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Though I have spoken of these books in the order in which they stand, I repeat, that they are not to be read in that order but that the thread of the history is to be pursued, from Nehemiah to the first book of the Maccabees, in the Apocrypha; taking care to observe the chronology regularly, by referring to the index, which supplies the deficiencies of this history from Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews.
Many of his books were filled with marginal notes. He tells us , that he had collected, with great care, the remains of the apostolical Fathers, and that he had thoughts of translating that part of Josephus's history, which relates to the law, and of adding notes to it.
How far we are to give credit to it, each reader must judge for himself. One thing is certain, however, that there are many military heroes of whom such stories would not be even fabricated. Alexander in Judea. Josephus, and the character of his writings. Alexander's visit to Jerusalem. Josephus's account of it. The high priest Jaddus. His dreams. The procession of priests.
Hugo Grotius, Theodore Beza, Petavius, all of whom have built upon the foundation of sacred history. Treatise on the Plague, containing the nature, signs, and accidents of the same, London 1603. Treatise in Defence of Plays. He also translated into English, Josephus's History of the Antiquity of the Jews, London 1602. The works both moral and natural of Seneca, London 1614.
%Josephus's Complete Works.% A new Translation, by Rev. ISAAC TAYLOR, of Ongar. Illustrated by numerous Engravings. Publishing in Monthly Numbers, 8vo, Paper, 25 cents each. %Letters and Speeches of Cromwell.% With Elucidations and connecting Narrative. By T. CARLYLE. 2 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $2 00.
Josephus's "Antiquities of the Jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great war. His style is so classically elegant that critics have called him the Greek Livy.
For, although we should lay aside the authority of our own books entirely, yet when Tacitus, who wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten, years after Josephus, in his account of a period in which Josephus was nearly thirty years of age, tells us, that a vast multitude of Christians were condemned at Rome; that they derived their denomination from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death, as a criminal, by the procurator, Pontius Pilate; that the superstition had spread not only over Judea, the source of the evil but it had reached Rome also: when Suetonius, an historian contemporary with Tacitus, relates that, in the time of Claudius, the Jews were making disturbances at Rome, Christus being their leader: and that, during the reign of Nero, the Christians were punished; under both which emperors Josephus lived: when Pliny, who wrote his celebrated epistle not more than thirty years after the publication of Josephus's history, found the Christians in such numbers in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint that the contagion had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so seized them as to produce a general desertion of the public rites; and when, as has already been observed, there is no reason for imagining that the Christians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of the Roman empire; it cannot, I should suppose, after this, be believed, that the religion, and the transaction upon which it was founded, were too obscure to engage the attention of Josephus, or to obtain a place in his history.
He began to read, displaying much pride in his composition: "September the fifteen. Got word that Cap'n Aaron Sproul had been cheated out of wife's interest in timber lands by his brother-in-law, Colonel Gideon Ward." "What in Josephus's name has that got to do with this trip?" demanded the Cap'n, with rising fire, at this blunt reference to his humiliation.
Accordingly, the Galileans came to me in great numbers, from all parts, with their weapons, and besought me to assault Tiberias, to take it by force, and to demolish it, till it lay even with the ground, and then to make slaves of its inhabitants, with their wives and children. Those that were Josephus's friends also, and had escaped out of Tiberias, gave him the same advice.
One of the two reports must be erroneous, possibly both are: at any rate, I cannot tell how much of either is true. And, if some fervent admirer of the Idumean should build up a theory of Herod's piety upon Josephus's evidence that he propounded the aphorism, is it a "mere evasion" to say, in reply, that the evidence that he did utter it is worthless?
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