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 Phenician 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.

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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 other 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 Besorus, 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' 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 Phenicia, 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' 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 Celosyria and Phenicia, 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 conntry under his dominion again. Now it so fell out that his father Nabolasser 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 Phenicians, 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 armour, with

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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 splendour. 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,* queen of Assyria, and for her false pretence to those wonderful edifices thereto 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 Phenicians, concerning this king Nabuchodonosor, that he conquered all Syria and Phenicia; 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 be now 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 fortythree years; whereupon his son Evilmerodach obtained the kingdom. He governed public affairs after an illegal and impure manner, and had a plot

The great improvements that Nebuchadnezzar made in the buildings at Babylon do no way contradict those ancient and authentic testimonies which ascribe its first building to Nimrod, and its first rebuilding to Semiramis, as Berosus seems here to suppose.

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 months; 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 of 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 eign,* 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 Phenicians; 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 Belatorus reigned one year; after his death they sent and fetched Merabalus 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 on the seventh year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar he began to besiege Tyre, and Cyrus the Persian took the kingdom on the fourteenth year of Hirom. So that the records

This number in Josephus, that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in the 18th year of his reign, is a mistake in the nicety of chronology; for it was in the 19th.

The true number here for the year of Darius, on 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' own account elsewhere, Antiq. b. xi. chap. iii. § 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 on the ninth of Darius.

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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. not know only our doctrines, but was in a very great measure a follower and admirer of them. There is not indeed extant any writing that is owned Now it is plain that he did for his ;* 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 Crotoniate 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 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 doctries 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. Theophrastus, in his writings concerning laws: for he says, "That the laws of the Tyrians forbade men to swear foreign oaths." Among which This is declared by 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 his 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 Phenicians, 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 neighbours 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. Ethiopians themselves, I am not able to say which of them received it But as for the Egyptians and 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

This is a thing well known by the learned, that we are not sure 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 affirin, of him.

them. Cherilus* also, a still ancienter writer, and a poet, 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, wouderful to be beheld, for they spake the Phenician 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 horses' 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 The account is this, as sets down Aristotle's own discourse with him. 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 he 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

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 Phenician tongue, is not agreed on by the learned. It is yet certain that Josephus, here, and Eusebius, Præp. ix. 9. p. 412, took them to be Jews; and I confessI 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' army; and that these spake the Phenician 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 Solymi at all large or broad, in comparison of the Jewish lake Asphaltitis; nor indeed were they so considerable a people as the Jews, nor so likely to be desired by Xerxes for As for the rest of Chehis army as the Jews, to whom he was always very favourable.

rilus' description, that "their heads were sooty; that they had round rasures on their heads; that their heads and faces were like nasty horses' heads, which had been hardened in the smoke:" these awkward characters probably fitted the Solymi of Pisidia 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 are the poor despicable Jews, and not the Pisidian Solymi celebrated in Homer, whom Cherilus here descr.bes; 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, aud not to 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 $23.