FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS OF THE ANTIQUITY OF THE JEWS, AGAINST APION.* BOOK I. § 1. I SUPPOSE that by my books of the Antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus,† I have made it evident 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 XX Books of Antiquities; and in particular against Agatharchides, 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 books, he declares, That "it seems to him a miraculous thing, how one "that was an Hebrew, who had been from his infancy instructed in sacred "learning, should be able to produce such a number of testimonies out of pro"fane authors, as if he had read over all the Grecian libraries." Epist 84, ad Magnum, and the learned Jew, Manasseh-ben-Israel, esteemed these two books so excellent, as to translate them into 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 farther 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 concerning the great antiquity 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 indica tions that they were written not at Rome, but in Judea, and this after the 3d year of Trajan, or A. D. 100. + 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 3d of Trajan, or A. D. 100. To which Noldius also agrees, de Herod, No. 383. "[Epaphroditus Since Flavius Josephus," says Dr. Hudson," wrote [or finished] his 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 skilful in the knowledge of all antiquity by the Greeks themselves. I will also shew, 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 endeavour 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 "books of Antiquities on the 13th 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 14th [or 15th] of Domitian, after he had been for a good while in banishment, but another Epaphroditus, a freed-man, and procurator of Trajan, as says Grotius on Luke i. 3." of the building of their cities, the invention 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 Phenicians (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 Phenicians 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 be 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. 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 * *This 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. Græc. 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 true. 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 Pherecydes 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 that I already, what a great disagreement there is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their genealogies; in how many cases 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 Athidæ follow one another about the Athenian affairs; nor do the historians the like, that wrote the Argolics, about * 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, that 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 Xenophou, the much more accurate historian in the affairs of Cyrus, implies, that Herodotus's accounts of that great man are almost entirely romantic. See the note on Antiq. B. XI chap. ii. sect. 1. and Hutchison's Prolegomena to his edition of Xenophon's Kúgy Пaidia, that we have already seen in the note on Antiq. B. VIII. chap. x. sect 3. how very little Herodotus knew about the Jewish affairs and country, and that he greatly affected what we call the marvellous, 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 wilfully related what he believed to be false, (as Ctesias seems to have done) but that he often wanted evidence, and sometimes preferred what was marvellous to what was best attested as really true. 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. 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 afterwards 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.* 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? 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 About the days of Cyrus and Daniel. + 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 their 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 historians in the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the real value of each of their |