CHAP. III.] Many authors agree, that when once an infectious distemper was arisen in Egypt, and made men's bodies impure, Bocchoris their king went to the oracle of Jupiter] Hammon, and begged he would grant him some relief against this evil, and that he was enjoined to purge his nation of them, and to banish this kind of men into other countries, as hateful to the gods:* that when he had sought for, and gotten them all together, they were left in a vast desert; that hereupon the rest devoted themselves to weeping and inactivity; but one of those exiles, Moses by name, advised them to look for no assistance from any of the gods, or from any of mankind, since they had been abandoned by both, but bade them believe in him, as in a celestial leader,† by whose help they had already gotten clear of their present miseries. They agreed to it; and though they were unac quainted with every thing, they began their journey at random: but nothing tired them so much as want of water; and now they laid themselves down on the ground to a great extent, as just ready to perish, when a herd of wild asses came from feeding, and went to a rock overshadowed by a grove of trees. Moses fol lowed them, as conjecturing that there was [thereabouts] some grassy soil, and so he opened large sources of water for them. That was an ease to them; and when they had journeyed continually six entire days,§ on the seventh they drove out the inhabitants, and obtained those lands wherein their city and temple were dedicated. CHAP. IV.] As for Moses, in order to secure the nation firmly to himself, he ordained new rites, and such as were contrary to those of other men. All things are with them profane which with us are sacred; and again, those prac tices are allowed among them which are by us esteemed most abominable.|| They place the image of that animal in their most holy place, by whose indi cation it was that they had escaped their wandering condition and their thirst.¶T They sacrifice rams, by way of reproach, to [Jupiter Hammon.] An ox is also sacrificed, which the Egyptians worship under the name of Apis.** They abstain from swine's flesh, as a memorial of that miserable destruction which the mange, to which that creature is liable, brought on them, and with which they had been defiled.†† That they had endured a long famine, they attest still by their frequent fastings. And that they stole the fruits of the earth, we have an argument from the bread of the Jews, which is unleavened.§§ It is generally supposed they rest on the seventh day, because that day gave them [the first] rest from their labours. Besides which, they are idle on every seventh year,¶¶ as being pleased with a lazy life. Others say, that they do honour thereby to Saturn;* .*** or, perhaps, the Idæi gave them this part of • Strange doctrine to Josephus! who truly observes on this occasion, that the gods are angry not at bodily imperfections, but at wicked practices. Apion, B. i. sect. 28. This believing in Moses as in a celestial leader, seems a blir.d confession of Tacitus that Moses professed to have his laws from God. This looks also like a plain confession of Tacitus, that Moses brought the Jews water out of a rock in great plenty, which he might have from Josephus, Antiq. B. iii, ch. i. sect. 7. Strange indeed! that 600,000 men should travel above 200 miles over the deserts of Arabia in six days, and conquer Judea the seventh. This is not true in general, but only so far, that the Israelites were by circumcision and other rites to be kept separate from the wicked and idolatrous nations about them. This strange story contradicts what the same Tacitus will tell us presently, that when Pompey went into the holy of holies he found no image there. **These are only guesses of Tacitus or his heathen authors, but no more. ++ Such memorials of what must have been very reproachful, are strangers to the rest of mankind, and without any probability. The Jews had but one solemn fast of old in the whole year, the great day of expiation. It is very strange that Tacitus should not know or confess that the Jews' seventh day, and seventh year of rest, were in memory of the seventh, or Sabbath-day's rest, after the six day's of creation Every Jew, as well as every Christian, could have informed him of those matters. TT A strange hypothesis of the origin of the sabbatic year, and without all good foundation. Tacitus probably had never heard of the Jews' year of jubilee, so he says nothing of it. *** As if the Jews, in the days of Moses, or long before, knew that the Greeks and Romans would long their religion, who [as we said above] were expelled together with Saturn, and who, as we have been informed, were the founders of this nation; or else it was because the star Saturn moves in the highest orb, and of the seven plancts exerts the principal part of that energy whereby mankind are governed: and, indeed, that most of the heavenly bodies exert their power, and perform their courses. according to the number seven.' ** CHAP. V.] These rites, by what manner soever they were first begun, are supported by their antiquity. The rest of their institutions are awkward,‡ impure, and got ground by their pravity: for every vile fellow, despising the rites of his forefathers, brought thither their tribute and contributions, by which means the Jewish commonwealth was augmented. And because among them. selves there is an unalterable fidelity and kindness always ready at hand, but bitter enmity to all others. they are a people separated from others in their food, and in their beds; though they be the lewdest nation upon earth, yet will they not corrupt foreign women, though nothing be esteemed unlawful among themselves. They have ordained circumcision of the parts of generation, that they may thereby be distinguished from other people: the proselytes** to their religion have the same usage. They are taught nothing sooner than to despise the gods, to renounce their country, and to have their parents, children, and brethren in the utmost contempt: but still they take care to increase and multiply, for it is esteemed utterly unlawful to kill any of their children. They also look on the souls of those that die in battle, or are put to death for their crimes, as eternal. Hence comes their love of posterity and contempt of death. They derive their custom of barying, instead of burning, their dead, from the Egyptians they have also the same care of the dead with them, and the same persuasion about the invisible world below: but of the gods above, their opinion is contrary to theirs. The Egyptians worship abundance of animals, and images of various sorts. The Jews have no notion of any more than one divine being,§§ and that known only by the mind. They esteem such to be profane who frame images of gods, out of perishable matter, and in the shape of men. That this being is supreme, and eternal immutable, and unperishable is their doctrine. Accordingly, thev have no images in their cities, much less in their temples: they never grant this piece of flattery to kings, or this kind of honour to emperors. But because their priests, when they play on the pipe and the timbrels, wear ivy round their head, and a golden vine¶¶ has been found in their temple, some have thought that afterward call the seventh day of the week Saturn's day; which Dio observes was not so called of old time; and it is a question whether before the Jews fell into idolatry, they ever heard of such a star or god as Saturn. Amos, v. 25: Acts, vii. 43. That the sun, moon, and stars, rule over the affairs of mankind, was a heathen and not a Jewish notion. Neither Jews nor Christians were permitted to deal in astrology, though Tacitus seeins to have been deep in it. + This acknowledgment of the antiquity of Moses, and of his Jewish settlement, was what the neathens eared not always to own. What these pretended awkward and impure institutions were, Tacitus does not inform us. A high, and, I doubt, a false commendation of the Jews. An entirely false character, and contrary to their many laws against uncleanness. See Josephus, Antiq. b. iii. chap. xi. sect. 12. **The proselytes of justice only, not the proselytes of the gates. ++ How does this agree with that unalterable fidelity and kindness which Tacitus told us the Jew had towards one another? unless he only means that they preferred the divine commands before their nearest relations, which is the highest degree of Jewish and Christian piety. This custom is at least as old among the Hebrews as the days of Abraham, and the cave of Mach pelah, long before the Israelites went into Egypt. Gen. xxiii. 1—20; xxv. 8—10 These are valuable concessions, which Tacitus here makes, as to the unspotted piety of the Jewish nation, in the worship of one infinite, invisible God, and absolute rejection of all idolatry, and of all wor ship of images, nay, of the image of the emperor Caius himself, or of affording it a place in their temple. All these concessions were to be learned from Josephus, and almost only from him; out of whom, therefore, I conclude Tacitus took the finest part of his character of the Jews. 11 This particular fact, that there was a golden vine in the front of the Jewish temple, was in all pm they worshiped our father Bacchus, the conqueror of the East; whereas the ce. remonies of the Jews do not at all agree with those of Bacchus; for he appointed rites that were of a jovial nature, and fit for festivals, while the practices of the Jews are absurd and sordid. CHAP. VI.] The limits of Judea easterly are bounded by Arabia: Egypt lies on the south on the west are Phoenicia and the [great] sea. They have a pros pect of Syria on their north quarter, as at some distance from them.* The bodies of the men are healthy, and such as will bear great labours. They have not many showers of rain: the r soil is very fruitful: the produce of their land is, like ours, in great plenty.† They have also, besides ours, two trees peculia themselves, the balsam-tree and the palm-tree. Their groves of palms are tail and beautiful. The balsam tree is not very large. As soon as any branch is swelled, the vines quake as for fear, if you bring an iron knife to cut them. They are to be opened with the broken piece of a stone, or with the shell of a fish. The juice is useful in physic. Libanus is their principal mountain, and is very high, and yet, what is very strange to be related, it is always shadowed with trees, and never free from snow. The same mountain supplies the river Jordan with water, and affords it its fountains also. Nor is this Jordan carried into the sea; it passes through one and a second lake undiminished,but it is stopped by the third.‡ This third lake is vastly great in circumference, as if it were a sea.§ It is of an ill taste and is pernicious to the adjoining inhabitants by its strong smell. The wind raises no waves there, nor will it maintain either fishes, or such birds as use the water. The reason is uncertain, but the fact is thus, that bodies cast into it are borne up, as by somewhat solid. Those who can and those who cannot swim are equally borne up by it. At a certain time of the year¶ it casts out bitumen: the manner of gathering it, like other arts, has been taught by experience. The liquor is of its own nature of a black colour; and if you pour vinegar upon it, it clings together, and swims on the top. Those whose business it is take it in their hands, and pull it into the upper parts of the ship, after which it follows, without farther attraction, and fills the ship full, till you cut it off: nor can you cut it off either with a brass or an iron instrument; but it cannot bear the touch of blood, or of a cloth wet with the menstrual purgations of women, as the ancient authors say. But those that are acquainted with the place assure us, that these waves of bitumen are driven along, and by the hand drawn to the shore; and that when they are dried by the warm steams from the earth and the force of the sun, they are cut in pieces with axes and wedges, as timber and stones are cut in pieces. CHAP. VII.] Not far from this lake are those plains, which are related to have been of old fertile, and to have had many¶ cities full of people, but to have been burnt up by a stroke of lightning: it is also said, that the footsteps of that debability taken by Tacitus out of Josephus: but as the Jewish priests were never adorned with ivy, the signal of Bacchus, how Tacitus came to imagine this, I cannot tell. See the chorography of Judea in Josephus, Ofthe War, B. iii. sect 3; whence most probably Tacitus framed this short abridgement of it. It comes in both authors naturally before Vespasian's first cam paign. The latter branch of this Tacitus might have from Josephus, Of the War, B. iii. ch. iii. sect. 2, 3, 4. The other is not in the present copies. These accounts of Jordan, of its fountains derived from Mount Libanus, and of the two lakes it runs through, and its stoppage by the third, are exactly agreeable to Josephus, Of the War, B. iii. ch. X. sect. 7, 8. No less than 580 furlongs long and 150 broad, in Josephus, Of the War, B. iv. ch. viii. sect. 4. Josephus never says that this bitumen was cast out at a certain time of the year only, and Strabo says the direct contrary, but Pliny agrees with Tacitus. **This is exactly according to Josephus, and must have been taken from him in the place forecited, and that particularly because it is peculiar to him, so far as I know, in all antiquity. The rest thought the cities were in the very same place where now the lake is, but Josephus and Tacitus say they were ts neighbourhood only, which is Mr. Reland's opinion also, VOL. II. 47 struction still remain, and that the earth itself appears as burnt earth, and has lost its natural fertility: and that as an argument thereof, all the plants that grow of their own accord, or are planted by the hand, whether they arrive at the degree of an herb, or of a flower, or at complete maturity, become black and empty, and as it were, vanish into ashes. As for myself, as I am willing to allow that these once famous cities were burnt by fire from heaven, so would I suppose that the earth is infected with the vapour of the lake, and the spirit or air that is over it thereby corrupted; and that by this means the fruits of the earth, both corn and grapes, rot away, both the soil and the air being equally unwholesorze. The river Belus does also run into the sea of Judea; and the sands that are collected about its mouth, when you mix nitre with them, are melted into glass this sort of shore is but small, but its sand, for the use of those that carry it off, is inexhaustible. CHAP. VIII.] A great part of Judea is composed of scattered villages; it also has larger towns: Jerusalem is the capital city of the whole nation. In that city there was a temple of immense wealth; in the first parts that are fortified is the city itself; next it the royal palace. The temple is enclosed in its most inward recesses. A Jew can come no farther than the gates; all but the priests are excluded by their threshold. While the East was under the dominion of the Assy. rians, the Medes, and the Persians, the Jews were of all slaves the most despicable.* † After the dominion of the Macedonians prevailed, King Antiochus tried to conquer their superstition, and to introduce the customs of the Greeks; but he was disappointed of his design, which was to give this most profligate nation a change for the better, and that was by his war with the Parthians, for at this time Arsaces had fallen off [from the Macedonians.] Then it was that the Jews set kings over them, because the Macedonians were become weak, the Parthians were not yet very powerful, and the Romans were very remote: which kings, when they had been expelled by the mobility of the vulgar, and had recovered their dominion by war, attempted the same things that kings used to do, I mean they introduced the destruction of cities, the slaughter of brethren, of wives, and parents, but still went on in their superstition; for they took upon them withal the honourable dignity of the high priesthood, as a firm security to their power and authority. CHAP. IX.] The first of the Romans that conquered the Jews was Cneius Pompeius, who entered the temple by right of victory. Thence the report was everywhere divulged, that therein was no image of a god, but an empty place, and mysteries, most secret places that have nothing in them. The walls of Jerusalem were then destroyed, but the temple continued still. Soon afterward arose a civil war among us; and when therein these provinces were reduced under Marcus Antonius, Pacorus, king of the Parthians, got possession of Judea, but was himself slain by Paulus Ventidius, and the Parthians were driven beyond Euphrates; and for the Jews, Caius Socius subdued them. Antonius gave the kingdom to Herod; and when Augustus conquered Antonius, he still augmented it. After Herod's death, one Simon, without waiting for the disposition of Cæsar, took upon him the title of King, who was brought to punishment by [or under] Quintilius Varus, when he was president of Syria. Afterward the nation was reduced, and the children of Herod governed it in three partitions. Under Tiberius the Jews had rest. After some time they were enjoined to place Caius Cæsar's statue in the temple; but rather than permit that, they took up arms; which sedition was put an end to by the death of Cæsar. A great slander against the Jews, without any just foundation. Josephus would have informed him better. Here begins Josephus's and Tacitus's true accounts of the Jews preliminary to the last war. See Of the War, Proæm. Sect. 7. They came to Petronius, the president of Syria, in vast numbers, but without arms, and as humble supplicants only. See Tacitus presently, where he afterwards sets this matter almost right, according to Josephus, and by way of correction, for that account is in his annals, which were written after this which is in his histories. Claudius, after the kings were either dead or reduced to smaller dominions, gave the province of Judea to Roman knights, or to freedmen, to be governed by them. Among whom was Antonius Felix, one that exercised all kind of barbarity and extravagance, as if he had royal authority, but with the disposition of a slave. He had married Drusilla, the granddaughter of Antonius, so that Felix was the granddaughter's husband, and Claudius the grandson of the same Antonius. ANNAL. Book XII. BUT he that was the brother of Pallas, whose sirname was Felix, did not act with the same moderation [as did Pallas himself.] He had been a good while ago set over Judea, and thought he might be guilty of all sorts of wickedness with impunity, while he relied on so sure an authority. The Jews had almost given a specimen of sedition; and even after the death of Caius was known, and they had not obeyed his command, there remained a degree of fear, lest some future prince should renew that command [for the setting up the prince's statue in their temple.] And in the meantime, Felix, by the use of unseasonable remedies, blew up the coals of sedition into a flame, and was imitated by his partner in the government, Ventidius Cumanus; the country be. ing thus divided between them, that the nation of the Galileans were under Cu. manus, and the Samaritans under Felix, which two nations were of old at vari ance, but now, out of contempt of their governors, did less restrain their hatred: they then began to plunder one another, to send in parties of robbers, to lie in wait, and sometimes to fight_battles, and withal to bring spoils and prey to the procurators, [Cumanus and Felix.] Whereupon these procura.ors began to rejoice; yet when the mischief grew considerable, soldiers were sent to quiet them, but the soldiers were killed; and the province had been in the flame of war, had not Quadratus, the president of Syria, afforded his assistance. Nor was it long in dispute whether the Jews who had killed the soldiers in the mutiny should be put to death: it was agreed they should die; only Cumanus and Felix occasioned a delay; for Claudius, upon hearing the causes as to this rebellion, had given [Quadratus] authority to determine the case, even as to the procurators them. selves; but Quadratus showed Felix among the judges, and took him into his seat of judgment, on purpose that he might discourage his accusers. So Cumanus was condemned for those flagitious actions, of which both he and Felix bad been guilty, and peace was restored to the province.* HISTOR. BOOK V. CHAP. X. HOWEVER, the Jews had patience till Gessius Florus was made procurator. Under him it was that the war began. Then Cestius Gallus the president of Syria, attempted to appease it, tried several battles, but generally with ill success. Upon his death,† whether it came by fate, or that he was weary of his life, is uncertain, Vespasian had the good fortune, by his reputation and excellent offi. cers, and a victorious army, in the space of two summers, to make himself maste of all the open country, and of all the cities, Jerusalem excepted. [Flavius Vespasianus, whom Nero had chosen for his general, managed th Jewish war with three legions. Histor. B. i. chap. x.] The next year, which was employed in a civil war at [home,] so far as the Jews were concerned, passed over in peace. When Italy was pacified, the care of foreign parts was revived. The Jews were the only people that stood out, which increased the rage [of the Romans.] It was also thought most proper that * Here seems to be a great mistake about the Jewish affairs in Tacitus. See of the War, B. ii. ch. xii sect. 8. + Josephus says nothing of the death of Cestius; so Tacitus seems to nave known notning in particu lar about it. |