other, while his true name was Mouses, and signifies a person who is preserved out of the water; for the Egyptians call water Moü. I think, therefore, I have made it sufficiently evident that Manetho, while he followed his ancient records, did not much mistake the truth of the history; but that when he had recourse to fabulous stories, without any certain author, he either forged them himself, without any probability, or else gave credit to some men who spake so out of their ill will to us.

32. And now I have done with Manetho, I will inquire into what Cheremon says: for he also, when he pretended to write the Egyptian history, sets down the same name for this king that Maretho did, Amenophis, as also of his son Ramesses, and then goes on thus :-"The goddess Isis appeared to Amenophis in his sleep, and blamed him that her temple had been demolished in the war. But that Phritiphantes, the sacred scribe, said to him, that in case he would purge Egypt of the men that had pollutions upon them, he should be no longer troubled with such frightful apparitions: that Amenophis, accordingly, chose out two hun dred and fifty thousand of those that were thus diseased, and cast them out of the country that Moses and Joseph were scribes, and Joseph was a sacred scribe: that their names were Egyptian originally; that of Moses had been Tisithen, and that of Joseph Peteseph: that these two came to Pelusium, and lighted upon three hundred and eighty thousand that had been left there by Amenophis, he not be ing willing to carry them into Egypt: that these scribes made a league of friend ship with them, and made with them an expedition against Egypt; that Ameno phis could not sustain their attacks, but fled into Ethiopia, and left his wife with child behind him, who lay concealed in certain caverns, and there brought forth a son, whose name was Messene, and who, when he was grown up to man's estate, pursued the Jews into Syria, being about two hundred thousand men, and then received his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia."

33. This is the account Cheremon gives us. Now I take it for granted, that what I have said already hath plainly proved the falsity of both these narrations: for had there been any real truth at the bottom, it was impossible that they should so greatly disagree about the particulars. But for those that invent lies, what they write will easily give us very different accounts, while they forge what they please out of their own heads. Now Manetho says, that the king's desire of seeing the gods was the origin of the ejection of the polluted people; but Cheremon feigns that it was a dream of his own, sent upon him by Isis, that was the occasion of it. Manetho says, that the person who foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the king was Amenophis: but this man says it was Phritiphantes. As to the num bers of the multitude that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well,* the for. mer reckoning them eighty thousand and the latter about two hundred and fifty thousand. Now, for Manetho, he describes these polluted persons as sent first to work in the quarries, and says that after that the city Avaris was given them for their habitation. As also he relates, that it was not till after they had made war with the rest of the Egyptians, that they invited the people of Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while Cheremon says only, that they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon three hundred and eighty thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left there by Amenophis, and so they invaded Egypt with them again; that thereupon Amenophis fled into Ethiopia. But, then, this Cheremon commits a most ridiculous blunder in not informing us who this army of so many ten thousands were, or whence they came; whether they were native Egyptians, or whether they came from a foreign country, Nor, indeed, has this man, who forged a dream from Isis, about the leprous people, assigned the reason why the king would not bring them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down Joseph as driven away at the same time with Moses, who yet died four† generations be

By way of irony, I suppose.

Here we see that Josephus esteemed a generation between Joseph and Moses to be about 42 or 43 years; which, if taken between the earlier children, well agrees with the duration of human life in those ages. See Authent Rec. Part II. p. 966, 1019 1020.

fore Moses, which four generations make almost one hundred and seventy years. Besides all this, Ramesses, the son of Amenophis, by Manetho's account was a young man, and assisted his father in this war, and left the country at the same time with him, and fled into Ethiopia. But Cheremon makes him to have been born in a certain cave, after his father was dead, and that he then overcame the Jews in battle, and drove them into Syria, being in number about two hundred thousand. O the levity of the man! For he had neither told us who these three hundred and eighty thousand were, nor how the four hundred and thirty thousand perished; whether they fell in war or went over to Ramesses. And what is the strangest of all, it is not possible to learn out of him who they were whom he calls Jews, or to which of these two parties he applies that denomination : whether to the hundred and fifty thousand leprous people, or to the three hun. dred and eighty thousand that were about Pelusium. But, perhaps, it will be looked upon as a silly thing in me to make any larger confutation of such writers as sufficiently confute themselves; for had they been only confuted by other men, it had been more tolerable.

31. I shall now add to these accounts about Manetho and Cheremon, somewhat about Lysimachus, who had taken the same topic of falsehood with those forementioned, but hath gone far beyond them in the incredible nature of his for. geries, which plainly demonstrates that he contrived them out of his virulent ha. tred of our nation. His words are these:-"The people of the Jews being le. prous, and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of distempers, in the days of Bocchoris, king of Egypt, they fled to the temples, and got their food there by begging; and as the numbers were very great that were fallen under these diseases, there arose a scarcity in Egypt. Hereupon Bocchoris, the king of Egypt, sent some to consult the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about this scarcity. The god's answer was this, that he must purge his temples of impure and impious men, by expelling them out of those temples into desert places; but as to the scabby and leprous people he must drown them, and purge his temples, the sun having an indignation at these men's being suffered to live; and by this means the land will bring forth its fruits. Upon Bocchoris's having received these ora. cles, he called for their priests and the attendants upon their altars, and ordered them to make a collection of the impure people, and to deliver them to the sol. diers, 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 as. sembled themselves together, and took counsel what they should do, and deter mined 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 places 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,

VOL. II.

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 scabby and leprous people; for he says, that the multitude of Jews were gathered together at the temples. Now it is uncertain whether he ascribes this name to these le. pers, or to those that were subject to such discases 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 remaining? 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 fainous among all mankind? And, besides, he ought to have spo ken more about our legislator than by giving us his bare name; and to have in formed 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 jour. ney For, in case the people were by birth Egyptians, they would not on a 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 im placable 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 pos terity, 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 that tells such imident 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.

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 many 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

That is the meaning of Hierosyla in Greek, not in Hebrew.

The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies of Anion, and then, more briefly, against the like calummies of Apollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any mese particular 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 legisla

tning 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; fcr 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 mouutebank. 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 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, neither 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 fore fathers, and offered his prayers in the open air towards the city walls; but tha he reduced them all to be directed towards sunrising, 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 as the sun itself goes round in the other." This is that wonderful relation which we have given us by this great 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 kind of a representation to be made at it, nor or dain that those that came after him should make such a 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 de termination of the time when he says he brought the leprous people, the blind and Called by Tiberius, Cymbalum Mundi, the drum of the world.

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 155, in the first year of the seventh Olympiad a we shall see presently. See 2 Kings, xx. 11; Isaiah, xxxviii. 8,

the lame out of Egypt, see how 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 and ninety-three years before Danaus fled to Argos; Lysimachus says it was under king Boc. choris, 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, hath 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 the time of the first coming of their colony to Carthage, they relate, that Hirom their king was above a hundred and fifty years earlier than the build. ing 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 num ber with Lysimachus, and says they were a 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 gotten 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 in their groin was named Sabbatosis by the Egyptians." And would not a man now laugh at this fellow's trifling, or rather hate his impu. dence 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 all been able to travel over a large desert, and besides that to fight and conquer those that oppose them, they had not all of them had buboes on their groins after the sixth day was over; for no such distemper comes naturally and of necessity upon those that travel; but still, when there are many ten thousands in a camp together, they constantly marched a settled space [in a day]. Nor is it at all probable that such a thing should happen by chance; this would be prodigiously absurd to be supposed. However, our admirable author Apion had be. fore told us, that "they came to Judea in six days time;" and again, that "Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and Arabia, which was called Sinai, and was concealed there forty days, and that when he came down from thence he gave laws to the Jews." But, then, how was it possible for them to tarry forty days in a desert place, where there was no water, and at the same time to pass all over the country between that and Judea in the six days? And as for this grammatical translation of the word Sabbath, it either contains an instance of his great impudence or gross ignorance; for the words Sabbo and Sabbath are widely different from one another; for the word Sabbath in the Jewish language denotes rest from all sorts of work; but the word Sabbo, as he affirms, denotes among the Egyptians the malady of a bubo in the groin.

3. This is that novel account which the Egyptian Apion gives us concerning the Jews' departure out of Egypt, and is no better than a contrivance of his own. But why should we wonder at the lies he tells us about our forefathers, when he affirms them to be of Egyptian original, when he lies also about himself? for al though he was born at Oasis in Egypt, he pretends to be, as a man may say, the top man of all the Egyptians, yet does he forswear his real country and progeni