writers for supposing,
without any foundation, that Babylon was built by Semiramis, 14
queen of Assyria, and for her false pretense to those wonderful edifices
thereto buildings at Babylon, do no way contradict those ancient and
relating, as if they were her own workmanship; as indeed in these affairs
the Chaldean History cannot but be the most credible. Moreover, we meet
with a confirmation of what Berosus says in the archives of the
Phoenicians, concerning this king Nabuchodonosor, that he conquered all
Syria and Phoenicia; in which case Philostratus agrees with the others in
that history which he composed, where he mentions the siege of Tyre; as
does Megasthenes also, in the fourth book of his Indian History, wherein
he pretends to prove that the forementioned king of the Babylonians was
superior to Hercules in strength and the greatness of his exploits; for he
says that he conquered a great part of Libya, and conquered Iberia also.
Now as to what I have said before about the temple at Jerusalem, that it
was fought against by the Babylonians, and burnt by them, but was opened
again when Cyrus had taken the kingdom of Asia, shall now be demonstrated
from what Berosus adds further upon that head; for thus he says in his
third book: “Nabuchodonosor, after he had begun to build the forementioned
wall, fell sick, and departed this life, when he had reigned forty-three
years; whereupon his son Evilmerodach obtained the kingdom. He governed
public affairs after an illegal and impure manner, and had a plot laid
against him by Neriglissoor, his sister’s husband, and was slain by him
when he had reigned but two years. After he was slain, Neriglissoor, the
person who plotted against him, succeeded him in the kingdom, and reigned
four years; his son Laborosoarchod obtained the kingdom, though he was but
a child, and kept it nine mouths; but by reason of the very ill temper and
ill practices he exhibited to the world, a plot was laid against him also
by his friends, and he was tormented to death. After his death, the
conspirators got together, and by common consent put the crown upon the
head of Nabonnedus, a man of Babylon, and one who belonged to that
insurrection. In his reign it was that the walls of the city of Babylon
were curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen; but when he was come to
the seventeenth year of his reign, Cyrus came out of Persia with a great
army; and having already conquered all the rest of Asia, he came hastily
to Babylonia. When Nabonnedus perceived he was coming to attack him, he
met him with his forces, and joining battle with him was beaten, and fled
away with a few of his troops with him, and was shut up within the city
Borsippus. Hereupon Cyrus took Babylon, and gave order that the outer
walls of the city should be demolished, because the city had proved very
troublesome to him, and cost him a great deal of pains to take it. He then
marched away to Borsippus, to besiege Nabonnedus; but as Nabonnedus did
not sustain the siege, but delivered himself into his hands, he was at
first kindly used by Cyrus, who gave him Carmania, as a place for him to
inhabit in, but sent him out of Babylonia. Accordingly Nabonnedus spent
the rest of his time in that country, and there died.”

21. These accounts agree with the true histories in our books; for in them
it is written that Nebuchadnezzar, in the eighteenth year of his reign,
laid our temple desolate, and so it lay in that state of obscurity for
fifty years; but that in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its
foundations were laid, and it was finished again in the second year of
Darius. I will now add the records of the Phoenicians; for it will not be
superfluous to give the reader demonstrations more than enough on this
occasion. In them we have this enumeration of the times of their several
kings: “Nabuchodonosor besieged Tyre for thirteen years in the days of
Ithobal, their king; after him reigned Baal, ten years; after him were
judges appointed, who judged the people: Ecnibalus, the son of Baslacus,
two months; Chelbes, the son of Abdeus, ten months; Abbar, the high
priest, three months; Mitgonus and Gerastratus, the sons of Abdelemus,
were judges six years; after whom Balatorus reigned one year; after his
death they sent and fetched Merbalus from Babylon, who reigned four years;
after his death they sent for his brother Hirom, who reigned twenty years.
Under his reign Cyrus became king of Persia.” So that the whole interval
is fifty-four years besides three months; for in the seventh year of the
reign of Nebuchadnezzar he began to besiege Tyre, and Cyrus the Persian
took the kingdom in the fourteenth year of Hirom. So that the records of
the Chaldeans and Tyrians agree with our writings about this temple; and
the testimonies here produced are an indisputable and undeniable
attestation to the antiquity of our nation. And I suppose that what I have
already said may be sufficient to such as are not very contentious.

22. But now it is proper to satisfy the inquiry of those that disbelieve
the records of barbarians, and think none but Greeks to be worthy of
credit, and to produce many of these very Greeks who were acquainted with
our nation, and to set before them such as upon occasion have made mention
of us in their own writings. Pythagoras, therefore, of Samos, lived in
very ancient times, and was esteemed a person superior to all philosophers
in wisdom and piety towards God. Now it is plain that he did not only know
our doctrines, but was in very great measure a follower and admirer of
them. There is not indeed extant any writing that is owned for his 15
but many there are who have written his history, of whom Hermippus is the
most celebrated, who was a person very inquisitive into all sorts of
history. Now this Hermippus, in his first book concerning Pythagoras,
speaks thus: “That Pythagoras, upon the death of one of his associates,
whose name was Calliphon, a Crotonlate by birth, affirmed that this man’s
soul conversed with him both night and day, and enjoined him not to pass
over a place where an ass had fallen down; as also not to drink of such
waters as caused thirst again; and to abstain from all sorts of
reproaches.” After which he adds thus: “This he did and said in imitation
of the doctrines of the Jews and Thracians, which he transferred into his
own philosophy.” For it is very truly affirmed of this Pythagoras, that he
took a great many of the laws of the Jews into his own philosophy. Nor was
our nation unknown of old to several of the Grecian cities, and indeed was
thought worthy of imitation by some of them. This is declared by
Theophrastus, in his writings concerning laws; for he says that “the laws
of the Tyrians forbid men to swear foreign oaths.” Among which he
enumerates some others, and particularly that called Corban: which oath
can only be found among the Jews, and declares what a man may call “A
thing devoted to God.” Nor indeed was Herodotus of Halicarnassus
unacquainted with our nation, but mentions it after a way of his own, when
he saith thus, in the second book concerning the Colchians. His words are
these: “The only people who were circumcised in their privy members
originally, were the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians; but the
Phoenicians and those Syrians that are in Palestine confess that they
learned it from the Egyptians. And for those Syrians who live about the
rivers Thermodon and Parthenius, and their neighbors the Macrones, they
say they have lately learned it from the Colchians; for these are the only
people that are circumcised among mankind, and appear to have done the
very same thing with the Egyptians. But as for the Egyptians and
Ethiopians themselves, I am not able to say which of them received it from
the other.” This therefore is what Herodotus says, that “the Syrians that
are in Palestine are circumcised.” But there are no inhabitants of
Palestine that are circumcised excepting the Jews; and therefore it must
be his knowledge of them that enabled him to speak so much concerning
them. Cherilus also, a still ancienter writer, and a poet, 16
makes mention of our nation, and informs us that it came to the assistance
of king Xerxes, in his expedition against Greece. For in his enumeration
of all those nations, he last of all inserts ours among the rest, when he
says, “At the last there passed over a people, wonderful to be beheld; for
they spake the Phoenician tongue with their mouths; they dwelt in the
Solymean mountains, near a broad lake: their heads were sooty; they had
round rasures on them; their heads and faces were like nasty horse-heads
also, that had been hardened in the smoke.” I think, therefore, that it is
evident to every body that Cherilus means us, because the Solymean
mountains are in our country, wherein we inhabit, as is also the lake
called Asphaltitis; for this is a broader and larger lake than any other
that is in Syria: and thus does Cherilus make mention of us. But now that
not only the lowest sort of the Grecians, but those that are had in the
greatest admiration for their philosophic improvements among them, did not
only know the Jews, but when they lighted upon any of them, admired them
also, it is easy for any one to know. For Clearchus, who was the scholar
of Aristotle, and inferior to no one of the Peripatetics whomsoever, in
his first book concerning sleep, says that “Aristotle his master related
what follows of a Jew,” and sets down Aristotle’s own discourse with him.
The account is this, as written down by him: “Now, for a great part of
what this Jew said, it would be too long to recite it; but what includes
in it both wonder and philosophy it may not be amiss to discourse of. Now,
that I may be plain with thee, Hyperochides, I shall herein seem to thee
to relate wonders, and what will resemble dreams themselves. Hereupon
Hyperochides answered modestly, and said, For that very reason it is that
all of us are very desirous of hearing what thou art going to say. Then
replied Aristotle, For this cause it will be the best way to imitate that
rule of the Rhetoricians, which requires us first to give an account of
the man, and of what nation he was, that so we may not contradict our
master’s directions. Then said Hyperochides, Go on, if it so pleases thee.
This man then, [answered Aristotle,] was by birth a Jew, and came from
Celesyria; these Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are
named by the Indians Calami, and by the Syrians Judaei, and took their
name from the country they inhabit, which is called Judea; but for the
name of their city, it is a very awkward one, for they call it Jerusalem.
Now this man, when he was hospitably treated by a great many, came down
from the upper country to the places near the sea, and became a Grecian,
not only in his language, but in his soul also; insomuch that when we
ourselves happened to be in Asia about the same places whither he came, he
conversed with us, and with other philosophical persons, and made a trial
of our skill in philosophy; and as he had lived with many learned men, he
communicated to us more information than he received from us.” This is
Aristotle’s account of the matter, as given us by Clearchus; which
Aristotle discoursed also particularly of the great and wonderful
fortitude of this Jew in his diet, and continent way of living, as those
that please may learn more about him from Clearchus’s book itself; for I
avoid setting down any more than is sufficient for my purpose. Now
Clearchus said this by way of digression, for his main design was of
another nature. But for Hecateus of Abdera, who was both a philosopher,
and one very useful ill an active life, he was contemporary with king
Alexander in his youth, and afterward was with Ptolemy, the son of Lagus;
he did not write about the Jewish affairs by the by only, but composed an
entire book concerning the Jews themselves; out of which book I am willing
to run over a few things, of which I have been treating by way of epitome.
And, in the first place, I will demonstrate the time when this Hecateus
lived; for he mentions the fight that was between Ptolemy and Demetrius
about Gaza, which was fought in the eleventh year after the death of
Alexander, and in the hundred and seventeenth olympiad, as Castor says in
his history. For when he had set down this olympiad, he says further, that
“in this olympiad Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, beat in battle Demetrius, the
son of Antigonus, who was named Poliorcetes, at Gaza.” Now, it is agreed
by all, that Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth olympiad; it is
therefore evident that our nation flourished in his time, and in the time
of Alexander. Again, Hecateus says to the same purpose, as follows:
“Ptolemy got possession of the places in Syria after that battle at Gaza;
and many, when they heard of Ptolemy’s moderation and humanity, went along
with him to Egypt, and were willing to assist him in his affairs; one of
whom [Hecateus says] was Hezekiah 17 the high
priest of the Jews; a man of about sixty-six years of age, and in great
dignity among his own people. He was a very sensible man, and could speak
very movingly, and was very skillful in the management of affairs, if any
other man ever were so; although, as he says, all the priests of the Jews
took tithes of the products of the earth, and managed public affairs, and
were in number not above fifteen hundred at the most.” Hecateus mentions
this Hezekiah a second time, and says, that “as he was possessed of so
great a dignity, and was become familiar with us, so did he take certain
of those that were with him, and explained to them all the circumstances
of their people; for he had all their habitations and polity down in
writing.” Moreover, Hecateus declares again, “what regard we have for our
laws, and that we resolve to endure any thing rather than transgress them,
because we think it right for us to do so.” Whereupon he adds, that
“although they are in a bad reputation among their neighbors, and among
all those that come to them, and have been often treated injuriously by
the kings and governors of Persia, yet can they not be dissuaded from
acting what they think best; but that when they are stripped on this
account, and have torments inflicted upon them, and they are brought to
the most terrible kinds of death, they meet them after an extraordinary
manner, beyond all other people, and will not renounce the religion of
their forefathers.” Hecateus also produces demonstrations not a few of
this their resolute tenaciousness of their laws, when he speaks thus:
“Alexander was once at Babylon, and had an intention to rebuild the temple
of Belus that was fallen to decay, and in order thereto, he commanded all
his soldiers in general to bring earth thither. But the Jews, and they
only, would not comply with that command; nay, they underwent stripes and
great losses of what they had on this account, till the king forgave them,
and permitted them to live in quiet.” He adds further, that “when the
Macedonians came to them into that country, and demolished the [old]
temples and the altars, they assisted them in demolishing them all 18
but [for not assisting them in rebuilding them] they either underwent
losses, or sometimes obtained forgiveness.” He adds further, that “these
men deserve to be admired on that account.” He also speaks of the mighty
populousness of our nation, and says that “the Persians formerly carried
away many ten thousands of our people to Babylon, as also that not a few
ten thousands were removed after Alexander’s death into Egypt and
Phoenicia, by reason of the sedition that was arisen in Syria.” The same
person takes notice in his history, how large the country is which we
inhabit, as well as of its excellent character, and says, that “the land
in which the Jews inhabit contains three millions of arourae, 19
and is generally of a most excellent and most fruitful soil; nor is Judea
of lesser dimensions.” The same man describe our city Jerusalem also
itself as of a most excellent structure, and very large, and inhabited
from the most ancient times. He also discourses of the multitude of men in
it, and of the construction of our temple, after the following manner:
“There are many strong places and villages [says he] in the country of
Judea; but one strong city there is, about fifty furlongs in
circumference, which is inhabited by a hundred and twenty thousand men, or
thereabouts; they call it Jerusalem. There is about the middle of the city
a wall of stone, whose length is five hundred feet, and the breadth a
hundred cubits, with double cloisters; wherein there is a square altar,
not made of hewn stone, but composed of white stones gathered together,
having each side twenty cubits long, and its altitude ten cubits. Hard by
it is a large edifice, wherein there is an altar and a candlestick, both
of gold, and in weight two talents: upon these there is a light that is
never extinguished, either by night or by day. There is no image, nor any
thing, nor any donations therein; nothing at all is there planted, neither
grove, nor any thing of that sort. The priests abide therein both nights
and days, performing certain purifications, and drinking not the least
drop of wine while they are in the temple.” Moreover, he attests that we
Jews went as auxiliaries along with king Alexander, and after him with his
successors. I will add further what he says he learned when he was himself
with the same army, concerning the actions of a man that was a Jew. His
words are these: “As I was myself going to the Red Sea, there followed us
a man, whose name was Mosollam; he was one of the Jewish horsemen who
conducted us; he was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by
all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the
Greeks or barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers
passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a
bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for.
Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he took his augury, and
told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand
still; but that if he got up, and flew onward, they must go forward; but
that if he flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no reply,
but drew his bow, and shot at the bird, and hit him, and killed him; and
as the augur and some others were very angry, and wished imprecations upon
him, he answered them thus: Why are you so mad as to take this most
unhappy bird into your hands? for how can this bird give us any true
information concerning our march, who could not foresee how to save
himself? for had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not
have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam the Jew
should shoot at him, and kill him.” But of Hecateus’s testimonies we have
said enough; for as to such as desire to know more of them, they may
easily obtain them from his book itself. However, I shall not think it too
much for me to name Agatharchides, as having made mention of us Jews,
though in way of derision at our simplicity, as he supposes it to be; for
when he was discoursing of the affairs of Stratonice, “how she came out of
Macedonia into Syria, and left her husband Demetrius, while yet Seleueus
would not marry her as she expected, but during the time of his raising an
army at Babylon, stirred up a sedition about Antioch; and how, after that,
the king came back, and upon his taking of Antioch, she fled to Seleucia,
and had it in her power to sail away immediately yet did she comply with a
dream which forbade her so to do, and so was caught and put to death.”
When Agatharehides had premised this story, and had jested upon Stratonice
for her superstition, he gives a like example of what was reported
concerning us, and writes thus: “There are a people called Jews, and dwell
in a city the strongest of all other cities, which the inhabitants call
Jerusalem, and are accustomed to rest on every seventh day 20
on which times they make no use of their arms, nor meddle with husbandry,
nor take care of any affairs of life, but spread out their hands in their
holy places, and pray till the evening. Now it came to pass, that when
Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, came into this city with his army, that these
men, in observing this mad custom of theirs, instead of guarding the city,
suffered their country to submit itself to a bitter lord; and their law
was openly proved to have commanded a foolish practice. 21
This accident taught all other men but the Jews to disregard such dreams
as these were, and not to follow the like idle suggestions delivered as a
law, when, in such uncertainty of human reasonings, they are at a loss
what they should do.” Now this our procedure seems a ridiculous thing to
Agatharehides, but will appear to such as consider it without prejudice a
great thing, and what deserved a great many encomiums; I mean, when
certain men constantly prefer the observation of their laws, and their
religion towards God, before the preservation of themselves and their
country.

23. Now that some writers have omitted to mention our nation, not because
they knew nothing of us, but because they envied us, or for some other
unjustifiable reasons, I think I can demonstrate by particular instances;
for Hieronymus, who wrote the History of Alexander’s Successors, lived at
the same time with Hecateus, and was a friend of king Antigonus, and
president of Syria. Now it is plain that Hecateus wrote an entire book
concerning us, while Hieronymus never mentions us in his history, although
he was bred up very near to the places where we live. Thus different from
one another are the inclinations of men; while the one thought we deserved
to be carefully remembered, as some ill-disposed passion blinded the
other’s mind so entirely, that he could not discern the truth. And now
certainly the foregoing records of the Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and
Phoenicians, together with so many of the Greek writers, will be
sufficient for the demonstration of our antiquity. Moreover, besides those
forementioned, Theophilus, and Theodotus, and Mnaseas, and Aristophanes,
and Hermogenes, Euhemerus also, and Conon, and Zopyrion, and perhaps many
others, [for I have not lighted upon all the Greek books,] have made
distinct mention of us. It is true, many of the men before mentioned have
made great mistakes about the true accounts of our nation in the earliest
times, because they had not perused our sacred books; yet have they all of
them afforded their testimony to our antiquity, concerning which I am now
treating. However, Demetrius Phalereus, and the elder Philo, with
Eupolemus, have not greatly missed the truth about our affairs; whose
lesser mistakes ought therefore to be forgiven them; for it was not in
their power to understand our writings with the utmost accuracy.

24. One particular there is still remaining behind of what I at first
proposed to speak to, and that is, to demonstrate that those calumnies and
reproaches which some have thrown upon our nation, are lies, and to make
use of those writers’ own testimonies against themselves; and that in
general this self-contradiction hath happened to many other authors by
reason of their ill-will to some people, I conclude, is not unknown to
such as have read histories with sufficient care; for some of them have
endeavored to disgrace the nobility of certain nations, and of some of the
most glorious cities, and have cast reproaches upon certain forms of
government. Thus hath Theopompus abused the city of Athens, Polycrates
that of Lacedemon, as hath he hat wrote the Tripoliticus [for he is not
Theopompus, as is supposed by some] done by the city of Thebes. Timeils
also hath greatly abused the foregoing people and others also; and this
ill-treatment they use chiefly when they have a contest with men of the
greatest reputation; some out of envy and malice, and others as supposing
that by this foolish talking of theirs they may be thought worthy of being
remembered themselves; and indeed they do by no means fail of their hopes,
with regard to the foolish part of mankind, but men of sober judgment
still condemn them of great malignity.

25. Now the Egyptians were the first that cast reproaches upon us; in
order to please which nation, some others undertook to pervert the truth,
while they would neither own that our forefathers came into Egypt from
another country, as the fact was, nor give a true account of our departure
thence. And indeed the Egyptians took many occasions to hate us and envy
us: in the first place, because our ancestors had had the dominion over
their country? and when they were delivered from them, and gone to their
own country again, they lived there in prosperity. In the next place, the
difference of our religion from theirs hath occasioned great enmity
between us, while our way of Divine worship did as much exceed that which
their laws appointed, as does the nature of God exceed that of brute
beasts; for so far they all agree through the whole country, to esteem
such animals as gods, although they differ one from another in the
peculiar worship they severally pay to them. And certainly men they are
entirely of vain and foolish minds, who have thus accustomed themselves
from the beginning to have such bad notions concerning their gods, and
could not think of imitating that decent form of Divine worship which we
made use of, though, when they saw our institutions approved of by many
others, they could not but envy us on that account; for some of them have
proceeded to that degree of folly and meanness in their conduct, as not to
scruple to contradict their own ancient records, nay, to contradict
themselves also in their writings, and yet were so blinded by their
passions as not to discern it.

26. And now I will turn my discourse to one of their principal writers,
whom I have a little before made use of as a witness to our antiquity; I
mean Manetho. 22 He promised to interpret the
Egyptian history out of their sacred writings, and premised this: that
“our people had come into Egypt, many ten thousands in number, and subdued
its inhabitants;” and when he had further confessed that “we went out of
that country afterward, and settled in that country which is now called
Judea, and there built Jerusalem and its temple.” Now thus far he followed
his ancient records; but after this he permits himself, in order to appear
to have written what rumors and reports passed abroad about the Jews, and
introduces incredible narrations, as if he would have the Egyptian
multitude, that had the leprosy and other distempers, to have been mixed
with us, as he says they were, and that they were condemned to fly out of
Egypt together; for he mentions Amenophis, a fictitious king’s name,
though on that account he durst not set down the number of years of his
reign, which yet he had accurately done as to the other kings he mentions;
he then ascribes certain fabulous stories to this king, as having in a
manner forgotten how he had already related that the departure of the
shepherds for Jerusalem had been five hundred and eighteen years before;
for Tethmosis was king when they went away. Now, from his days, the reigns
of the intermediate kings, according to Manethe, amounted to three hundred
and ninety-three years, as he says himself, till the two brothers Sethos
and Hermeus; the one of whom, Sethos, was called by that other name of
Egyptus, and the other, Hermeus, by that of Danaus. He also says that
Sethos east the other out of Egypt, and reigned fifty-nine years, as did
his eldest son Rhampses reign after him sixty-six years. When Manethe
therefore had acknowledged that our forefathers were gone out of Egypt so
many years ago, he introduces his fictitious king Amenophis, and says
thus: “This king was desirous to become a spectator of the gods, as had
Orus, one of his predecessors in that kingdom, desired the same before
him; he also communicated that his desire to his namesake Amenophis, who
was the son of Papis, and one that seemed to partake of a divine nature,
both as to wisdom and the knowledge of futurities.” Manethe adds, “how
this namesake of his told him that he might see the gods, if he would
clear the whole country of the lepers and of the other impure people; that
the king was pleased with this injunction, and got together all that had
any defect in their bodies out of Egypt; and that their number was eighty
thousand; whom he sent to those quarries which are on the east side of the
Nile, that they might work in them, and might be separated from the rest
of the Egyptians.” He says further, that “there were some of the learned
priests that were polluted with the leprosy; but that still this
Amenophis, the wise man and the prophet, was afraid that the gods would be
angry at him and at the king, if there should appear to have been violence
offered them; who also added this further, [out of his sagacity about
futurities,] that certain people would come to the assistance of these
polluted wretches, and would conquer Egypt, and keep it in their
possession thirteen years; that, however, he durst not tell the king of
these things, but that he left a writing behind him about all those
matters, and then slew himself, which made the king disconsolate.” After
which he writes thus verbatim: “After those that were sent to work in the
quarries had continued in that miserable state for a long while, the king
was desired that he would set apart the city Avaris, which was then left
desolate of the shepherds, for their habitation and protection; which
desire he granted them. Now this city, according to the ancient theology,
was Typho’s city. But when these men were gotten into it, and found the
place fit for a revolt, they appointed themselves a ruler out of the
priests of Hellopolis, whose name was Osarsiph, and they took their oaths
that they would be obedient to him in all things. He then, in the first
place, made this law for them, That they should neither worship the
Egyptian gods, nor should abstain from any one of those sacred animals
which they have in the highest esteem, but kill and destroy them all; that
they should join themselves to nobody but to those that were of this
confederacy. When he had made such laws as these, and many more such as
were mainly opposite to the customs of the Egyptians, 23
he gave order that they should use the multitude of the hands they had in
building walls about their City, and make themselves ready for a war with
king Amenophis, while he did himself take into his friendship the other
priests, and those that were polluted with them, and sent ambassadors to
those shepherds who had been driven out of the land by Tefilmosis to the
city called Jerusalem; whereby he informed them of his own affairs, and of
the state of those others that had been treated after such an ignominious
manner, and desired that they would come with one consent to his
assistance in this war against Egypt. He also promised that he would, in
the first place, bring them back to their ancient city and country Avaris,
and provide a plentiful maintenance for their multitude; that he would
protect them and fight for them as occasion should require, and would
easily reduce the country under their dominion. These shepherds were all
very glad of this message, and came away with alacrity all together, being
in number two hundred thousand men; and in a little time they came to
Avaris. And now Amenophis the king of Egypt, upon his being informed of
their invasion, was in great confusion, as calling to mind what Amenophis,
the son of Papis, had foretold him; and, in the first place, he assembled
the multitude of the Egyptians, and took counsel with their leaders, and
sent for their sacred animals to him, especially for those that were
principally worshipped in their temples, and gave a particular charge to
the priests distinctly, that they should hide the images of their gods
with the utmost care he also sent his son Sethos, who was also named
Ramesses, from his father Rhampses, being but five years old, to a friend
of his. He then passed on with the rest of the Egyptians, being three
hundred thousand of the most warlike of them, against the enemy, who met
them. Yet did he not join battle with them; but thinking that would be to
fight against the gods, he returned back and came to Memphis, where he
took Apis and the other sacred animals which he had sent for to him, and
presently marched into Ethiopia, together with his whole army and
multitude of Egyptians; for the king of Ethiopia was under an obligation
to him, on which account he received him, and took care of all the
multitude that was with him, while the country supplied all that was
necessary for the food of the men. He also allotted cities and villages
for this exile, that was to be from its beginning during those fatally
determined thirteen years. Moreover, he pitched a camp for his Ethiopian
army, as a guard to king Amenophis, upon the borders of Egypt. And this
was the state of things in Ethiopia. But for the people of Jerusalem, when
they came down together with the polluted Egyptians, they treated the men
in such a barbarous manner, that those who saw how they subdued the
forementioned country, and the horrid wickedness they were guilty of,
thought it a most dreadful thing; for they did not only set the cities and
villages on fire but were not satisfied till they had been guilty of
sacrilege, and destroyed the images of the gods, and used them in roasting
those sacred animals that used to be worshipped, and forced the priests
and prophets to be the executioners and murderers of those animals, and
then ejected them naked out of the country. It was also reported that the
priest, who ordained their polity and their laws, was by birth of
Hellopolls, and his name Osarsiph, from Osyris, who was the god of
Hellopolls; but that when he was gone over to these people, his name was
changed, and he was called Moses.”

27. This is what the Egyptians relate about the Jews, with much more,
which I omit for the sake of brevity. But still Manetho goes on, that
“after this, Amenophis returned back from Ethiopia with a great army, as
did his son Ahampses with another army also, and that both of them joined
battle with the shepherds and the polluted people, and beat them, and slew
a great many of them, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria.” These and
the like accounts are written by Manetho. But I will demonstrate that he
trifles, and tells arrant lies, after I have made a distinction which will
relate to what I am going to say about him; for this Manetho had granted
and confessed that this nation was not originally Egyptian, but that they
had come from another country, and subdued Egypt, and then went away again
out of it. But that those Egyptians who were thus diseased in their bodies
were not mingled with us afterward, and that Moses who brought the people
out was not one of that company, but lived many generations earlier, I
shall endeavor to demonstrate from Manetho’s own accounts themselves.

28. Now, for the first occasion of this fiction, Manetho supposes what is
no better than a ridiculous thing; for he says that, “King Amenophis
desired to see the gods.” What gods, I pray, did he desire to see? If he
meant the gods whom their laws ordained to be worshipped, the ox, the
goat, the crocodile, and the baboon, he saw them already; but for the
heavenly gods, how could he see them, and what should occasion this his
desire? To be sure? it was because another king before him had already
seen them. He had then been informed what sort of gods they were, and
after what manner they had been seen, insomuch that he did not stand in
need of any new artifice for obtaining this sight. However, the prophet by
whose means the king thought to compass his design was a wise man. If so,
how came he not to know that such his desire was impossible to be
accomplished? for the event did not succeed. And what pretense could there
be to suppose that the gods would not be seen by reason of the people’s
maims in their bodies, or leprosy? for the gods are not angry at the
imperfection of bodies, but at wicked practices; and as to eighty thousand
lepers, and those in an ill state also, how is it possible to have them
gathered together in one day? nay, how came the king not to comply with
the prophet? for his injunction was, that those that were maimed should be
expelled out of Egypt, while the king only sent them to work in the
quarries, as if he were rather in want of laborers, than intended to purge
his country. He says further, that, “this prophet slew himself, as
foreseeing the anger of the gods, and those events which were to come upon
Egypt afterward; and that he left this prediction for the king in
writing.” Besides, how came it to pass that this prophet did not foreknow
his own death at the first? nay, how came he not to contradict the king in
his desire to see the gods immediately? how came that unreasonable dread
upon him of judgments that were not to happen in his lifetime? or what
worse thing could he suffer, out of the fear of which he made haste to
kill himself? But now let us see the silliest thing of all:—The
king, although he had been informed of these things, and terrified with
the fear of what was to come, yet did not he even then eject these maimed
people out of his country, when it had been foretold him that he was to
clear Egypt of them; but, as Manetho says, “he then, upon their request,
gave them that city to inhabit, which had formerly belonged to the
shepherds, and was called Avaris; whither when they were gone in crowds,”
he says, “they chose one that had formerly been priest of Hellopolls; and
that this priest first ordained that they should neither worship the gods,
nor abstain from those animals that were worshipped by the Egyptians, but
should kill and eat them all, and should associate with nobody but those
that had conspired with them; and that he bound the multitude by oaths to
be sure to continue in those laws; and that when he had built a wall about
Avaris, he made war against the king.” Manetho adds also, that “this
priest sent to Jerusalem to invite that people to come to his assistance,
and promised to give them Avaris; for that it had belonged to the
forefathers of those that were coming from Jerusalem, and that when they
were come, they made a war immediately against the king, and got
possession of all Egypt.” He says also that “the Egyptians came with an
army of two hundred thousand men, and that Amenophis, the king of Egypt,
not thinking that he ought to fight against the gods, ran away presently
into Ethiopia, and committed Apis and certain other of their sacred
animals to the priests, and commanded them to take care of preserving
them.” He says further, that, “the people of Jerusalem came accordingly
upon the Egyptians, and overthrew their cities, and burnt their temples,
and slew their horsemen, and, in short, abstained from no sort of
wickedness nor barbarity; and for that priest who settled their polity and
their laws,” he says, “he was by birth of Hellopolis, and his name was
Osarsiph, from Osyris the god of Hellopolis, but that he changed his name,
and called himself Moses.” He then says that “on the thirteenth year
afterward, Amenophis, according to the fatal time of the duration of his
misfortunes, came upon them out of Ethiopia with a great army, and joining
battle with the shepherds and with the polluted people, overcame them in
battle, and slew a great many of them, and pursued them as far as the
bounds of Syria.”

29. Now Manetho does not reflect upon the improbability of his lie; for
the leprous people, and the multitude that was with them, although they
might formerly have been angry at the king, and at those that had treated
them so coarsely, and this according to the prediction of the prophet; yet
certainly, when they were come out of the mines, and had received of the
king a city, and a country, they would have grown milder towards him.
However, had they ever so much hated him in particular, they might have
laid a private plot against himself, but would hardly have made war
against all the Egyptians; I mean this on the account of the great kindred
they who were so numerous must have had among them. Nay still, if they had
resolved to fight with the men, they would not have had impudence enough
to fight with their gods; nor would they have ordained laws quite contrary
to those of their own country, and to those in which they had been bred up
themselves. Yet are we beholden to Manethe, that he does not lay the
principal charge of this horrid transgression upon those that came from
Jerusalem, but says that the Egyptians themselves were the most guilty,
and that they were their priests that contrived these things, and made the
multitude take their oaths for doing so. But still how absurd is it to
suppose that none of these people’s own relations or friends should be
prevailed with to revolt, nor to undergo the hazards of war with them,
while these polluted people were forced to send to Jerusalem, and bring
their auxiliaries from thence! What friendship, I pray, or what relation
was there formerly between them that required this assistance? On the
contrary, these people were enemies, and greatly differed from them in
their customs. He says, indeed, that they complied immediately, upon their
praising them that they should conquer Egypt; as if they did not
themselves very well know that country out of which they had been driven
by force. Now had these men been in want, or lived miserably, perhaps they
might have undertaken so hazardous an enterprise; but as they dwelt in a
happy city, and had a large country, and one better than Egypt itself, how
came it about that, for the sake of those that had of old been their
enemies, of those that were maimed in their bodies, and of those whom none
of their own relations would endure, they should run such hazards in
assisting them? For they could not foresee that the king would run away
from them: on the contrary, he saith himself that “Amenophis’s son had
three hundred thousand men with him, and met them at Pelusium.” Now, to be
sure, those that came could not be ignorant of this; but for the king’s
repentance and flight, how could they possibly guess at it? He then says,
that “those who came from Jerusalem, and made this invasion, got the
granaries of Egypt into their possession, and perpetrated many of the most
horrid actions there.” And thence he reproaches them, as though he had not
himself introduced them as enemies, or as though he might accuse such as
were invited from another place for so doing, when the natural Egyptians
themselves had done the same things before their coming, and had taken
oaths so to do. However, “Amenophis, some time afterward, came upon them,
and conquered them in battle, and slew his enemies, and drove them before
him as far as Syria.” As if Egypt were so easily taken by people that came
from any place whatsoever, and as if those that had conquered it by war,
when they were informed that Amenophis was alive, did neither fortify the
avenues out of Ethiopia into it, although they had great advantages for
doing it, nor did get their other forces ready for their defense! but that
he followed them over the sandy desert, and slew them as far as Syria;
while yet it is rot an easy thing for an army to pass over that country,
even without fighting.

30. Our nation, therefore, according to Manetho, was not derived from
Egypt, nor were any of the Egyptians mingled with us. For it is to be
supposed that many of the leprous and distempered people were dead in the
mines, since they had been there a long time, and in so ill a condition;
many others must be dead in the battles that happened afterward, and more
still in the last battle and flight after it.

31. It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now the
Egyptians acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a divine person;
nay, they would willingly lay claim to him themselves, though after a most
abusive and incredible manner, and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and
one of the priests of that place, and was ejected out of it among the
rest, on account of his leprosy; although it had been demonstrated out of
their records that he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier, and
then brought our forefathers out of Egypt into the country that is now
inhabited by us. But now that he was not subject in his body to any such
calamity, is evident from what he himself tells us; for he forbade those
that had the leprosy either to continue in a city, or to inhabit in a
village, but commanded that they should go about by themselves with their
clothes rent; and declares that such as either touch them, or live under
the same roof with them, should be esteemed unclean; nay, more, if any one
of their disease be healed, and he recover his natural constitution again,
he appointed them certain purifications, and washings with spring water,
and the shaving off all their hair, and enjoins that they shall offer many
sacrifices, and those of several kinds, and then at length to be admitted
into the holy city; although it were to be expected that, on the contrary,
if he had been under the same calamity, he should have taken care of such
persons beforehand, and have had them treated after a kinder manner, as
affected with a concern for those that were to be under the like
misfortunes with himself. Nor was it only those leprous people for whose
sake he made these laws, but also for such as should be maimed in the
smallest part of their body, who yet are not permitted by him to officiate
as priests; nay, although any priest, already initiated, should have such
a calamity fall upon him afterward, he ordered him to be deprived of his
honor of officiating. How can it then be supposed that Moses should ordain
such laws against himself, to his own reproach and damage who so ordained
them? Nor indeed is that other notion of Manetho at all probable, wherein
he relates the change of his name, and says that “he was formerly called
Osarsiph;” and this a name no way agreeable to the other, while his true
name was Mosses, and signifies a person who is preserved out of the water,
for the Egyptians call water Moil. I think, therefore, I have made it
sufficiently evident that Manetho, while he followed his ancient records,
did not much mistake the truth of the history; but that when he had
recourse to fabulous stories, without any certain author, he either forged
them himself, without any probability, or else gave credit to some men who
spake so out of their ill-will to us.

32. And now I have done with Manetho, I will inquire into what Cheremon
says. For he also, when he pretended to write the Egyptian history, sets
down the same name for this king that Manetho did, Amenophis, as also of
his son Ramesses, and then goes on thus: “The goddess Isis appeared to
Amenophis in his sleep, and blamed him that her temple had been demolished
in the war. But that Phritiphantes, the sacred scribe, said to him, that
in case he would purge Egypt of the men that had pollutions upon them, he
should be no longer troubled with such frightful apparitions. That
Amenophis accordingly chose out two hundred and fifty thousand of those
that were thus diseased, and cast them out of the country: that Moses and
Joseph were scribes, and Joseph was a sacred scribe; that their names were
Egyptian originally; that of Moses had been Tisithen, and that of Joseph,
Peteseph: that these two came to Pelusium, and lighted upon three hundred
and eighty thousand that had been left there by Amenophis, he not being
willing to carry them into Egypt; that these scribes made a league of
friendship with them, and made with them an expedition against Egypt: that
Amenophis could not sustain their attacks, but fled into Ethiopia, and
left his wife with child behind him, who lay concealed in certain caverns,
and there brought forth a son, whose name was Messene, and who, when he
was grown up to man’s estate, pursued the Jews into Syria, being about two
hundred thousand, and then received his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia.”

33. This is the account Cheremon gives us. Now I take it for granted that
what I have said already hath plainly proved the falsity of both these
narrations; for had there been any real truth at the bottom, it was
impossible they should so greatly disagree about the particulars. But for
those that invent lies, what they write will easily give us very different
accounts, while they forge what they please out of their own heads. Now
Manetho says that the king’s desire of seeing the gods was the origin of
the ejection of the polluted people; but Cheremon feigns that it was a
dream of his own, sent upon him by Isis, that was the occasion of it.
Manetho says that the person who foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the
king was Amenophis; but this man says it was Phritiphantes. As to the
numbers of the multitude that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well
24
the former reckoning them eighty thousand, and the latter about two
hundred and fifty thousand! Now, for Manetho, he describes those polluted
persons as sent first to work in the quarries, and says that the city
Avaris was given them for their habitation. As also he relates that it was
not till after they had made war with the rest of the Egyptians, that they
invited the people of Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while
Cheremon says only that they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon
three hundred and eighty thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left
there by Amenophis, and so they invaded Egypt with them again; that
thereupon Amenophis fled into Ethiopia. But then this Cheremon commits a
most ridiculous blunder in not informing us who this army of so many ten
thousands were, or whence they came; whether they were native Egyptians,
or whether they came from a foreign country. Nor indeed has this man, who
forged a dream from Isis about the leprous people, assigned the reason why
the king would not bring them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down
Joseph as driven away at the same time with Moses, who yet died four
generations 25 before Moses, which four
generations make almost one hundred and seventy years. Besides all this,
Ramesses, the son of Amenophis, by Manetho’s account, was a young man, and
assisted his father in his war, and left the country at the same time with
him, and fled into Ethiopia. But Cheremon makes him to have been born in a
certain cave, after his father was dead, and that he then overcame the
Jews in battle, and drove them into Syria, being in number about two
hundred thousand. O the levity of the man! for he had neither told us who
these three hundred and eighty thousand were, nor how the four hundred and
thirty thousand perished; whether they fell in war, or went over to
Ramesses. And, what is the strangest of all, it is not possible to learn
out of him who they were whom he calls Jews, or to which of these two
parties he applies that denomination, whether to the two hundred and fifty
thousand leprous people, or to the three hundred and eighty thousand that
were about Pelusium. But perhaps it will be looked upon as a silly thing
in me to make any larger confutation of such writers as sufficiently
confute themselves; for had they been only confuted by other men, it had
been more tolerable.

34. I shall now add to these accounts about Manethoand Cheremon somewhat
about Lysimachus, who hath taken the same topic of falsehood with those
forementioned, but hath gone far beyond them in the incredible nature of
his forgeries; which plainly demonstrates that he contrived them out of
his virulent hatred of our nation. His words are these: “The people of the
Jews being leprous and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of
distempers, in the days of Bocchoris, king of Egypt, they fled to the
temples, and got their food there by begging: and as the numbers were very
great that were fallen under these diseases, there arose a scarcity in
Egypt. Hereupon Bocehoris, the king of Egypt, sent some to consult the
oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about his scarcity. The god’s answer was this,
that he must purge his temples of impure and impious men, by expelling
them out of those temples into desert places; but as to the scabby and
leprous people, he must drown them, and purge his temples, the sun having
an indignation at these men being suffered to live; and by this means the
land will bring forth its fruits. Upon Bocchoris’s having received these
oracles, he called for their priests, and the attendants upon their
altars, and ordered them to make a collection of the impure people, and to
deliver them to the soldiers, to carry them away into the desert; but to
take the leprous people, and wrap them in sheets of lead, and let them
down into the sea. Hereupon the scabby and leprous people were drowned,
and the rest were gotten together, and sent into desert places, in order
to be exposed to destruction. In this case they assembled themselves
together, and took counsel what they should do, and determined that, as
the night was coming on, they should kindle fires and lamps, and keep
watch; that they also should fast the next night, and propitiate the gods,
in order to obtain deliverance from them. That on the next day there was
one Moses, who advised them that they should venture upon a journey, and
go along one road till they should come to places fit for habitation: that
he charged them to have no kind regards for any man, nor give good counsel
to any, but always to advise them for the worst; and to overturn all those
temples and altars of the gods they should meet with: that the rest
commended what he had said with one consent, and did what they had
resolved on, and so traveled over the desert. But that the difficulties of
the journey being over, they came to a country inhabited, and that there
they abused the men, and plundered and burnt their temples; and then came
into that land which is called Judea, and there they built a city, and
dwelt therein, and that their city was named Hierosyla, from this their
robbing of the temples; but that still, upon the success they had
afterwards, they in time changed its denomination, that it might not be a
reproach to them, and called the city Hierosolyma, and themselves
Hierosolymites.”

35. Now this man did not discover and mention the same king with the
others, but feigned a newer name, and passing by the dream and the
Egyptian prophet, he brings him to [Jupiter] Hammon, in order to gain
oracles about the scabby and leprous people; for he says that the
multitude of Jews were gathered together at the temples. Now it is
uncertain whether he ascribes this name to these lepers, or to those that
were subject to such diseases among the Jews only; for he describes them
as a people of the Jews. What people does he mean? foreigners, or those of
that country? Why then’ dost thou call them Jews, if they were Egyptians?
But if they were foreigners, why dost thou not tell us whence they came?
And how could it be that, after the king had drowned many of them in the
sea, and ejected the rest into desert places, there should be still so
great a multitude remaining? Or after what manner did they pass over the
desert, and get the land which we now dwell in, and build our city, and
that temple which hath been so famous among all mankind? And besides, he
ought to have spoken more about our legislator than by giving us his bare
name; and to have informed us of what nation he was, and what parents he
was derived from; and to have assigned the reasons why he undertook to
make such laws concerning the gods, and concerning matters of injustice
with regard to men during that journey. For in case the people were by
birth Egyptians, they would not on the sudden have so easily changed the
customs of their country; and in case they had been foreigners, they had
for certain some laws or other which had been kept by them from long
custom. It is true, that with regard to those who had ejected them, they
might have sworn never to bear good-will to them, and might have had a
plausible reason for so doing. But if these men resolved to wage an
implacable war against all men, in case they had acted as wickedly as he
relates of them, and this while they wanted the assistance of all men,
this demonstrates a kind of mad conduct indeed; but not of the men
themselves, but very greatly so of him that tells such lies about them. He
hath also impudence enough to say that a name, implying “Robbers of the
temples,” 26
was given to their city, and that this name was afterward changed. The
reason of which is plain, that the former name brought reproach and hatred
upon them in the times of their posterity, while, it seems, those that
built the city thought they did honor to the city by giving it such a
name. So we see that this fine fellow had such an unbounded inclination to
reproach us, that he did not understand that robbery of temples is not
expressed By the same word and name among the Jews as it is among the
Greeks. But why should a man say any more to a person who tells such
impudent lies? However, since this book is arisen to a competent length, I
will make another beginning, and endeavor to add what still remains to
perfect my design in the following book.

APION BOOK 1 FOOTNOTES

1 (return)
[ This first book has a wrong
title. It is not written against Apion, as is the first part of the second
book, but against those Greeks in general who would not believe Josephus’s
former accounts of the very ancient state of the Jewish nation, in his 20
books of Antiquities; and particularly against Agatharelddes, Manetho,
Cheremon, and Lysimachus. it is one of the most learned, excellent, and
useful books of all antiquity; and upon Jerome’s perusal of this and the
following book, he declares that it seems to him a miraculous thing “how
one that was a Hebrew, who had been from his infancy instructed in sacred
learning, should be able to pronounce such a number of testimonies out of
profane authors, as if he had read over all the Grecian libraries,” Epist.
8. ad Magnum; and the learned Jew, Manasseh-Ben-Israel, esteemed these two
books so excellent, as to translate them into the Hebrew; this we learn
from his own catalogue of his works, which I have seen. As to the time and
place when and where these two books were written, the learned have not
hitherto been able to determine them any further than that they were
written some time after his Antiquities, or some time after A.D. 93; which
indeed is too obvious at their entrance to be overlooked by even a
careless peruser, they being directly intended against those that would
not believe what he had advanced in those books con-the great of the
Jewish nation As to the place, they all imagine that these two books were
written where the former were, I mean at Rome; and I confess that I myself
believed both those determinations, till I came to finish my notes upon
these books, when I met with plain indications that they were written not
at Rome, but in Judea, and this after the third of Trajan, or A.D. 100.]

2 (return)
[ Take Dr. Hudson’s note
here, which as it justly contradicts the common opinion that Josephus
either died under Domitian, or at least wrote nothing later than his days,
so does it perfectly agree to my own determination, from Justus of
Tiberias, that he wrote or finished his own Life after the third of
Trajan, or A.D. 100. To which Noldius also agrees, de Herod, No. 383
[Epaphroditus]. “Since Florius Josephus,” says Dr. Hudson, “wrote [or
finished] his books of Antiquities on the thirteenth of Domitian, [A.D.
93,] and after that wrote the Memoirs of his own Life, as an appendix to
the books of Antiquities, and at last his two books against Apion, and yet
dedicated all those writings to Epaphroditus; he can hardly be that
Epaphroditus who was formerly secretary to Nero, and was slain on the
fourteenth [or fifteenth] of Domitian, after he had been for a good while
in banishment; but another Epaphroditas, a freed-man, and procurator of
Trajan, as says Grotius on Luke 1:3.”]

3 (return)
[ The preservation of Homer’s
Poems by memory, and not by his own writing them down, and that thence
they were styled Rhapsodies, as sung by him, like ballads, by parts, and
not composed and connected together in complete works, are opinions well
known from the ancient commentators; though such supposal seems to myself,
as well as to Fabricius Biblioth. Grace. I. p. 269, and to others, highly
improbable. Nor does Josephus say there were no ancienter writings among
the Greeks than Homer’s Poems, but that they did not fully own any
ancienter writings pretending to such antiquity, which is trite.]

4 (return)
[ It well deserves to be
considered, that Josephus here says how all the following Greek historians
looked on Herodotus as a fabulous author; and presently, sect. 14, how
Manetho, the most authentic writer of the Egyptian history, greatly
complains of his mistakes in the Egyptian affairs; as also that Strabo, B.
XI. p. 507, the most accurate geographer and historian, esteemed him such;
that Xenophon, the much more accurate historian in the affairs of Cyrus,
implies that Herodotus’s account of that great man is almost entirely
romantic. See the notes on Antiq. B. XI. ch. 2. sect. 1, and Hutchinson’s
Prolegomena to his edition of Xenophon’s, that we have already seen in the
note on Antiq. B. VIII. ch. 10. sect. 3, how very little Herodotus knew
about the Jewish affairs and country, and that he greatly affected what we
call the marvelous, as Monsieur Rollin has lately and justly determined;
whence we are not always to depend on the authority of Herodotus, where it
is unsupported by other evidence, but ought to compare the other evidence
with his, and if it preponderate, to prefer it before his. I do not mean
by this that Herodotus willfully related what he believed to be false, [as
Cteeias seems to have done,] but that he often wanted evidence, and
sometimes preferred what was marvelous to what was best attested as really
true.]

5 (return)
[ About the days of Cyrus and
Daniel.]

6 (return)
[ It is here well worth our
observation, what the reasons are that such ancient authors as Herodotus,
Josephus, and others have been read to so little purpose by many learned
critics; viz. that their main aim has not been chronology or history, but
philology, to know words, and not things, they not much entering
oftentimes into the real contents of their authors, and judging which were
the most accurate discoverers of truth, and most to be depended on in the
several histories, but rather inquiring who wrote the finest style, and
had the greatest elegance in their expressions; which are things of small
consequence in comparison of the other. Thus you will sometimes find great
debates among the learned, whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest
historian in the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as
to the real value of each of their histories; while it would be of much
more moment to let the reader know, that as the consequence of Herodotus’s
history, which begins so much earlier, and reaches so much wider, than
that of Thucydides, is therefore vastly greater; so is the most part of
Thucydides, which belongs to his own times, and fell under his own
observation, much the most certain.]

7 (return)
[ Of this accuracy of the
Jews before and in our Savior’s time, in carefully preserving their
genealogies all along, particularly those of the priests, see Josephus’s
Life, sect. 1. This accuracy. seems to have ended at the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus, or, however, at that by Adrian.]

8 (return)
[ Which were these twenty-two
sacred books of the Old Testament, see the Supplement to the Essay of the
Old Testament, p. 25-29, viz. those we call canonical, all excepting the
Canticles; but still with this further exception, that the book of
apocryphal Esdras be taken into that number instead of our canonical Ezra,
which seems to be no more than a later epitome of the other; which two
books of Canticles and Ezra it no way appears that our Josephus ever saw.]

9 (return)
[ Here we have an account of
the first building of the city of Jerusalem, according to Manetho, when
the Phoenician shepherds were expelled out of Egypt about thirty-seven
years before Abraham came out of Harsh.]

10 (return)
[ Genesis 46;32, 34; 47:3,
4.]

11 (return)
[ In our copies of the book
of Genesis and of Joseph, this Joseph never calls himself “a captive,”
when he was with the king of Egypt, though he does call himself “a
servant,” “a slave,” or “captive,” many times in the Testament of the
Twelve Patriarchs, under Joseph, sect. 1, 11, 13-16.]

12 (return)
[ Of this Egyptian
chronology of Manetho, as mistaken by Josephus, and of these Phoenician
shepherds, as falsely supposed by him, and others after him, to have been
the Israelites in Egypt, see Essay on the Old Testament, Appendix, p.
182-188. And note here, that when Josephus tells us that the Greeks or
Argives looked on this Danaus as “a most ancient,” or “the most ancient,”
king of Argos, he need not be supposed to mean, in the strictest sense,
that they had no one king so ancient as he; for it is certain that they
owned nine kings before him, and Inachus at the head of them. See
Authentic Records, Part II. p. 983, as Josephus could not but know very
well; but that he was esteemed as very ancient by them, and that they knew
they had been first of all denominated “Danai” from this very ancient king
Danaus. Nor does this superlative degree always imply the “most ancient”
of all without exception, but is sometimes to be rendered “very ancient”
only, as is the case in the like superlative degrees of other words also.]

13 (return)
[ Authentic Records, Part
II. p. 983, as Josephus could not but know very well; but that he was
esteemed as very ancient by them, and that they knew they had been first
of all denominated “Danai” from this very ancient king Danaus. Nor does
this superlative degree always imply the “most ancient” of all without
exception, but is sometimes to be rendered “very ancient” only, as is the
case in the like superlative degrees of other words also.]

14 (return)
[ This number in Josephus,
that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in the eighteenth year of his
reign, is a mistake in the nicety of chronology; for it was in the
nineteenth. The true number here for the year of Darius, in which the
second temple was finished, whether the second with our present copies, or
the sixth with that of Syncellus, or the tenth with that of Eusebius, is
very uncertain; so we had best follow Josephus’s own account elsewhere,
Antiq.;B. XI. ch. 3. sect. 4, which shows us that according to his copy of
the Old Testament, after the second of Cyrus, that work was interrupted
till the second of Darius, when in seven years it was finished in the
ninth of Darius.]

15 (return)
[ This is a thing well
known by the learned, that we are not secure that we have any genuine
writings of Pythagoras; those Golden Verses, which are his best remains,
being generally supposed to have been written not by himself, but by some
of his scholars only, in agreement with what Josephus here affirms of
him.]

16 (return)
[ Whether these verses of
Cherilus, the heathen poet, in the days of Xerxes, belong to the Solymi in
Pisidia, that were near a small lake, or to the Jews that dwelt on the
Solymean or Jerusalem mountains, near the great and broad lake
Asphaltitis, that were a strange people, and spake the Phoenician tongue,
is not agreed on by the learned. If is yet certain that Josephus here, and
Eusebius, Prep. IX. 9. p. 412, took them to be Jews; and I confess I
cannot but very much incline to the same opinion. The other Solymi were
not a strange people, but heathen idolaters, like the other parts of
Xerxes’s army; and that these spake the Phoenician tongue is next to
impossible, as the Jews certainly did; nor is there the least evidence for
it elsewhere. Nor was the lake adjoining to the mountains of the Solvmi at
all large or broad, in comparison of the Jewish lake Asphaltitis; nor
indeed were these so considerable a people as the Jews, nor so likely to
be desired by Xerxes for his army as the Jews, to whom he was always very
favorable. As for the rest of Cherilus’s description, that “their heads
were sooty; that they had round rasures on their heads; that their heads
and faces were like nasty horse-heads, which had been hardened in the
smoke;” these awkward characters probably fitted the Solymi of Pisidi no
better than they did the Jews in Judea. And indeed this reproachful
language, here given these people, is to me a strong indication that they
were the poor despicable Jews, and not the Pisidian Solymi celebrated in
Homer, whom Cherilus here describes; nor are we to expect that either
Cherilus or Hecateus, or any other pagan writers cited by Josephus and
Eusebius, made no mistakes in the Jewish history. If by comparing their
testimonies with the more authentic records of that nation we find them
for the main to confirm the same, as we almost always do, we ought to be
satisfied, and not expect that they ever had an exact knowledge of all the
circumstances of the Jewish affairs, which indeed it was almost always
impossible for them to have. See sect. 23.]

17 (return)
[ This Hezekiah, who is
here called a high priest, is not named in Josephus’s catalogue; the real
high priest at that time being rather Onias, as Archbishop Usher supposes.
However, Josephus often uses the word high priests in the plural number,
as living many at the same time. See the note on Antiq. B. XX. ch. 8.
sect. 8.]

18 (return)
[ So I read the text with
Havercamp, though the place be difficult.]

19 (return)
[ This number of arourae or
Egyptian acres, 3,000,000, each aroura containing a square of 100 Egyptian
cubits, [being about three quarters of an English acre, and just twice the
area of the court of the Jewish tabernacle,] as contained in the country
of Judea, will be about one third of the entire number of arourae in the
whole land of Judea, supposing it 160 measured miles long and 70 such
miles broad; which estimation, for the fruitful parts of it, as perhaps
here in Hecateus, is not therefore very wide from the truth. The fifty
furlongs in compass for the city Jerusalem presently are not very wide
from the truth also, as Josephus himself describes it, who, Of the War, B.
V. ch. 4. sect. 3. makes its wall thirty-three furlongs, besides the
suburbs and gardens; nay, he says, B. V. ch. 12. sect. 2, that Titus’s
wall about it at some small distance, after the gardens and suburbs were
destroyed, was not less than thirty-nine furlongs. Nor perhaps were its
constant inhabitants, in the days of Hecateus, many more than these
120,000, because room was always to be left for vastly greater numbers
which came up at the three great festivals; to say nothing of the probable
increase in their number between the days of Hecateus and Josephus, which
was at least three hundred years. But see a more authentic account of some
of these measures in my Description of the Jewish Temples. However, we are
not to expect that such heathens as Cherilus or Hecateus, or the rest that
are cited by Josephus and Eusebius, could avoid making many mistakes in
the Jewish history, while yet they strongly confirm the same history in
the general, and are most valuable attestations to those more authentic
accounts we have in the Scriptures and Josephus concerning them.]

20 (return)
[ A glorious testimony this
of the observation of the sabbath by the Jews. See Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 2.
sect. 4, and ch. 6. sect. 2; the Life, sect. 54; and War, B. IV. ch. 9.
sect. 12.]

21 (return)
[ Not their law, but the
superstitious interpretation of their leaders which neither the Maccabees
nor our blessed Savior did ever approve of.]

22 (return)
[ In reading this and the
remaining sections of this book, and some parts of the next, one may
easily perceive that our usually cool and candid author, Josephus, was too
highly offended with the impudent calumnies of Manethe, and the other
bitter enemies of the Jews, with whom he had now to deal, and was thereby
betrayed into a greater heat and passion than ordinary, and that by
consequence he does not hear reason with his usual fairness and
impartiality; he seems to depart sometimes from the brevity and sincerity
of a faithful historian, which is his grand character, and indulges the
prolixity and colors of a pleader and a disputant: accordingly, I confess,
I always read these sections with less pleasure than I do the rest of his
writings, though I fully believe the reproaches cast on the Jews, which he
here endeavors to confute and expose, were wholly groundless and
unreasonable.]

23 (return)
[ This is a very valuable
testimony of Manetho, that the laws of Osarsiph, or Moses, were not made
in compliance with, but in opposition to, the customs of the Egyptians.
See the note on Antiq. B. III. ch. 8. sect. 9.]

24 (return)
[ By way of irony, I
suppose.]

25 (return)
[ Here we see that Josephus
esteemed a generation between Joseph and Moses to be about forty-two or
forty-three years; which, if taken between the earlier children, well
agrees with the duration of human life in those ages. See Antheat. Rec.
Part II. pages 966, 1019, 1020.]

26 (return)
[ That is the meaning of
Hierosyla in Greek, not in Hebrew.]

BOOK II.

1. In the former book, most honored Epaphroditus, I have demonstrated our
antiquity, and confirmed the truth of what I have said, from the writings
of the Phoenicians, and Chaldeans, and Egyptians. I have, moreover,
produced many of the Grecian writers as witnesses thereto. I have also
made a refutation of Manetho and Cheremon, and of certain others of our
enemies. I shall now 1 therefore begin a confutation of
the remaining authors who have written any thing against us; although I
confess I have had a doubt upon me about Apion 2 the
grammarian, whether I ought to take the trouble of confuting him or not;
for some of his writings contain much the same accusations which the
others have laid against us, some things that he hath added are very
frigid and contemptible, and for the greatest part of what he says, it is
very scurrilous, and, to speak no more than the plain truth, it shows him
to be a very unlearned person, and what he lays together looks like the
work of a man of very bad morals, and of one no better in his whole life
than a mountebank. Yet, because there are a great many men so very
foolish, that they are rather caught by such orations than by what is
written with care, and take pleasure in reproaching other men, and cannot
abide to hear them commended, I thought it to be necessary not to let this
man go off without examination, who had written such an accusation against
us, as if he would bring us to make an answer in open court. For I also
have observed, that many men are very much delighted when they see a man
who first began to reproach another, to be himself exposed to contempt on
account of the vices he hath himself been guilty of. However, it is not a
very easy thing to go over this man’s discourse, nor to know plainly what
he means; yet does he seem, amidst a great confusion and disorder in his
falsehoods, to produce, in the first place, such things as resemble what
we have examined already, and relate to the departure of our forefathers
out of Egypt; and, in the second place, he accuses those Jews that are
inhabitants of Alexandria; as, in the third place, he mixes with those
things such accusations as concern the sacred purifications, with the
other legal rites used in the temple.

2. Now although I cannot but think that I have already demonstrated, and
that abundantly more than was necessary, that our fathers were not
originally Egyptians, nor were thence expelled, either on account of
bodily diseases, or any other calamities of that sort; yet will I briefly
take notice of what Apion adds upon that subject; for in his third book,
which relates to the affairs of Egypt, he speaks thus: “I have heard of
the ancient men of Egypt, that Moses was of Heliopolis, and that he
thought himself obliged to follow the customs of his forefathers, and
offered his prayers in the open air, towards the city walls; but that he
reduced them all to be directed towards sun-rising, which was agreeable to
the situation of Heliopolis; that he also set up pillars instead of
gnomons, 3
under which was represented a cavity like that of a boat, and the shadow
that fell from their tops fell down upon that cavity, that it might go
round about the like course as the sun itself goes round in the other.”
This is that wonderful relation which we have given us by this grammarian.
But that it is a false one is so plain, that it stands in need of few
words to prove it, but is manifest from the works of Moses; for when he
erected the first tabernacle to God, he did himself neither give order for
any such kind of representation to be made at it, nor ordain that those
that came after him should make such a one. Moreover, when in a future age
Solomon built his temple in Jerusalem, he avoided all such needless
decorations as Apion hath here devised. He says further, how he had “heard
of the ancient men, that Moses was of Hellopolis.” To be sure that was,
because being a younger man himself, he believed those that by their elder
age were acquainted and conversed with him. Now this grammarian, as he
was, could not certainly tell which was the poet Homer’s country, no more
than he could which was the country of Pythagoras, who lived comparatively
but a little while ago; yet does he thus easily determine the age of
Moses, who preceded them such a vast number of years, as depending on his
ancient men’s relation, which shows how notorious a liar he was. But then
as to this chronological determination of the time when he says he brought
the leprous people, the blind, and the lame out of Egypt, see how well
this most accurate grammarian of ours agrees with those that have written
before him! Manetho says that the Jews departed out of Egypt, in the reign
of Tethmosis, three hundred ninety-three years before Danaus fled to
Argos; Lysimaehus says it was under king Bocchoris, that is, one thousand
seven hundred years ago; Molo and some others determined it as every one
pleased: but this Apion of ours, as deserving to be believed before them,
hath determined it exactly to have been in the seventh olympiad, and the
first year of that olympiad; the very same year in which he says that
Carthage was built by the Phoenicians. The reason why he added this
building of Carthage was, to be sure, in order, as he thought, to
strengthen his assertion by so evident a character of chronology. But he
was not aware that this character confutes his assertion; for if we may
give credit to the Phoenician records as to the time of the first coming
of their colony to Carthage, they relate that Hirom their king was above a
hundred and fifty years earlier than the building of Carthage; concerning
whom I have formerly produced testimonials out of those Phoenician
records, as also that this Hirom was a friend of Solomon when he was
building the temple of Jerusalem, and gave him great assistance in his
building that temple; while still Solomon himself built that temple six
hundred and twelve years after the Jews came out of Egypt. As for the
number of those that were expelled out of Egypt, he hath contrived to have
the very same number with Lysimaehus, and says they were a hundred and ten
thousand. He then assigns a certain wonderful and plausible occasion for
the name of Sabbath; for he says that “when the Jews had traveled a six
days’ journey, they had buboes in their groins; and that on this account
it was that they rested on the seventh day, as having got safely to that
country which is now called Judea; that then they preserved the language
of the Egyptians, and called that day the Sabbath, for that malady of
buboes on their groin was named Sabbatosis by the Egyptians.” And would
not a man now laugh at this fellow’s trifling, or rather hate his
impudence in writing thus? We must, it seems, fake it for granted that all
these hundred and ten thousand men must have these buboes. But, for
certain, if those men had been blind and lame, and had all sorts of
distempers upon them, as Apion says they had, they could not have gone one
single day’s journey; but if they had been all able to travel over a large
desert, and, besides that, to fight and conquer those that opposed them,
they had not all of them had buboes on their groins after the sixth day
was over; for no such distemper comes naturally and of necessity upon
those that travel; but still, when there are many ten thousands in a camp
together, they constantly march a settled space [in a day]. Nor is it at
all probable that such a thing should happen by chance; this would be
prodigiously absurd to be supposed. However, our admirable author Apion
hath before told us that “they came to Judea in six days’ time;” and
again, that “Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and
Arabia, which was called Sinai, and was concealed there forty days, and
that when he came down from thence he gave laws to the Jews.” But, then,
how was it possible for them to tarry forty days in a desert place where
there was no water, and at the same time to pass all over the country
between that and Judea in the six days? And as for this grammatical
translation of the word Sabbath, it either contains an instance of his
great impudence or gross ignorance; for the words Sabbo and Sabbath are
widely different from one another; for the word Sabbath in the Jewish
language denotes rest from all sorts of work; but the word Sabbo, as he
affirms, denotes among the Egyptians the malady of a bubo in the groin.

3. This is that novel account which the Egyptian Apion gives us concerning
the Jews’ departure out of Egypt, and is no better than a contrivance of
his own. But why should we wonder at the lies he tells about our
forefathers, when he affirms them to be of Egyptian original, when he lies
also about himself? for although he was born at Oasis in Egypt, he
pretends to be, as a man may say, the top man of all the Egyptians; yet
does he forswear his real country and progenitors, and by falsely
pretending to be born at Alexandria, cannot deny the 4 pravity of
his family; for you see how justly he calls those Egyptians whom he hates,
and endeavors to reproach; for had he not deemed Egyptians to be a name of
great reproach, he would not have avoided the name of an Egyptian himself;
as we know that those who brag of their own countries value themselves
upon the denomination they acquire thereby, and reprove such as unjustly
lay claim thereto. As for the Egyptians’ claim to be of our kindred, they
do it on one of the following accounts; I mean, either as they value
themselves upon it, and pretend to bear that relation to us; or else as
they would draw us in to be partakers of their own infamy. But this fine
fellow Apion seems to broach this reproachful appellation against us,
[that we were originally Egyptians,] in order to bestow it on the
Alexandrians, as a reward for the privilege they had given him of being a
fellow citizen with them: he also is apprized of the ill-will the
Alexandrians bear to those Jews who are their fellow citizens, and so
proposes to himself to reproach them, although he must thereby include all
the other Egyptians also; while in both cases he is no better than an
impudent liar.

4. But let us now see what those heavy and wicked crimes are which Apion
charges upon the Alexandrian Jews. “They came [says he] out of Syria, and
inhabited near the tempestuous sea, and were in the neighborhood of the
dashing of the waves.” Now if the place of habitation includes any thing
that is reproached, this man reproaches not his own real country, [Egypt,]
but what he pretends to be his own country, Alexandria; for all are agreed
in this, that the part of that city which is near the sea is the best part
of all for habitation. Now if the Jews gained that part of the city by
force, and have kept it hitherto without impeachment, this is a mark of
their valor; but in reality it was Alexander himself that gave them that
place for their habitation, when they obtained equal privileges there with
the Macedonians. Nor call I devise what Apion would have said, had their
habitation been at Necropolis? and not been fixed hard by the royal palace
[as it is]; nor had their nation had the denomination of Macedonians given
them till this very day [as they have]. Had this man now read the epistles
of king Alexander, or those of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, or met with the
writings of the succeeding kings, or that pillar which is still standing
at Alexandria, and contains the privileges which the great [Julius] Caesar
bestowed upon the Jews; had this man, I say, known these records, and yet
hath the impudence to write in contradiction to them, he hath shown
himself to be a wicked man; but if he knew nothing of these records, he
hath shown himself to be a man very ignorant: nay, when lie appears to
wonder how Jews could be called Alexandrians, this is another like
instance of his ignorance; for all such as are called out to be colonies,
although they be ever so far remote from one another in their original,
receive their names from those that bring them to their new habitations.
And what occasion is there to speak of others, when those of us Jews that
dwell at Antioch are named Antiochians, because Seleucns the founder of
that city gave them the privileges belonging thereto? After the like
manner do those Jews that inhabit Ephesus, and the other cities of Ionia,
enjoy the same name with those that were originally born there, by the
grant of the succeeding princes; nay, the kindness and humanity of the
Romans hath been so great, that it hath granted leave to almost all others
to take the same name of Romans upon them; I mean not particular men only,
but entire and large nations themselves also; for those anciently named
Iberi, and Tyrrheni, and Sabini, are now called Romani. And if Apion
reject this way of obtaining the privilege of a citizen of Alexandria, let
him abstain from calling himself an Alexandrian hereafter; for otherwise,
how can he who was born in the very heart of Egypt be an Alexandrian, if
this way of accepting such a privilege, of which he would have us
deprived, be once abrogated? although indeed these Romans, who are now the
lords of the habitable earth, have forbidden the Egyptians to have the
privileges of any city whatsoever; while this fine fellow, who is willing
to partake of such a privilege himself as he is forbidden to make use of,
endeavors by calumnies to deprive those of it that have justly received
it; for Alexander did not therefore get some of our nation to Alexandria,
because he wanted inhabitants for this his city, on whose building he had
bestowed so much pains; but this was given to our people as a reward,
because he had, upon a careful trial, found them all to have been men of
virtue and fidelity to him; for, as Hecateus says concerning us,
“Alexander honored our nation to such a degree, that, for the equity and
the fidelity which the Jews exhibited to him, he permitted them to hold
the country of Samaria free from tribute. Of the same mind also was
Ptolemy the son of Lagus, as to those Jews who dwelt at Alexandria.” For
he intrusted the fortresses of Egypt into their hands, as believing they
would keep them faithfully and valiantly for him; and when he was desirous
to secure the government of Cyrene, and the other cities of Libya, to
himself, he sent a party of Jews to inhabit in them. And for his successor
Ptolemy, who was called Philadelphus, he did not only set all those of our
nation free who were captives under him, but did frequently give money
[for their ransom]; and, what was his greatest work of all, he had a great
desire of knowing our laws, and of obtaining the books of our sacred
Scriptures; accordingly, he desired that such men might be sent him as
might interpret our law to him; and, in order to have them well compiled,
he committed that care to no ordinary persons, but ordained that Demetrius
Phalereus, and Andreas, and Aristeas; the first, Demetrius, the most
learned person of his age, and the others, such as were intrusted with the
guard of his body; should take care of this matter: nor would he certainly
have been so desirous of learning our law, and the philosophy of our
nation, had he despised the men that made use of it, or had he not indeed
had them in great admiration.

5. Now this Apion was unacquainted with almost all the kings of those
Macedonians whom he pretends to have been his progenitors, who were yet
very well affected towards us; for the third of those Ptolemies, who was
called Euergetes, when he had gotten possession of all Syria by force, did
not offer his thank-offerings to the Egyptian gods for his victory, but
came to Jerusalem, and according to our own laws offered many sacrifices
to God, and dedicated to him such gifts as were suitable to such a
victory: and as for Ptolemy Philometer and his wife Cleopatra, they
committed their whole kingdom to the Jews, when Onias and Dositheus, both
Jews, whose names are laughed at by Apion, were the generals of their
whole army. But certainly, instead of reproaching them, he ought to admire
their actions, and return them thanks for saving Alexandria, whose citizen
he pretends to be; for when these Alexandrians were making war with
Cleopatra the queen, and were in danger of being utterly ruined, these
Jews brought them to terms of agreement, and freed them from the miseries
of a civil war. “But then [says Apion] Onias brought a small army
afterward upon the city at the time when Thorruns the Roman ambassador was
there present.” Yes, do I venture to say, and that he did rightly and very
justly in so doing; for that Ptolemy who was called Physco, upon the death
of his brother Philometer, came from Cyrene, and would have ejected
Cleopatra as well as her sons out of their kingdom, that he might obtain
it for himself unjustly. 5 For this cause then it was that
Onias undertook a war against him on Cleopatra’s account; nor would he
desert that trust the royal family had reposed in him in their distress.
Accordingly, God gave a remarkable attestation to his righteous procedure;
for when Ptolemy Physco 6 had the presumption to fight
against Onias’s army, and had caught all the Jews that were in the city
[Alexandria], with their children and wives, and exposed them naked and in
bonds to his elephants, that they might be trodden upon and destroyed, and
when he had made those elephants drunk for that purpose, the event proved
contrary to his preparations; for these elephants left the Jews who were
exposed to them, and fell violently upon Physco’s friends, and slew a
great number of them; nay, after this Ptolemy saw a terrible ghost, which
prohibited his hurting those men; his very concubine, whom he loved so
well, [some call her Ithaca, and others Irene,] making supplication to
him, that he would not perpetrate so great a wickedness. So he complied
with her request, and repented of what he either had already done, or was
about to do; whence it is well known that the Alexandrian Jews do with
good reason celebrate this day, on the account that they had thereon been
vouchsafed such an evident deliverance from God. However, Apion, the
common calumniator of men, hath the presumption to accuse the Jews for
making this war against Physco, when he ought to have commended them for
the same. This man also makes mention of Cleopatra, the last queen of
Alexandria, and abuses us, because she was ungrateful to us; whereas he
ought to have reproved her, who indulged herself in all kinds of injustice
and wicked practices, both with regard to her nearest relations and
husbands who had loved her, and, indeed, in general with regard to all the
Romans, and those emperors that were her benefactors; who also had her
sister Arsinoe slain in a temple, when she had done her no harm: moreover,
she had her brother slain by private treachery, and she destroyed the gods
of her country and the sepulchers of her progenitors; and while she had
received her kingdom from the first Caesar, she had the impudence to rebel
against his son: 7 and successor; nay, she corrupted
Antony with her love-tricks, and rendered him an enemy to his country, and
made him treacherous to his friends, and [by his means] despoiled some of
their royal authority, and forced others in her madness to act wickedly.
But what need I enlarge upon this head any further, when she left Antony
in his fight at sea, though he were her husband, and the father of their
common children, and compelled him to resign up his government, with the
army, and to follow her [into Egypt]? nay, when last of all Caesar had
taken Alexandria, she came to that pitch of cruelty, that she declared she
had some hope of preserving her affairs still, in case she could kill the
Jews, though it were with her own hand; to such a degree of barbarity and
perfidiousness had she arrived. And doth any one think that we cannot
boast ourselves of any thing, if, as Apion says, this queen did not at a
time of famine distribute wheat among us? However, she at length met with
the punishment she deserved. As for us Jews, we appeal to the great Caesar
what assistance we brought him, and what fidelity we showed to him against
the Egyptians; as also to the senate and its decrees, and the epistles of
Augustus Caesar, whereby our merits [to the Romans] are justified. Apion
ought to have looked upon those epistles, and in particular to have
examined the testimonies given on our behalf, under Alexander and all the
Ptolemies, and the decrees of the senate and of the greatest Roman
emperors. And if Germanicus was not able to make a distribution of corn to
all the inhabitants of Alexandria, that only shows what a barren time it
was, and how great a want there was then of corn, but tends nothing to the
accusation of the Jews; for what all the emperors have thought of the
Alexandrian Jews is well known, for this distribution of wheat was no
otherwise omitted with regard to the Jews, than it was with regard to the
other inhabitants of Alexandria. But they still were desirous to preserve
what the kings had formerly intrusted to their care, I mean the custody of
the river; nor did those kings think them unworthy of having the entire
custody thereof, upon all occasions.

6. But besides this, Apion objects to us thus: “If the Jews [says he] be
citizens of Alexandria, why do they not worship the same gods with the
Alexandrians?” To which I give this answer: Since you are yourselves
Egyptians, why do you fight it out one against another, and have
implacable wars about your religion? At this rate we must not call you all
Egyptians, nor indeed in general men, because you breed up with great care
beasts of a nature quite contrary to that of men, although the nature of
all men seems to be one and the same. Now if there be such differences in
opinion among you Egyptians, why are you surprised that those who came to
Alexandria from another country, and had original laws of their own
before, should persevere in the observance of those laws? But still he
charges us with being the authors of sedition; which accusation, if it be
a just one, why is it not laid against us all, since we are known to be
all of one mind. Moreover, those that search into such matters will soon
discover that the authors of sedition have been such citizens of
Alexandria as Apion is; for while they were the Grecians and Macedonians
who were ill possession of this city, there was no sedition raised against
us, and we were permitted to observe our ancient solemnities; but when the
number of the Egyptians therein came to be considerable, the times grew
confused, and then these seditions brake out still more and more, while
our people continued uncorrupted. These Egyptians, therefore, were the
authors of these troubles, who having not the constancy of Macedonians,
nor the prudence of Grecians, indulged all of them the evil manners of the
Egyptians, and continued their ancient hatred against us; for what is here
so presumptuously charged upon us, is owing to the differences that are
amongst themselves; while many of them have not obtained the privileges of
citizens in proper times, but style those who are well known to have had
that privilege extended to them all no other than foreigners: for it does
not appear that any of the kings have ever formerly bestowed those
privileges of citizens upon Egyptians, no more than have the emperors done
it more lately; while it was Alexander who introduced us into this city at
first, the kings augmented our privileges therein, and the Romans have
been pleased to preserve them always inviolable. Moreover, Apion would lay
a blot upon us, because we do not erect images for our emperors; as if
those emperors did not know this before, or stood in need of Apion as
their defender; whereas he ought rather to have admired the magnanimity
and modesty of the Romans, whereby they do not compel those that are
subject to them to transgress the laws of their countries, but are willing
to receive the honors due to them after such a manner as those who are to
pay them esteem consistent with piety and with their own laws; for they do
not thank people for conferring honors upon them, When they are compelled
by violence so to do. Accordingly, since the Grecians and some other
nations think it a right thing to make images, nay, when they have painted
the pictures of their parents, and wives, and children, they exult for
joy; and some there are who take pictures for themselves of such persons
as were no way related to them; nay, some take the pictures of such
servants as they were fond of; what wonder is it then if such as these
appear willing to pay the same respect to their princes and lords? But
then our legislator hath forbidden us to make images, not by way of
denunciation beforehand, that the Roman authority was not to be honored,
but as despising a thing that was neither necessary nor useful for either
God or man; and he forbade them, as we shall prove hereafter, to make
these images for any part of the animal creation, and much less for God
himself, who is no part of such animal creation. Yet hath our legislator
no where forbidden us to pay honors to worthy men, provided they be of
another kind, and inferior to those we pay to God; with which honors we
willingly testify our respect to our emperors, and to the people of Rome;
we also offer perpetual sacrifices for them; nor do we only offer them
every day at the common expenses of all the Jews, but although we offer no
other such sacrifices out of our common expenses, no, not for our own
children, yet do we this as a peculiar honor to the emperors, and to them
alone, while we do the same to no other person whomsoever. And let this
suffice for an answer in general to Apion, as to what he says with
relation to the Alexandrian Jews.

7. However, I cannot but admire those other authors who furnished this man
with such his materials; I mean Possidonius and Apollonius [the son of]
Molo, 8
who, while they accuse us for not worshipping the same gods whom others
worship, they think themselves not guilty of impiety when they tell lies
of us, and frame absurd and reproachful stories about our temple; whereas
it is a most shameful thing for freemen to forge lies on any occasion, and
much more so to forge them about our temple, which was so famous over all
the world, and was preserved so sacred by us; for Apion hath the impudence
to pretend that, “the Jews placed an ass’s head in their holy place;” and
he affirms that this was discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes spoiled our
temple, and found that ass’s head there made of gold, and worth a great
deal of money. To this my first answer shall be this, that had there been
any such thing among us, an Egyptian ought by no means to have thrown it
in our teeth, since an ass is not a more contemptible animal than 9
and goats, and other such creatures, which among them are gods. But
besides this answer, I say further, how comes it about that Apion does not
understand this to be no other than a palpable lie, and to be confuted by
the thing itself as utterly incredible? For we Jews are always governed by
the same laws, in which we constantly persevere; and although many
misfortunes have befallen our city, as the like have befallen others, and
although Theos [Epiphanes], and Pompey the Great, and Licinius Crassus,
and last of all Titus Caesar, have conquered us in war, and gotten
possession of our temple; yet have they none of them found any such thing
there, nor indeed any thing but what was agreeable to the strictest piety;
although what they found we are not at liberty to reveal to other nations.
But for Antiochus [Epiphanes], he had no just cause for that ravage in our
temple that he made; he only came to it when he wanted money, without
declaring himself our enemy, and attacked us while we were his associates
and his friends; nor did he find any thing there that was ridiculous. This
is attested by many worthy writers; Polybius of Megalopolis, Strabo of
Cappadocia, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes, Castor the chronotoger, and
Apollodorus; 10 who all say that it was out of
Antiochus’s want of money that he broke his league with the Jews, and
despoiled their temple when it was full of gold and silver. Apion ought to
have had a regard to these facts, unless he had himself had either an
ass’s heart or a dog’s impudence; of such a dog I mean as they worship;
for he had no other external reason for the lies he tells of us. As for us
Jews, we ascribe no honor or power to asses, as do the Egyptians to
crocodiles and asps, when they esteem such as are seized upon by the
former, or bitten by the latter, to be happy persons, and persons worthy
of God. Asses are the same with us which they are with other wise men,
viz. creatures that bear the burdens that we lay upon them; but if they
come to our thrashing-floors and eat our corn, or do not perform what we
impose upon them, we beat them with a great many stripes, because it is
their business to minister to us in our husbandry affairs. But this Apion
of ours was either perfectly unskillful in the composition of such
fallacious discourses, or however, when he begun [somewhat better], he was
not able to persevere in what he had undertaken, since he hath no manner
of success in those reproaches he casts upon us.

8. He adds another Grecian fable, in order to reproach us. In reply to
which, it would be enough to say, that they who presume to speak about
Divine worship ought not to be ignorant of this plain truth, that it is a
degree of less impurity to pass through temples, than to forge wicked
calumnies of its priests. Now such men as he are more zealous to justify a
sacrilegious king, than to write what is just and what is true about us,
and about our temple; for when they are desirous of gratifying Antiochus,
and of concealing that perfidiousness and sacrilege which he was guilty
of, with regard to our nation, when he wanted money, they endeavor to
disgrace us, and tell lies even relating to futurities. Apion becomes
other men’s prophet upon this occasion, and says that “Antiochus found in
our temple a bed, and a man lying upon it, with a small table before him,
full of dainties, from the [fishes of the] sea, and the fowls of the dry
land; that this man was amazed at these dainties thus set before him; that
he immediately adored the king, upon his coming in, as hoping that he
would afford him all possible assistance; that he fell down upon his
knees, and stretched out to him his right hand, and begged to be released;
and that when the king bid him sit down, and tell him who he was, and why
he dwelt there, and what was the meaning of those various sorts of food
that were set before him the man made a lamentable complaint, and with
sighs, and tears in his eyes, gave him this account of the distress he was
in; and said that he was a Greek and that as he went over this province,
in order to get his living, he was seized upon by foreigners, on a sudden,
and brought to this temple, and shut up therein, and was seen by nobody,
but was fattened by these curious provisions thus set before him; and that
truly at the first such unexpected advantages seemed to him matter of
great joy; that after a while, they brought a suspicion him, and at length
astonishment, what their meaning should be; that at last he inquired of
the servants that came to him and was by them informed that it was in
order to the fulfilling a law of the Jews, which they must not tell him,
that he was thus fed; and that they did the same at a set time every year:
that they used to catch a Greek foreigner, and fat him thus up every year,
and then lead him to a certain wood, and kill him, and sacrifice with
their accustomed solemnities, and taste of his entrails, and take an oath
upon this sacrificing a Greek, that they would ever be at enmity with the
Greeks; and that then they threw the remaining parts of the miserable
wretch into a certain pit.” Apion adds further, that, “the man said there
were but a few days to come ere he was to be slain, and implored of
Antiochus that, out of the reverence he bore to the Grecian gods, he would
disappoint the snares the Jews laid for his blood, and would deliver him
from the miseries with which he was encompassed.” 11 Now this
is such a most tragical fable as is full of nothing but cruelty and
impudence; yet does it not excuse Antiochus of his sacrilegious attempt,
as those who write it in his vindication are willing to suppose; for he
could not presume beforehand that he should meet with any such thing in
coming to the temple, but must have found it unexpectedly. He was
therefore still an impious person, that was given to unlawful pleasures,
and had no regard to God in his actions. But [as for Apion], he hath done
whatever his extravagant love of lying hath dictated to him, as it is most
easy to discover by a consideration of his writings; for the difference of
our laws is known not to regard the Grecians only, but they are
principally opposite to the Egyptians, and to some other nations also for
while it so falls out that men of all countries come sometimes and sojourn
among us, how comes it about that we take an oath, and conspire only
against the Grecians, and that by the effusion of their blood also? Or how
is it possible that all the Jews should get together to these sacrifices,
and the entrails of one man should be sufficient for so many thousands to
taste of them, as Apion pretends? Or why did not the king carry this man,
whosoever he was, and whatsoever was his name, [which is not set down in
Apion’s book,] with great pomp back into his own country? when he might
thereby have been esteemed a religious person himself, and a mighty lover
of the Greeks, and might thereby have procured himself great assistance
from all men against that hatred the Jews bore to him. But I leave this
matter; for the proper way of confuting fools is not to use bare words,
but to appeal to the things themselves that make against them. Now, then,
all such as ever saw the construction of our temple, of what nature it
was, know well enough how the purity of it was never to be profaned; for
it had four several courts 12 encompassed with cloisters
round about, every one of which had by our law a peculiar degree of
separation from the rest. Into the first court every body was allowed to
go, even foreigners, and none but women, during their courses, were
prohibited to pass through it; all the Jews went into the second court, as
well as their wives, when they were free from all uncleanness; into the
third court went in the Jewish men, when they were clean and purified;
into the fourth went the priests, having on their sacerdotal garments; but
for the most sacred place, none went in but the high priests, clothed in
their peculiar garments. Now there is so great caution used about these
offices of religion, that the priests are appointed to go into the temple
but at certain hours; for in the morning, at the opening of the inner
temple, those that are to officiate receive the sacrifices, as they do
again at noon, till the doors are shut. Lastly, it is not so much as
lawful to carry any vessel into the holy house; nor is there any thing
therein, but the altar [of incense], the table [of shew-bread], the
censer, and the candlestick, which are all written in the law; for there
is nothing further there, nor are there any mysteries performed that may
not be spoken of; nor is there any feasting within the place. For what I
have now said is publicly known, and supported by the testimony of the
whole people, and their operations are very manifest; for although there
be four courses of the priests, and every one of them have above five
thousand men in them, yet do they officiate on certain days only; and when
those days are over, other priests succeed in the performance of their
sacrifices, and assemble together at mid-day, and receive the keys of the
temple, and the vessels by tale, without any thing relating to food or
drink being carried into the temple; nay, we are not allowed to offer such
things at the altar, excepting what is prepared for the sacrifices.

9. What then can we say of Apion, but that he examined nothing that
concerned these things, while still he uttered incredible words about
them? but it is a great shame for a grammarian not to be able to write
true history. Now if he knew the purity of our temple, he hath entirely
omitted to take notice of it; but he forges a story about the seizing of a
Grecian, about ineffable food, and the most delicious preparation of
dainties; and pretends that strangers could go into a place whereinto the
noblest men among the Jews are not allowed to enter, unless they be
priests. This, therefore, is the utmost degree of impiety, and a voluntary
lie, in order to the delusion of those who will not examine into the truth
of matters; whereas such unspeakable mischiefs as are above related have
been occasioned by such calumnies that are raised upon us.

10. Nay, this miracle or piety derides us further, and adds the following
pretended facts to his former fable; for he says that this man related
how, “while the Jews were once in a long war with the Idumeans, there came
a man out of one of the cities of the Idumeans, who there had worshipped
Apollo. This man, whose name is said to have been Zabidus, came to the
Jews, and promised that he would deliver Apollo, the god of Dora, into
their hands, and that he would come to our temple, if they would all come
up with him, and bring the whole multitude of the Jews with them; that
Zabidus made him a certain wooden instrument, and put it round about him,
and set three rows of lamps therein, and walked after such a manner, that
he appeared to those that stood a great way off him to be a kind of star,
walking upon the earth; that the Jews were terribly affrighted at so
surprising an appearance, and stood very quiet at a distance; and that
Zabidus, while they continued so very quiet, went into the holy house, and
carried off that golden head of an ass, [for so facetiously does he
write,] and then went his way back again to Dora in great haste.” And say
you so, sir! as I may reply; then does Apion load the ass, that is,
himself, and lays on him a burden of fooleries and lies; for he writes of
places that have no being, and not knowing the cities he speaks of, he
changes their situation; for Idumea borders upon our country, and is near
to Gaza, in which there is no such city as Dora; although there be, it is
true, a city named Dora in Phoenicia, near Mount Carmel, but it is four
days’ journey from Idumea. Now, then, why does this man accuse us, because
we have not gods in common with other nations, if our fathers were so
easily prevailed upon to have Apollo come to them, and thought they saw
him walking upon the earth, and the stars with him? for certainly those
who have so many festivals, wherein they light lamps, must yet, at this
rate, have never seen a candlestick! But still it seems that while Zabidus
took his journey over the country, where were so many ten thousands of
people, nobody met him. He also, it seems, even in a time of war, found
the walls of Jerusalem destitute of guards. I omit the rest. Now the doors
of the holy house were seventy 13 cubits
high, and twenty cubits broad; they were all plated over with gold, and
almost of solid gold itself, and there were no fewer than twenty 14
men required to shut them every day; nor was it lawful ever to leave them
open, though it seems this lamp-bearer of ours opened them easily, or
thought he opened them, as he thought he had the ass’s head in his hand.
Whether, therefore, he returned it to us again, or whether Apion took it,
and brought it into the temple again, that Antiochus might find it, and
afford a handle for a second fable of Apion’s, is uncertain.

11. Apion also tells a false story, when he mentions an oath of ours, as
if we “swore by God, the Maker of the heaven, and earth, and sea, to bear
no good will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Greeks.”
Now this liar ought to have said directly that, “we would bear no
good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Egyptians.”
For then his story about the oath would have squared with the rest of his
original forgeries, in case our forefathers had been driven away by their
kinsmen, the Egyptians, not on account of any wickedness they had been
guilty of, but on account of the calamities they were under; for as to the
Grecians, we were rather remote from them in place, than different from
them in our institutions, insomuch that we have no enmity with them, nor
any jealousy of them. On the contrary, it hath so happened that many of
them have come over to our laws, and some of them have continued in their
observation, although others of them had not courage enough to persevere,
and so departed from them again; nor did any body ever hear this oath
sworn by us: Apion, it seems, was the only person that heard it, for he
indeed was the first composer of it.

12. However, Apion deserves to be admired for his great prudence, as to
what I am going to say, which is this, “That there is a plain mark among
us, that we neither have just laws, nor worship God as we ought to do,
because we are not governors, but are rather in subjection to Gentiles,
sometimes to one nation, and sometimes to another; and that our city hath
been liable to several calamities, while their city [Alexandria] hath been
of old time an imperial city, and not used to be in subjection to the
Romans.” But now this man had better leave off this bragging, for every
body but himself would think that Apion said what he hath said against
himself; for there are very few nations that have had the good fortune to
continue many generations in the principality, but still the mutations in
human affairs have put them into subjection under others; and most nations
have been often subdued, and brought into subjection by others. Now for
the Egyptians, perhaps they are the only nation that have had this
extraordinary privilege, to have never served any of those monarchs who
subdued Asia and Europe, and this on account, as they pretend, that the
gods fled into their country, and saved themselves by being changed into
the shapes of wild beasts! Whereas these Egyptians 15 are the
very people that appear to have never, in all the past ages, had one day
of freedom, no, not so much as from their own lords. For I will not
reproach them with relating the manner how the Persians used them, and
this not once only, but many times, when they laid their cities waste,
demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those animals whom they
esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to imitate the clownish
ignorance of Apion, who hath no regard to the misfortunes of the
Athenians, or of the Lacedemonians, the latter of whom were styled by all
men the most courageous, and the former the most religious of the
Grecians. I say nothing of such kings as have been famous for piety,
particularly of one of them, whose name was Cresus, nor what calamities he
met with in his life; I say nothing of the citadel of Athens, of the
temple at Ephesus, of that at Delphi, nor of ten thousand others which
have been burnt down, while nobody cast reproaches on those that were the
sufferers, but on those that were the actors therein. But now we have met
with Apion, an accuser of our nation, though one that still forgets the
miseries of his own people, the Egyptians; but it is that Sesostris who
was once so celebrated a king of Egypt that hath blinded him. Now we will
not brag of our kings, David and Solomon, though they conquered many
nations; accordingly we will let them alone. However, Apion is ignorant of
what every body knows, that the Egyptians were servants to the Persians,
and afterwards to the Macedonians, when they were lords of Asia, and were
no better than slaves, while we have enjoyed liberty formerly; nay, more
than that, have had the dominion of the cities that lie round about us,
and this nearly for a hundred and twenty years together, until Pompeius
Magnus. And when all the kings every where were conquered by the Romans,
our ancestors were the only people who continued to be esteemed their
confederates and friends, on account of their fidelity to them.16

13. “But,” says Apion, “we Jews have not had any wonderful men amongst us,
not any inventors of arts, nor any eminent for wisdom.” He then enumerates
Socrates, and Zeno, and Cleanthes, and some others of the same sort; and,
after all, he adds himself to them, which is the most wonderful thing of
all that he says, and pronounces Alexandria to be happy, because it hath
such a citizen as he is in it; for he was the fittest man to be a witness
to his own deserts, although he hath appeared to all others no better than
a wicked mountebank, of a corrupt life and ill discourses; on which
account one may justly pity Alexandria, if it should value itself upon
such a citizen as he is. But as to our own men, we have had those who have
been as deserving of commendation as any other whosoever, and such as have
perused our Antiquities cannot be ignorant of them.

14. As to the other things which he sets down as blameworthy, it may
perhaps be the best way to let them pass without apology, that he may be
allowed to be his own accuser, and the accuser of the rest of the
Egyptians. However, he accuses us for sacrificing animals, and for
abstaining from swine’s flesh, and laughs at us for the circumcision of
our privy members. Now as for our slaughter of tame animals for
sacrifices, it is common to us and to all other men; but this Apion, by
making it a crime to sacrifice them, demonstrates himself to be an
Egyptian; for had he been either a Grecian or a Macedonian, [as he
pretends to be,] he had not shown any uneasiness at it; for those people
glory in sacrificing whole hecatombs to the gods, and make use of those
sacrifices for feasting; and yet is not the world thereby rendered
destitute of cattle, as Apion was afraid would come to pass. Yet if all
men had followed the manners of the Egyptians, the world had certainly
been made desolate as to mankind, but had been filled full of the wildest
sort of brute beasts, which, because they suppose them to be gods, they
carefully nourish. However, if any one should ask Apion which of the
Egyptians he thinks to be the most wise and most pious of them all, he
would certainly acknowledge the priests to be so; for the histories say
that two things were originally committed to their care by their kings’
injunctions, the worship of the gods, and the support of wisdom and
philosophy. Accordingly, these priests are all circumcised, and abstain
from swine’s flesh; nor does any one of the other Egyptians assist them in
slaying those sacrifices they offer to the gods. Apion was therefore quite
blinded in his mind, when, for the sake of the Egyptians, he contrived to
reproach us, and to accuse such others as not only make use of that
conduct of life which he so much abuses, but have also taught other men to
be circumcised, as says Herodotus; which makes me think that Apion is
hereby justly punished for his casting such reproaches on the laws of his
own country; for he was circumcised himself of necessity, on account of an
ulcer in his privy member; and when he received no benefit by such
circumcision, but his member became putrid, he died in great torment. Now
men of good tempers ought to observe their own laws concerning religion
accurately, and to persevere therein, but not presently to abuse the laws
of other nations, while this Apion deserted his own laws, and told lies
about ours. And this was the end of Apion’s life, and this shall be the
conclusion of our discourse about him.

15. But now, since Apollonius Molo, and Lysimachus, and some others, write
treatises about our lawgiver Moses, and about our laws, which are neither
just nor true, and this partly out of ignorance, but chiefly out of
ill-will to us, while they calumniate Moses as an impostor and deceiver,
and pretend that our laws teach us wickedness, but nothing that is
virtuous, I have a mind to discourse briefly, according to my ability,
about our whole constitution of government, and about the particular
branches of it. For I suppose it will thence become evident, that the laws
we have given us are disposed after the best manner for the advancement of
piety, for mutual communion with one another, for a general love of
mankind, as also for justice, and for sustaining labors with fortitude,
and for a contempt of death. And I beg of those that shall peruse this
writing of mine, to read it without partiality; for it is not my purpose
to write an encomium upon ourselves, but I shall esteem this as a most
just apology for us, and taken from those our laws, according to which we
lead our lives, against the many and the lying objections that have been
made against us. Moreover, since this Apollonius does not do like Apion,
and lay a continued accusation against us, but does it only by starts, and
up and clown his discourse, while he sometimes reproaches us as atheists,
and man-haters, and sometimes hits us in the teeth with our want of
courage, and yet sometimes, on the contrary, accuses us of too great
boldness and madness in our conduct; nay, he says that we are the weakest
of all the barbarians, and that this is the reason why we are the only
people who have made no improvements in human life; now I think I shall
have then sufficiently disproved all these his allegations, when it shall
appear that our laws enjoin the very reverse of what he says, and that we
very carefully observe those laws ourselves. And if I he compelled to make
mention of the laws of other nations, that are contrary to ours, those
ought deservedly to thank themselves for it, who have pretended to
depreciate our laws in comparison of their own; nor will there, I think,
be any room after that for them to pretend either that we have no such
laws ourselves, an epitome of which I will present to the reader, or that
we do not, above all men, continue in the observation of them.

16. To begin then a good way backward, I would advance this, in the first
place, that those who have been admirers of good order, and of living
under common laws, and who began to introduce them, may well have this
testimony that they are better than other men, both for moderation and
such virtue as is agreeable to nature. Indeed their endeavor was to have
every thing they ordained believed to be very ancient, that they might not
be thought to imitate others, but might appear to have delivered a regular
way of living to others after them. Since then this is the case, the
excellency of a legislator is seen in providing for the people’s living
after the best manner, and in prevailing with those that are to use the
laws he ordains for them, to have a good opinion of them, and in obliging
the multitude to persevere in them, and to make no changes in them,
neither in prosperity nor adversity. Now I venture to say, that our
legislator is the most ancient of all the legislators whom we have ally
where heard of; for as for the Lycurguses, and Solons, and Zaleucus
Locrensis, and all those legislators who are so admired by the Greeks,
they seem to be of yesterday, if compared with our legislator, insomuch as
the very name of a law was not so much as known in old times among the
Grecians. Homer is a witness to the truth of this observation, who never
uses that term in all his poems; for indeed there was then no such thing
among them, but the multitude was governed by wise maxims, and by the
injunctions of their king. It was also a long time that they continued in
the use of these unwritten customs, although they were always changing
them upon several occasions. But for our legislator, who was of so much
greater antiquity than the rest, [as even those that speak against us upon
all occasions do always confess,] he exhibited himself to the people as
their best governor and counselor, and included in his legislation the
entire conduct of their lives, and prevailed with them to receive it, and
brought it so to pass, that those that were made acquainted with his laws
did most carefully observe them.

17. But let us consider his first and greatest work; for when it was
resolved on by our forefathers to leave Egypt, and return to their own
country, this Moses took the many tell thousands that were of the people,
and saved them out of many desperate distresses, and brought them home in
safety. And certainly it was here necessary to travel over a country
without water, and full of sand, to overcome their enemies, and, during
these battles, to preserve their children, and their wives, and their
prey; on all which occasions he became an excellent general of an army,
and a most prudent counselor, and one that took the truest care of them
all; he also so brought it about, that the whole multitude depended upon
him. And while he had them always obedient to what he enjoined, he made no
manner of use of his authority for his own private advantage, which is the
usual time when governors gain great powers to themselves, and pave the
way for tyranny, and accustom the multitude to live very dissolutely;
whereas, when our legislator was in so great authority, he, on the
contrary, thought he ought to have regard to piety, and to show his great
good-will to the people; and by this means he thought he might show the
great degree of virtue that was in him, and might procure the most lasting
security to those who had made him their governor. When he had therefore
come to such a good resolution, and had performed such wonderful exploits,
we had just reason to look upon ourselves as having him for a divine
governor and counselor. And when he had first persuaded himself 17
that his actions and designs were agreeable to God’s will, he thought it
his duty to impress, above all things, that notion upon the multitude; for
those who have once believed that God is the inspector of their lives,
will not permit themselves in any sin. And this is the character of our
legislator: he was no impostor, no deceiver, as his revilers say, though
unjustly, but such a one as they brag Minos 18 to have
been among the Greeks, and other legislators after him; for some of them
suppose that they had their laws from Jupiter, while Minos said that the
revelation of his laws was to be referred to Apollo, and his oracle at
Delphi, whether they really thought they were so derived, or supposed,
however, that they could persuade the people easily that so it was. But
which of these it was who made the best laws, and which had the greatest
reason to believe that God was their author, it will be easy, upon
comparing those laws themselves together, to determine; for it is time
that we come to that point. 19 Now there are innumerable
differences in the particular customs and laws that are among all mankind,
which a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: Some legislators
have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them
under oligarchies, and others under a republican form; but our legislator
had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be
what, by a strained expression, may be termed a Theocracy, 20
by ascribing the authority and the power to God, and by persuading all the
people to have a regard to him, as the author of all the good things that
were enjoyed either in common by all mankind, or by each one in
particular, and of all that they themselves obtained by praying to him in
their greatest difficulties. He informed them that it was impossible to
escape God’s observation, even in any of our outward actions, or in any of
our inward thoughts. Moreover, he represented God as unbegotten, 21
and immutable, through all eternity, superior to all mortal conceptions in
pulchritude; and, though known to us by his power, yet unknown to us as to
his essence. I do not now explain how these notions of God are the
sentiments of the wisest among the Grecians, and how they were taught them
upon the principles that he afforded them. However, they testify, with
great assurance, that these notions are just, and agreeable to the nature
of God, and to his majesty; for Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras, and Plato, and
the Stoic philosophers that succeeded them, and almost all the rest, are
of the same sentiments, and had the same notions of the nature of God; yet
durst not these men disclose those true notions to more than a few,
because the body of the people were prejudiced with other opinions
beforehand. But our legislator, who made his actions agree to his laws,
did not only prevail with those that were his contemporaries to agree with
these his notions, but so firmly imprinted this faith in God upon all
their posterity, that it never could be removed. The reason why the
constitution of this legislation was ever better directed to the utility
of all than other legislations were, is this, that Moses did not make
religion a part of virtue, but he saw and he ordained other virtues to be
parts of religion; I mean justice, and fortitude, and temperance, and a
universal agreement of the members of the community with one another; for
all our actions and studies, and all our words, [in Moses’s settlement,]
have a reference to piety towards God; for he hath left none of these in
suspense, or undetermined. For there are two ways of coming at any sort of
learning and a moral conduct of life; the one is by instruction in words,
the other by practical exercises. Now other lawgivers have separated these
two ways in their opinions, and choosing one of those ways of instruction,
or that which best pleased every one of them, neglected the other. Thus
did the Lacedemonians and the Cretians teach by practical exercises, but
not by words; while the Athenians, and almost all the other Grecians, made
laws about what was to be done, or left undone, but had no regard to the
exercising them thereto in practice.

18. But for our legislator, he very carefully joined these two methods of
instruction together; for he neither left these practical exercises to go
on without verbal instruction, nor did he permit the hearing of the law to
proceed without the exercises for practice; but beginning immediately from
the earliest infancy, and the appointment of every one’s diet, he left
nothing of the very smallest consequence to be done at the pleasure and
disposal of the person himself. Accordingly, he made a fixed rule of law
what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what sorts they should
make use of; as also, what communion they should have with others what
great diligence they should use in their occupations, and what times of
rest should be interposed, that, by living under that law as under a
father and a master, we might be guilty of no sin, neither voluntary nor
out of ignorance; for he did not suffer the guilt of ignorance to go on
without punishment, but demonstrated the law to be the best and the most
necessary instruction of all others, permitting the people to leave off
their other employments, and to assemble together for the hearing of the
law, and learning it exactly, and this not once or twice, or oftener, but
every week; which thing all the other legislators seem to have neglected.

19. And indeed the greatest part of mankind are so far from living
according to their own laws, that they hardly know them; but when they
have sinned, they learn from others that they have transgressed the law.
Those also who are in the highest and principal posts of the government,
confess they are not acquainted with those laws, and are obliged to take
such persons for their assessors in public administrations as profess to
have skill in those laws; but for our people, if any body do but ask any
one of them about our laws, he will more readily tell them all than he
will tell his own name, and this in consequence of our having learned them
immediately as soon as ever we became sensible of any thing, and of our
having them as it were engraven on our souls. Our transgressors of them
are but few, and it is impossible, when any do offend, to escape
punishment.

20. And this very thing it is that principally creates such a wonderful
agreement of minds amongst us all; for this entire agreement of ours in
all our notions concerning God, and our having no difference in our course
of life and manners, procures among us the most excellent concord of these
our manners that is any where among mankind; for no other people but the
Jews have avoided all discourses about God that any way contradict one
another, which yet are frequent among other nations; and this is true not
only among ordinary persons, according as every one is affected, but some
of the philosophers have been insolent enough to indulge such
contradictions, while some of them have undertaken to use such words as
entirely take away the nature of God, as others of them have taken away
his providence over mankind. Nor can any one perceive amongst us any
difference in the conduct of our lives, but all our works are common to us
all. We have one sort of discourse concerning God, which is conformable to
our law, and affirms that he sees all things; as also we have but one way
of speaking concerning the conduct of our lives, that all other things
ought to have piety for their end; and this any body may hear from our
women, and servants themselves.

21. And, indeed, hence hath arisen that accusation which some make against
us, that we have not produced men that have been the inventors of new
operations, or of new ways of speaking; for others think it a fine thing
to persevere in nothing that has been delivered down from their
forefathers, and these testify it to be an instance of the sharpest wisdom
when these men venture to transgress those traditions; whereas we, on the
contrary, suppose it to be our only wisdom and virtue to admit no actions
nor supposals that are contrary to our original laws; which procedure of
ours is a just and sure sign that our law is admirably constituted; for
such laws as are not thus well made are convicted upon trial to want
amendment.

22. But while we are ourselves persuaded that our law was made agreeably
to the will of God, it would be impious for us not to observe the same;
for what is there in it that any body would change? and what can be
invented that is better? or what can we take out of other people’s laws
that will exceed it? Perhaps some would have the entire settlement of our
government altered. And where shall we find a better or more righteous
constitution than ours, while this makes us esteem God to be the Governor
of the universe, and permits the priests in general to be the
administrators of the principal affairs, and withal intrusts the
government over the other priests to the chief high priest himself? which
priests our legislator, at their first appointment, did not advance to
that dignity for their riches, or any abundance of other possessions, or
any plenty they had as the gifts of fortune; but he intrusted the
principal management of Divine worship to those that exceeded others in an
ability to persuade men, and in prudence of conduct. These men had the
main care of the law and of the other parts of the people’s conduct
committed to them; for they were the priests who were ordained to be the
inspectors of all, and the judges in doubtful cases, and the punishers of
those that were condemned to suffer punishment.

23. What form of government then can be more holy than this? what more
worthy kind of worship can be paid to God than we pay, where the entire
body of the people are prepared for religion, where an extraordinary
degree of care is required in the priests, and where the whole polity is
so ordered as if it were a certain religious solemnity? For what things
foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe
for a few days’ time, and call them Mysteries and Sacred Ceremonies, we
observe with great pleasure and an unshaken resolution during our whole
lives. What are the things then that we are commanded or forbidden? They
are simple, and easily known. The first command is concerning God, and
affirms that God contains all things, and is a Being every way perfect and
happy, self-sufficient, and supplying all other beings; the beginning, the
middle, and the end of all things. He is manifest in his works and
benefits, and more conspicuous than any other being whatsoever; but as to
his form and magnitude, he is most obscure. All materials, let them be
ever so costly, are unworthy to compose an image for him, and all arts are
unartful to express the notion we ought to have of him. We can neither see
nor think of any thing like him, nor is it agreeable to piety to form a
resemblance of him. We see his works, the light, the heaven, the earth,
the sun and the moon, the waters, the generations of animals, the
productions of fruits. These things hath God made, not with hands, nor
with labor, nor as wanting the assistance of any to cooperate with him;
but as his will resolved they should be made and be good also, they were
made and became good immediately. All men ought to follow this Being, and
to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of worship of God
is the most holy of all others.

24. There ought also to be but one temple for one God; for likeness is the
constant foundation of agreement. This temple ought to be common to all
men, because he is the common God of all men. High priests are to be
continually about his worship, over whom he that is the first by his birth
is to be their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices
to God, together with those priests that are joined with him, to see that
the laws be observed, to determine controversies, and to punish those that
are convicted of injustice; while he that does not submit to him shall be
subject to the same punishment, as if he had been guilty of impiety
towards God himself. When we offer sacrifices to him, we do it not in
order to surfeit ourselves, or to be drunken; for such excesses are
against the will of God, and would be an occasion of injuries and of
luxury; but by keeping ourselves sober, orderly, and ready for our other
occupations, and being more temperate than others. And for our duty at the
sacrifices 22 themselves, we ought, in the
first place, to pray for the common welfare of all, and after that for our
own; for we are made for fellowship one with another, and he who prefers
the common good before what is peculiar to himself is above all acceptable
to God. And let our prayers and supplications be made humbly to God, not
[so much] that he would give us what is good, [for he hath already given
that of his own accord, and hath proposed the same publicly to all,] as
that we may duly receive it, and when we have received it, may preserve
it. Now the law has appointed several purifications at our sacrifices,
whereby we are cleansed after a funeral, after what sometimes happens to
us in bed, and after accompanying with our wives, and upon many other
occasions, which it would be too long now to set down. And this is our
doctrine concerning God and his worship, and is the same that the law
appoints for our practice.

25. But, then, what are our laws about marriage? That law owns no other
mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed, of a man with his
wife, and that this be used only for the procreation of children. But it
abhors the mixture of a male with a male; and if any one do that, death is
its punishment. It commands us also, when we marry, not to have regard to
portion, nor to take a woman by violence, nor to persuade her deceitfully
and knavishly; but to demand her in marriage of him who hath power to
dispose of her, and is fit to give her away by the nearness of his
kindred; for, says the Scripture, “A woman is inferior to her husband in
all things.” 23 Let her, therefore, be obedient
to him; not so that he should abuse her, but that she may acknowledge her
duty to her husband; for God hath given the authority to the husband. A
husband, therefore, is to lie only with his wife whom he hath married; but
to have to do with another man’s wife is a wicked thing, which, if any one
ventures upon, death is inevitably his punishment: no more can he avoid
the same who forces a virgin betrothed to another man, or entices another
man’s wife. The law, moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring,
and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it
afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a
murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing
human kind; if any one, therefore, proceeds to such fornication or murder,
he cannot be clean. Moreover, the law enjoins, that after the man and wife
have lain together in a regular way, they shall bathe themselves; for
there is a defilement contracted thereby, both in soul and body, as if
they had gone into another country; for indeed the soul, by being united
to the body, is subject to miseries, and is not freed therefrom again but
by death; on which account the law requires this purification to be
entirely performed.

26. Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at the
births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drinking to excess;
but it ordains that the very beginning of our education should be
immediately directed to sobriety. It also commands us to bring those
children up in learning, and to exercise them in the laws, and make them
acquainted with the acts of their predecessors, in order to their
imitation of them, and that they might be nourished up in the laws from
their infancy, and might neither transgress them, nor have any pretense
for their ignorance of them.

27. Our law hath also taken care of the decent burial of the dead, but
without any extravagant expenses for their funerals, and without the
erection of any illustrious monuments for them; but hath ordered that
their nearest relations should perform their obsequies; and hath showed it
to be regular, that all who pass by when any one is buried should
accompany the funeral, and join in the lamentation. It also ordains that
the house and its inhabitants should be purified after the funeral is
over, that every one may thence learn to keep at a great distance from the
thoughts of being pure, if he hath been once guilty of murder.

28. The law ordains also, that parents should be honored immediately after
God himself, and delivers that son who does not requite them for the
benefits he hath received from them, but is deficient on any such
occasion, to be stoned. It also says that the young men should pay due
respect to every elder, since God is the eldest of all beings. It does not
give leave to conceal any thing from our friends, because that is not true
friendship which will not commit all things to their fidelity: it also
forbids the revelation of secrets, even though an enmity arise between
them. If any judge takes bribes, his punishment is death: he that
overlooks one that offers him a petition, and this when he is able to
relieve him, he is a guilty person. What is not by any one intrusted to
another ought not to be required back again. No one is to touch another’s
goods. He that lends money must not demand usury for its loan. These, and
many more of the like sort, are the rules that unite us in the bands of
society one with another.

29. It will be also worth our while to see what equity our legislator
would have us exercise in our intercourse with strangers; for it will
thence appear that he made the best provision he possibly could, both that
we should not dissolve our own constitution, nor show any envious mind
towards those that would cultivate a friendship with us. Accordingly, our
legislator admits all those that have a mind to observe our laws so to do;
and this after a friendly manner, as esteeming that a true union which not
only extends to our own stock, but to those that would live after the same
manner with us; yet does he not allow those that come to us by accident
only to be admitted into communion with us.

30. However, there are other things which our legislator ordained for us
beforehand, which of necessity we ought to do in common to all men; as to
afford fire, and water, and food to such as want it; to show them the
roads; not to let any one lie unburied. He also would have us treat those
that are esteemed our enemies with moderation; for he doth not allow us to
set their country on fire, nor permit us to cut down those trees that bear
fruit; nay, further, he forbids us to spoil those that have been slain in
war. He hath also provided for such as are taken captive, that they may
not be injured, and especially that the women may not be abused. Indeed he
hath taught us gentleness and humanity so effectually, that he hath not
despised the care of brute beasts, by permitting no other than a regular
use of them, and forbidding any other; and if any of them come to our
houses, like supplicants, we are forbidden to slay them; nor may we kill
the dams, together with their young ones; but we are obliged, even in an
enemy’s country, to spare and not kill those creatures that labor for
mankind. Thus hath our lawgiver contrived to teach us an equitable conduct
every way, by using us to such laws as instruct us therein; while at the
same time he hath ordained that such as break these laws should be
punished, without the allowance of any excuse whatsoever.

31. Now the greatest part of offenses with us are capital; as if any one
be guilty of adultery; if any one force a virgin; if any one be so
impudent as to attempt sodomy with a male; or if, upon another’s making an
attempt upon him, he submits to be so used. There is also a law for slaves
of the like nature, that can never be avoided. Moreover, if any one cheats
another in measures or weights, or makes a knavish bargain and sale, in
order to cheat another; if any one steals what belongs to another, and
takes what he never deposited; all these have punishments allotted them;
not such as are met with among other nations, but more severe ones. And as
for attempts of unjust behavior towards parents, or for impiety against
God, though they be not actually accomplished, the offenders are destroyed
immediately. However, the reward for such as live exactly according to the
laws is not silver or gold; it is not a garland of olive branches or of
small age, nor any such public sign of commendation; but every good man
hath his own conscience bearing witness to himself, and by virtue of our
legislator’s prophetic spirit, and of the firm security God himself
affords such a one, he believes that God hath made this grant to those
that observe these laws, even though they be obliged readily to die for
them, that they shall come into being again, and at a certain revolution
of things shall receive a better life than they had enjoyed before. Nor
would I venture to write thus at this time, were it not well known to all
by our actions that many of our people have many a time bravely resolved
to endure any sufferings, rather than speak one word against our law.

32. Nay, indeed, in case it had so fallen out, that our nation had not
been so thoroughly known among all men as they are, and our voluntary
submission to our laws had not been so open and manifest as it is, but
that somebody had pretended to have written these laws himself, and had
read them to the Greeks, or had pretended that he had met with men out of
the limits of the known world, that had such reverent notions of God, and
had continued a long time in the firm observance of such laws as ours, I
cannot but suppose that all men would admire them on a reflection upon the
frequent changes they had therein been themselves subject to; and this
while those that have attempted to write somewhat of the same kind for
politic government, and for laws, are accused as composing monstrous
things, and are said to have undertaken an impossible task upon them. And
here I will say nothing of those other philosophers who have undertaken
any thing of this nature in their writings. But even Plato himself, who is
so admired by the Greeks on account of that gravity in his manners, and
force in his words, and that ability he had to persuade men beyond all
other philosophers, is little better than laughed at and exposed to
ridicule on that account, by those that pretend to sagacity in political
affairs; although he that shall diligently peruse his writings will find
his precepts to be somewhat gentle, and pretty near to the customs of the
generality of mankind. Nay, Plato himself confesseth that it is not safe
to publish the true notion concerning God among the ignorant multitude.
Yet do some men look upon Plato’s discourses as no better than certain
idle words set off with great artifice. However, they admire Lycurgus as
the principal lawgiver, and all men celebrate Sparta for having continued
in the firm observance of his laws for a very long time. So far then we
have gained, that it is to be confessed a mark of virtue to submit to
laws. 24
But then let such as admire this in the Lacedemonians compare that
duration of theirs with more than two thousand years which our political
government hath continued; and let them further consider, that though the
Lacedemonians did seem to observe their laws exactly while they enjoyed
their liberty, yet that when they underwent a change of their fortune,
they forgot almost all those laws; while we, having been under ten
thousand changes in our fortune by the changes that happened among the
kings of Asia, have never betrayed our laws under the most pressing
distresses we have been in; nor have we neglected them either out of sloth
or for a livelihood. 25 if any one will consider it,
the difficulties and labors laid upon us have been greater than what
appears to have been borne by the Lacedemonian fortitude, while they
neither ploughed their land, nor exercised any trades, but lived in their
own city, free from all such pains-taking, in the enjoyment of plenty, and
using such exercises as might improve their bodies, while they made use of
other men as their servants for all the necessaries of life, and had their
food prepared for them by the others; and these good and humane actions
they do for no other purpose but this, that by their actions and their
sufferings they may be able to conquer all those against whom they make
war. I need not add this, that they have not been fully able to observe
their laws; for not only a few single persons, but multitudes of them,
have in heaps neglected those laws, and have delivered themselves,
together with their arms, into the hands of their enemies.

33. Now as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell of so
many; nay, not of more than one or two that have betrayed our laws, no,
not out of fear of death itself; I do not mean such an easy death as
happens in battles, but that which comes with bodily torments, and seems
to be the severest kind of death of all others. Now I think those that
have conquered us have put us to such deaths, not out of their hatred to
us when they had subdued us, but rather out of their desire of seeing a
surprising sight, which is this, whether there be such men in the world
who believe that no evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or
to speak any thing contrary to their own laws. Nor ought men to wonder at
us, if we are more courageous in dying for our laws than all other men
are; for other men do not easily submit to the easier things in which we
are instituted; I mean working with our hands, and eating but little, and
being contented to eat and drink, not at random, or at every one’s
pleasure, or being under inviolable rules in lying with our wives, in
magnificent furniture, and again in the observation of our times of rest;
while those that can use their swords in war, and can put their enemies to
flight when they attack them, cannot bear to submit to such laws about
their way of living: whereas our being accustomed willingly to submit to
laws in these instances, renders us fit to show our fortitude upon other
occasions also.

34. Yet do the Lysimachi and the Molones, and some other writers,
[unskillful sophists as they are, and the deceivers of young men,]
reproach us as the vilest of all mankind. Now I have no mind to make an
inquiry into the laws of other nations; for the custom of our country is
to keep our own laws, but not to bring accusations against the laws of
others. And indeed our legislator hath expressly forbidden us to laugh at
and revile those that are esteemed gods by other people? on account of the
very name of God ascribed to them. But since our antagonists think to run
us down upon the comparison of their religion and ours, it is not possible
to keep silence here, especially while what I shall say to confute these
men will not be now first said, but hath been already said by many, and
these of the highest reputation also; for who is there among those that
have been admired among the Greeks for wisdom, who hath not greatly blamed
both the most famous poets, and most celebrated legislators, for spreading
such notions originally among the body of the people concerning the gods?
such as these, that they may be allowed to be as numerous as they have a
mind to have them; that they are begotten one by another, and that after
all the kinds of generation you can imagine. They also distinguish them in
their places and ways of living as they would distinguish several sorts of
animals; as some to be under the earth; as some to be in the sea; and the
ancientest of them all to be bound in hell; and for those to whom they
have allotted heaven, they have set over them one, who in title is their
father, but in his actions a tyrant and a lord; whence it came to pass
that his wife, and brother, and daughter [which daughter he brought forth
from his own head] made a conspiracy against him to seize upon him and
confine hint, as he had himself seized upon and confined his own father
before.

35. And justly have the wisest men thought these notions deserved severe
rebukes; they also laugh at them for determining that we ought to believe
some of the gods to be beardless and young, and others of them to be old,
and to have beards accordingly; that some are set to trades; that one god
is a smith, and another goddess is a weaver; that one god is a warrior,
and fights with men; that some of them are harpers, or delight in archery;
and besides, that mutual seditions arise among them, and that they quarrel
about men, and this so far, that they not only lay hands upon one another,
but that they are wounded by men, and lament, and take on for such their
afflictions. But what is the grossest of all in point of lasciviousness,
are those unbounded lusts ascribed to almost all of them, and their
amours; which how can it be other than a most absurd supposal, especially
when it reaches to the male gods, and to the female goddesses also?
Moreover, the chief of all their gods, and their first father himself,
overlooks those goddesses whom he hath deluded and begotten with child,
and suffers them to be kept in prison, or drowned in the sea. He is also
so bound up by fate, that he cannot save his own offspring, nor can he
bear their deaths without shedding of tears. These are fine things indeed!
as are the rest that follow. Adulteries truly are so impudently looked on
in heaven by the gods, that some of them have confessed they envied those
that were found in the very act. And why should they not do so, when the
eldest of them, who is their king also, hath not been able to restrain
himself in the violence of his lust, from lying with his wife, so long as
they might get into their bedchamber? Now some of the gods are servants to
men, and will sometimes be builders for a reward, and sometimes will be
shepherds; while others of them, like malefactors, are bound in a prison
of brass. And what sober person is there who would not be provoked at such
stories, and rebuke those that forged them, and condemn the great
silliness of those that admit them for true? Nay, others there are that
have advanced a certain timorousness and fear, as also madness and fraud,
and any other of the vilest passions, into the nature and form of gods,
and have persuaded whole cities to offer sacrifices to the better sort of
them; on which account they have been absolutely forced to esteem some
gods as the givers of good things, and to call others of them averters of
evil. They also endeavor to move them, as they would the vilest of men, by
gifts and presents, as looking for nothing else than to receive some great
mischief from them, unless they pay them such wages.

36. Wherefore it deserves our inquiry what should be the occasion of this
unjust management, and of these scandals about the Deity. And truly I
suppose it to be derived from the imperfect knowledge the heathen
legislators had at first of the true nature of God; nor did they explain
to the people even so far as they did comprehend of it: nor did they
compose the other parts of their political settlements according to it,
but omitted it as a thing of very little consequence, and gave leave both
to the poets to introduce what gods they pleased, and those subject to all
sorts of passions, and to the orators to procure political decrees from
the people for the admission of such foreign gods as they thought proper.
The painters also, and statuaries of Greece, had herein great power, as
each of them could contrive a shape [proper for a god]; the one to be
formed out of clay, and the other by making a bare picture of such a one.
But those workmen that were principally admired, had the use of ivory and
of gold as the constant materials for their new statues [whereby it comes
to pass that some temples are quite deserted, while others are in great
esteem, and adorned with all the rites of all kinds of purification].
Besides this, the first gods, who have long flourished in the honors done
them, are now grown old [while those that flourished after them are come
in their room as a second rank, that I may speak the most honorably of
them I can]: nay, certain other gods there are who are newly introduced,
and newly worshipped [as we, by way of digression, have said already, and
yet have left their places of worship desolate]; and for their temples,
some of them are already left desolate, and others are built anew,
according to the pleasure of men; whereas they ought to have their opinion
about God, and that worship which is due to him, always and immutably the
same.

37. But now, this Apollonius Molo was one of these foolish and proud men.
However, nothing that I have said was unknown to those that were real
philosophers among the Greeks, nor were they unacquainted with those
frigid pretensions of allegories [which had been alleged for such things];
on which account they justly despised them, but have still agreed with us
as to the true and becoming notions of God; whence it was that Plato would
not have political settlements admit to of any one of the other poets, and
dismisses even Homer himself, with a garland on his head, and with
ointment poured upon him, and this because he should not destroy the right
notions of God with his fables. Nay, Plato principally imitated our
legislator in this point, that he enjoined his citizens to have he main
regard to this precept, “That every one of them should learn their laws
accurately.” He also ordained, that they should not admit of foreigners
intermixing with their own people at random; and provided that the
commonwealth should keep itself pure, and consist of such only as
persevered in their own laws. Apollonius Molo did no way consider this,
when he made it one branch of his accusation against us, that we do not
admit of such as have different notions about God, nor will we have
fellowship with those that choose to observe a way of living different
from ourselves, yet is not this method peculiar to us, but common to all
other men; not among the ordinary Grecians only, but among such of those
Grecians as are of the greatest reputation among them. Moreover, the
Lacedemonians continued in their way of expelling foreigners, and would
not indeed give leave to their own people to travel abroad, as suspecting
that those two things would introduce a dissolution of their own laws: and
perhaps there may be some reason to blame the rigid severity of the
Lacedemonians, for they bestowed the privilege of their city on no
foreigners, nor indeed would give leave to them to stay among them;
whereas we, though we do not think fit to imitate other institutions, yet
do we willingly admit of those that desire to partake of ours, which, I
think, I may reckon to be a plain indication of our humanity, and at the
same time of our magnanimity also.

38. But I shall say no more of the Lacedemonians. As for the Athenians,
who glory in having made their city to be common to all men, what their
behavior was Apollonius did not know, while they punished those that did
but speak one word contrary to the laws about the gods, without any mercy;
for on what other account was it that Socrates was put to death by them?
For certainly he neither betrayed their city to its enemies, nor was he
guilty of any sacrilege with regard to any of their temples; but it was on
this account, that he swore certain new oaths 26 and that
he affirmed either in earnest, or, as some say, only in jest, that a
certain demon used to make signs to him [what he should not do]. For these
reasons he was condemned to drink poison, and kill himself. His accuser
also complained that he corrupted the young men, by inducing them to
despise the political settlement and laws of their city: and thus was
Socrates, the citizen of Athens, punished. There was also Anaxagoras, who,
although he was of Clazomente, was within a few suffrages of being
condemned to die, because he said the sun, which the Athenians thought to
be a god, was a ball of fire. They also made this public proclamation,
“That they would give a talent to any one who would kill Diagoras of
Melos,” because it was reported of him that he laughed at their mysteries.
Protagoras also, who was thought to have written somewhat that was not
owned for truth by the Athenians about the gods, had been seized upon, and
put to death, if he had not fled away immediately. Nor need we at all
wonder that they thus treated such considerable men, when they did not
spare even women also; for they very lately slew a certain priestess,
because she was accused by somebody that she initiated people into the
worship of strange gods, it having been forbidden so to do by one of their
laws; and a capital punishment had been decreed to such as introduced a
strange god; it being manifest, that they who make use of such a law do
not believe those of other nations to be really gods, otherwise they had
not envied themselves the advantage of more gods than they already had.
And this was the happy administration of the affairs of the Athenians! Now
as to the Scythians, they take a pleasure in killing men, and differ but
little from brute beasts; yet do they think it reasonable to have their
institutions observed. They also slew Anacharsis, a person greatly admired
for his wisdom among the Greeks, when he returned to them, because he
appeared to come fraught with Grecian customs. One may also find many to
have been punished among the Persians, on the very same account. And to be
sure Apollonius was greatly pleased with the laws of the Persians, and was
an admirer of them, because the Greeks enjoyed the advantage of their
courage, and had the very same opinion about the gods which they had. This
last was exemplified in the temples which they burnt, and their courage in
coming, and almost entirely enslaving the Grecians. However, Apollonius
has imitated all the Persian institutions, and that by his offering
violence to other men’s wives, and gelding his own sons. Now, with us, it
is a capital crime, if any one does thus abuse even a brute beast; and as
for us, neither hath the fear of our governors, nor a desire of following
what other nations have in so great esteem, been able to withdraw us from
our own laws; nor have we exerted our courage in raising up wars to
increase our wealth, but only for the observation of our laws; and when we
with patience bear other losses, yet when any persons would compel us to
break our laws, then it is that we choose to go to war, though it be
beyond our ability to pursue it, and bear the greatest calamities to the
last with much fortitude. And, indeed, what reason can there be why we
should desire to imitate the laws of other nations, while we see they are
not observed by their own legislators 27 And why
do not the Lacedemonians think of abolishing that form of their government
which suffers them not to associate with any others, as well as their
contempt of matrimony? And why do not the Eleans and Thebans abolish that
unnatural and impudent lust, which makes them lie with males? For they
will not show a sufficient sign of their repentance of what they of old
thought to be very excellent, and very advantageous in their practices,
unless they entirely avoid all such actions for the time to come: nay,
such things are inserted into the body of their laws, and had once such a
power among the Greeks, that they ascribed these sodomitical practices to
the gods themselves, as a part of their good character; and indeed it was
according to the same manner that the gods married their own sisters. This
the Greeks contrived as an apology for their own absurd and unnatural
pleasures.

39. I omit to speak concerning punishments, and how many ways of escaping
them the greatest part of the legislators have afforded malefactors, by
ordaining that, for adulteries, fines in money should be allowed, and for
corrupting 28 [virgins] they need only marry
them as also what excuses they may have in denying the facts, if any one
attempts to inquire into them; for amongst most other nations it is a
studied art how men may transgress their laws; but no such thing is
permitted amongst us; for though we be deprived of our wealth, of our
cities, or of the other advantages we have, our law continues immortal;
nor can any Jew go so far from his own country, nor be so aftrighted at
the severest lord, as not to be more aftrighted at the law than at him.
If, therefore, this be the disposition we are under, with regard to the
excellency of our laws, let our enemies make us this concession, that our
laws are most excellent; and if still they imagine, that though we so
firmly adhere to them, yet are they bad laws notwithstanding, what
penalties then do they deserve to undergo who do not observe their own
laws, which they esteem so far superior to them? Whereas, therefore,
length of time is esteemed to be the truest touchstone in all cases, I
would make that a testimonial of the excellency of our laws, and of that
belief thereby delivered to us concerning God. For as there hath been a
very long time for this comparison, if any one will but compare its
duration with the duration of the laws made by other legislators, he will
find our legislator to have been the ancientest of them all.

40. We have already demonstrated that our laws have been such as have
always inspired admiration and imitation into all other men; nay, the
earliest Grecian philosophers, though in appearance they observed the laws
of their own countries, yet did they, in their actions, and their
philosophic doctrines, follow our legislator, and instructed men to live
sparingly, and to have friendly communication one with another. Nay,
further, the multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of a
long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not any city
of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever,
whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come, and by
which our fasts and lighting up lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to
our food, are not observed; they also endeavor to imitate our mutual
concord with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods,
and our diligence in our trades, and our fortitude in undergoing the
distresses we are in, on account of our laws; and, what is here matter of
the greatest admiration, our law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to
it, but it prevails by its own force; and as God himself pervades all the
world, so hath our law passed through all the world also. So that if any
one will but reflect on his own country, and his own family, he will have
reason to give credit to what I say. It is therefore but just, either to
condemn all mankind of indulging a wicked disposition, when they have been
so desirous of imitating laws that are to them foreign and evil in
themselves, rather than following laws of their own that are of a better
character, or else our accusers must leave off their spite against us. Nor
are we guilty of any envious behavior towards them, when we honor our own
legislator, and believe what he, by his prophetic authority, hath taught
us concerning God. For though we should not be able ourselves to
understand the excellency of our own laws, yet would the great multitude
of those that desire to imitate them, justify us, in greatly valuing
ourselves upon them.

41. But as for the [distinct] political laws by which we are governed, I
have delivered them accurately in my books of Antiquities; and have only
mentioned them now, so far as was necessary to my present purpose, without
proposing to myself either to blame the laws of other nations, or to make
an encomium upon our own; but in order to convict those that have written
about us unjustly, and in an impudent affectation of disguising the truth.
And now I think I have sufficiently completed what I proposed in writing
these books. For whereas our accusers have pretended that our nation are a
people of very late original, I have demonstrated that they are exceeding
ancient; for I have produced as witnesses thereto many ancient writers,
who have made mention of us in their books, while they had said that no
such writer had so done. Moreover, they had said that we were sprung from
the Egyptians, while I have proved that we came from another country into
Egypt: while they had told lies of us, as if we were expelled thence on
account of diseases on our bodies, it has appeared, on the contrary, that
we returned to our country by our own choice, and with sound and strong
bodies. Those accusers reproached our legislator as a vile fellow; whereas
God in old time bare witness to his virtuous conduct; and since that
testimony of God, time itself hath been discovered to have borne witness
to the same thing.

42. As to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, for they are
visible in their own nature, and appear to teach not impiety, but the
truest piety in the world. They do not make men hate one another, but
encourage people to communicate what they have to one another freely; they
are enemies to injustice, they take care of righteousness, they banish
idleness and expensive living, and instruct men to be content with what
they have, and to be laborious in their calling; they forbid men to make
war from a desire of getting more, but make men courageous in defending
the laws; they are inexorable in punishing malefactors; they admit no
sophistry of words, but are always established by actions themselves,
which actions we ever propose as surer demonstrations than what is
contained in writing only: on which account I am so bold as to say that we
are become the teachers of other men, in the greatest number of things,
and those of the most excellent nature only; for what is more excellent
than inviolable piety? what is more just than submission to laws? and what
is more advantageous than mutual love and concord? and this so far that we
are to be neither divided by calamities, nor to become injurious and
seditious in prosperity; but to contemn death when we are in war, and in
peace to apply ourselves to our mechanical occupations, or to our tillage
of the ground; while we in all things and all ways are satisfied that God
is the inspector and governor of our actions. If these precepts had either
been written at first, or more exactly kept by any others before us, we
should have owed them thanks as disciples owe to their masters; but if it
be visible that we have made use of them more than any other men, and if
we have demonstrated that the original invention of them is our own, let
the Apions, and the Molons, with all the rest of those that delight in
lies and reproaches, stand confuted; but let this and the foregoing book
be dedicated to thee, Epaphroditus, who art so great a lover of truth, and
by thy means to those that have been in like manner desirous to be
acquainted with the affairs of our nation.

APION BOOK 2 FOOTNOTES

1 (return)
[ The former part of this
second book is written against the calumnies of Apion, and then, more
briefly, against the like calumnies of Apollonius Molo. But after that,
Josephus leaves off any more particular reply to those adversaries of the
Jews, and gives us a large and excellent description and vindication of
that theocracy which was settled for the Jewish nation by Moses, their
great legislator.]

2 (return)
[ Called by Tiberius
Cymbalum Mundi, The drum of the world.]

3 (return)
[ This seems to have been
the first dial that had been made in Egypt, and was a little before the
time that Ahaz made his [first] dial in Judea, and about anno 755, in the
first year of the seventh olympiad, as we shall see presently. See 2 Kings
20:11; Isaiah 38:8.]

4 (return)
[ The burial-place for dead
bodies, as I suppose.]

5 (return)
[ Here begins a great defect
in the Greek copy; but the old Latin version fully supplies that defect.]

6 (return)
[ What error is here
generally believed to have been committed by our Josephus in ascribing a
deliverance of the Jews to the reign of Ptolemy Physco, the seventh of
those Ptolemus, which has been universally supposed to have happened under
Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of them, is no better than a gross error of
the moderns, and not of Josephus, as I have fully proved in the Authentic.
Rec. Part I. p. 200-201, whither I refer the inquisitive reader.]

7 (return)
[ Sister’s son, and adopted
son.]

8 (return)
[ Called more properly Molo,
or Apollonius Molo, as hereafter; for Apollonins, the son of Molo, was
another person, as Strabo informs us, lib. xiv.]

9 (return)
[ Furones in the Latin,
which what animal it denotes does not now appear.]

10 (return)
[ It is great pity that
these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous
profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all
lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description;
though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant in his time.]

11 (return)
[ It is remarkable that
Josephus here, and, I think, no where else, reckons up four distinct
courts of the temple; that of the Gentiles, that of the women of Israel,
that of the men of Israel, and that of the priests; as also that the court
of the women admitted of the men, [I suppose only of the husbands of those
wives that were therein,] while the court of the men did not admit any
women into it at all.]

12 (return)
[ Judea, in the Greek, by
a gross mistake of the transcribers.]

13 (return)
[ Seven in the Greek, by a
like gross mistake of the transcribers. See of the War, B. V. ch. 5. sect.
4.]

14 (return)
[ Two hundred in the
Greek, contrary to the twenty in the War, B. VII. ch, 5. sect. 3.]

15 (return)
[ This notorious disgrace
belonging peculiarly to the people of Egypt, ever since the times of the
old prophets of the Jews, noted both sect. 4 already, and here, may be
confirmed by the testimony of Isidorus, an Egyptian of Pelusium, Epist.
lib. i. Ep. 489. And this is a remarkable completion of the ancient
prediction of God by Ezekiel 29:14, 15, “that the Egyptians should be a
base kingdom, the basest of the kingdoms,” and that, “it should not exalt
itself any more above the nations.”]

16 (return)
[ The truth of which still
further appears by the present observation of Josephus, that these
Egyptians had never, in all the past ages since Sesostris, had one day of
liberty, no, not so much as to have been free from despotic power under
any of the monarchies to that day. And all this has been found equally
true in the latter ages, under the Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks,
from the days of Josephus till the present ago also.]

17 (return)
[ This language, that
Moses, “persuaded himself” that what he did was according to God’s will,
can mean no more, by Josephus’s own constant notions elsewhere, than that
he was “firmly persuaded,” that he had “fully satisfied himself” that so
it was, viz. by the many revelations he had received from God, and the
numerous miracles God had enabled him to work, as he both in these very
two books against Apion, and in his Antiquities, most clearly and
frequently assures us. This is further evident from several passages
lower, where he affirms that Moses was no impostor nor deceiver, and where
he assures that Moses’s constitution of government was no other than a
theocracy; and where he says they are to hope for deliverance out of their
distresses by prayer to God, and that withal it was owing in part to this
prophetic spirit of Moses that the Jews expected a resurrection from the
dead. See almost as strange a use of the like words, “to persuade God,”
Antiq. B. VI. ch. 5. sect. 6.]

18 (return)
[ That is, Moses really
was, what the heathen legislators pretended to be, under a Divine
direction; nor does it yet appear that these pretensions to a supernatural
conduct, either in these legislators or oracles, were mere delusions of
men without any demoniacal impressions, nor that Josephus took them so to
be; as the ancientest and contemporary authors did still believe them to
be supernatural.]

19 (return)
[ This whole very large
passage is corrected by Dr. Hudson from Eusebius’s citation of it, Prep.
Evangel. viii. 8, which is here not a little different from the present
MSS. of Josephus.]

20 (return)
[ This expression itself,
that “Moses ordained the Jewish government to be a theocracy,” may be
illustrated by that parallel expression in the Antiquities, B. III. ch. 8.
sect. 9, that “Moses left it to God to be present at his sacrifices when
he pleased; and when he pleased, to be absent.” Both ways of speaking
sound harsh in the ears of Jews and Christians, as do several others which
Josephus uses to the heathens; but still they were not very improper in
him, when he all along thought fit to accommodate himself, both in his
Antiquities, and in these his books against Apion, all written for the use
of the Greeks and Romans, to their notions and language, and this as far
as ever truth would give him leave. Though it be very observable withal,
that he never uses such expressions in his books of the War, written
originally for the Jews beyond Euphrates, and in their language, in all
these cases. However, Josephus directly supposes the Jewish settlement,
under Moses, to be a Divine settlement, and indeed no other than a real
theocracy.]

21 (return)
[ These excellent accounts
of the Divine attributes, and that God is not to be at all known in his
essence, as also some other clear expressions about the resurrection of
the dead, and the state of departed souls, etc., in this late work of
Josephus, look more like the exalted notions of the Essens, or rather
Ebionite Christians, than those of a mere Jew or Pharisee. The following
large accounts also of the laws of Moses, seem to me to show a regard to
the higher interpretations and improvements of Moses’s laws, derived from
Jesus Christ, than to the bare letter of them in the Old Testament, whence
alone Josephus took them when he wrote his Antiquities; nor, as I think,
can some of these laws, though generally excellent in their kind, be
properly now found either in the copies of the Jewish Pentateuch, or in
Philo, or in Josephus himself, before he became a Nazarene or Ebionite
Christian; nor even all of them among the laws of catholic Christianity
themselves. I desire, therefore, the learned reader to consider, whether
some of these improvements or interpretations might not be peculiar to the
Essens among the Jews, or rather to the Nazarenes or Ebionites among the
Christians, though we have indeed but imperfect accounts of those
Nazarenes or Ebionite Christians transmitted down to us at this day.]

22 (return)
[ We may here observe how
known a thing it was among the Jews and heathens, in this and many other
instances, that sacrifices were still accompanied with prayers; whence
most probably came those phrases of “the sacrifice of prayer, the
sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” However, those
ancient forms used at sacrifices are now generally lost, to the no small
damage of true religion. It is here also exceeding remarkable, that
although the temple at Jerusalem was built as the only place where the
whole nation of the Jews were to offer their sacrifices, yet is there no
mention of the “sacrifices” themselves, but of “prayers” only, in
Solomon’s long and famous form of devotion at its dedication, 1 Kings 8.;
2 Chronicles 6. See also many passages cited in the Apostolical
Constitutions, VII. 37, and Of the War, above, B. VII. ch. 5. sect. 6.]

23 (return)
[ This text is no where in
our present copies of the Old Testament.]

24 (return)
[ It may not be amiss to
set down here a very remarkable testimony of the great philosopher Cicero,
as to the preference of “laws to philosophy:—I will,” says he,
“boldly declare my opinion, though the whole world be offended at it. I
prefer this little book of the Twelve Tables alone to all the volumes of
the philosophers. I find it to be not only of more weight,’ but also much
more useful.”—Oratore.]

25 (return)
[ we have observed our
times of rest, and sorts of food allowed us [Footnote during our
distresses].]

26 (return)
[ See what those novel
oaths were in Dr. Hudson’s note, viz. to swear by an oak, by a goat, and
by a dog, as also by a gander, as say Philostratus and others. This
swearing strange oaths was also forbidden by the Tyrians, B. I. sect. 22,
as Spanheim here notes.]

27 (return)
[ Why Josephus here should
blame some heathen legislators, when they allowed so easy a composition
for simple fornication, as an obligation to marry the virgin that was
corrupted, is hard to say, seeing he had himself truly informed us that it
was a law of the Jews, Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 23, as it is the law of
Christianity also: see Horeb Covenant, p. 61. I am almost ready to suspect
that, for, we should here read, and that corrupting wedlock, or other
men’s wives, is the crime for which these heathens wickedly allowed this
composition in money.]

28 (return)
[ Or “for corrupting other
men’s wives the same allowance.”]