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Still athirst for history, after finishing Rollin I began fingering other works of that kind: there was Whiston's Josephus, too ponderous a book to be held in the hands when read out of doors; and there was Gibbon in six stately volumes.
And, what is more, the perfidious and unbelieving Jews, did not stick to aver, that our Saviour himself wrought all his miracles by virtue of this art, and that he discovered several of its secrets, containing a variety of charms against devils, and also, as Josephus writes, against diseases.
The glare in the Cap'n's eyes failed to dislodge him, and the Cap'n's mind was just then too intent on a certain topic to admit even the digression of ordering Mr. Gammon out. "What in the name of Josephus Priest do I care what the public demands?" he continued, shoving his face toward the lowering countenance of Mr. Tate.
Anticipating the theological controversialists of later times, Josephus sets special store on the Bible book that is most miraculous, because miracle and exact prognostication of the future are for his audience the clearest testimony of God.
Still he was not loved by other courtiers as worthy as himself, and he had frequently to defend himself against the charges of his enemies. In the reign of Vespasian, after the Zealot rising in Cyrene had been put down, the leader, Jonathan, who was brought as a prisoner to Rome, charged Josephus before the Emperor with having sent him both weapons and money.
Josephus, who was born thirty-nine years after Christ, says that it was then two hundred years since the stones of the ephod had given an answer to consultations by their extraordinary lustre. The Scriptures only inform us, that Urim and Thummim were something that Moses had put in the high-priest's breast-plate.
Turning in detail to the precepts of the Law, Josephus gives eloquent expression in the Hellenistic fashion to the idea of the divine unity. "God," he says, "contains all: He is a being altogether perfect, happy, and self-sufficient, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things; God's aim is reflected in human institutions.
Josephus had no doubt predecessors among the Hellenistic Jewish litterateurs in the search for testimony, as well as successors among the Christian apologists; but his collection has alone survived, and has become invaluable to modern scholars, who have ploughed the same field for a different purpose.
Seth he describes as the model of the virtuous, and of him the Rabbis likewise say, "From Seth dates the stock of all generations of the virtuous." Examples might be multiplied from the first chapters of the Antiquities of the way in which Josephus weaves into the Bible account traditional Midrashim, but these instances will suffice.
When Simon heard Ananus say this, he desired that the messengers would conceal the thing, and not let it come among many; for that he would take care to have Josephus removed out of Galilee very quickly.
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