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oracles, he called for their priests and the attendants upon eltars, 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 a place 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 travelled 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 the 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 re

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maining? 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 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 honour 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 endeavour to add what still remains to perfect my design in the following book.

* This is the meaning of Hierosyla in Greek, not in Hebrew,

BOOK II.

§ 1. IN the former book, most honoured 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 ma

ny 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, * 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 † 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

The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies of Apion, and then, more briefly, against the like calumnies of Appollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any more particu lar 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.

+ Called by Tiberius, Cymbalum Mundi, the drum of the world.

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,* 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 This is that wonas the sun itself goes round in the other." derful 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 a kind of representation to be made at it, nor ordain that those that came after him should make such an 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 farther, "How he had heard of the ancient men, that Moses was of Heliopolis." 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

*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 xx. 11. Isaiah xxxviii. 8.

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; Lysimachus 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, bath 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 an 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 at 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 Lysimachus, and says they were an 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 travelled 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 Sabatosis 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, take 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

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