Footnotes to Book 7



(1) Why the great Bochart should say, (De Phoenic. Colon. Book II. ch. iv.), that" there are in this clause of Josephus as many mistakes as words," I do by no means understand. Josephus thought Melchisedek first built, or rather rebuilt and adorned, this city, and that it was then called Salem, as Psalm 76:2; afterwards came to be called Jerusalem; and that Melchisedek, being a priest as well as a king, built to the true God therein a temple, or place for public Divine worship and sacrifice; all which things may be very true for aught we know to the contrary. And for the word, or temple, as if it must needs belong to the great temple built by Solomon long afterward, Josephus himself uses, for the small tabernacle of Moses, Antiq. Book III. ch. 6. sect. 4; see also Antiq. Book lit. ch. 6. sect. 1; as he here presently uses, for a large and splendid synagogue of the Jews at Antioch, Book VII. ch. 3. sect. 3.

(2) This Tereutius Rufus, as Reland in part observes here, is the same person whom the Talmudists call Turnus Rufus; of whom they relate, that "he ploughed up Sion as a field, and made Jerusalem become as heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high Idaces of a forest;" which was long before foretold by the prophet Micah, ch. 3:12, and quoted from him in the prophecies of Jeremiah, ch. 26:18.

(3) See Ecclesiastes 8:11.

(4) This Berytus was certainly a Roman colony, and has coins extant that witness the same, as Hudson and Spanheim inform us. See the note on Antiq. Book XVI: ch. 11. sect. 1.

(5) The Jews at Antioch and Alexandria, the two principal cities in all the East, had allowed them, both by the Macedonians, and afterwards by the Romans, a governor of their own, who was exempt from the jurisdiction of the other civil governors. He was called sometimes barely "governor," sometimes "ethnarch," and [at Alexandria] "alabarch," as Dr. Hudson takes notice on this place out of Fuller's Miscellanies. They had the like governor or governors allowed them at Babylon under their captivity there, as the history of Susanna implies.

(6) This Classicus, and Civilis, and Cerealis are names well known in Tacitus; the two former as moving sedition against the Romans, and the last as sent to repress them by Vespasian, just as they are here described in Josephus; which is the case also of Fontellis Agrippa and Rubrius Gallup, i, sect. 3. But as to the very favorable account presently given of Domitian, particularly as to his designs in this his Gallic and German expedition, it is not a little contrary to that in Suetonius, Vesp. sect. 7. Nor are the reasons unobvious that might occasion this great diversity: Domitian was one of Josephus's patrons, and when he published these books of the Jewish war, was very young, and had hardly begun those wicked practices which rendered him so infamous afterward; while Suetonius seems to have been too young, and too low in life, to receive any remarkable favors from him; as Domitian was certainly very lewd and cruel, and generally hated, when Puetonius wrote about him.

(7) Since in these latter ages this Sabbatic River, once so famous, which, by Josephus's account here, ran every seventh day, and rested on six, but according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. 31. II, ran perpetually on six days, and rested every seventh, (though it no way appears by either of their accounts that the seventh day of this river was the Jewish seventh day or sabbath), is quite vanished, I shall add no more about it: only see Dr. Hudson's note. In Varenius's Geography, i, 17, the reader will find several instances of such periodical fountains and. rivers, though none of their periods were that of a just week as of old this appears to have been.

(8) Vespasian and his two sons, Titus and Domitian.

(9) See the representations of these Jewish vessels as they still stand on Titus's triumphal arch at Rome, in Reland's very curious book de Spoliis Ternpli, throughout. But what, things are chiefly to be noted are these: (1.) That Josephus says the candlestick here carried in this triumph was not thoroughly like that which was used in the temple, which appears in the number of the little knobs and flowers in that on the triumphal arch not well agreeing with Moses's description, Exodus 25:31-36. (2.) The smallness of the branches in Josephus compared with the thickness of those on that arch. (3.) That the Law or Pentateuch does not appear on that arch at all, though Josephus, an eye-witness, assures us that it was carried in this procession. All which things deserve the consideration of the inquisitive reader.

(10) Spanheim observes here, that in Graceia Major and Sicily they had rue prodigiously great and durable, like this rue at Macherus,

(11) This strange account of the place and root Baaras seems to have been taken from the magicians, and the root to have been made use of in the days of Josephus, in that superstitious way of casting out demons, supposed by him to have been derived from king Solomon; of which we have already seen he had a great opinion, Antiq. Book VIII. ch. 2. sect. 5. We also may hence learn the true notion Josephus had of demons and demoniacs, exactly like that of the Jews and Christians in the New Testament, and the first four centuries. See Antiq. Book I. ch. 8. sect. 2; Book XI, ch. 2. sect. 3.

(12) It is very remarkable that Titus did not people this now desolate country of Judea, but ordered it to be all sold; nor indeed is it properly peopled at this day, but lies ready for its old inhabitants the Jews, at their future restoration. See Literal Accomplishment of Prophecies, p. 77.

(13) That the city Emmaus, or Areindus, in Josephus and others which was the place of the government of Julius Africanus were slain, to the number of one thousand seven hundred, as were the women and the children made slaves. But as Bassus thought he must perform the covenant he had made with those that had surrendered the citadel, he let them go, and restored Eleazar to them, in the beginning of the third century, and which he then procured to be rebuilt, and after which rebuilding it was called Nicopolis, is entirely different from that Emmaus which is mentioned by St. Luke 24;13; see Reland's Paleestina, lib. II. p. 429, and under the name Ammaus also. But he justly thinks that that in St. Luke may well be the same with his Ammaus before us, especially since the Greek copies here usually make it sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem, as does St. Luke, though the Latin copies say only thirty. The place also allotted for these eight hundred soldiers, as for a Roman garrison, in this place, would most naturally be not so remote from Jerusalem as was the other Emmaus, or Nicopolis.

(14) Pliny and others confirm this strange paradox, that provisions laid up against sieges will continue good for a hundred ears, as Spanheim notes upon this place.

(15) The speeches in this and the next section, as introduced under the person of this Eleazar, are exceeding remarkable, and oil the noblest subjects, the contempt of death, and the dignity and immortality of the soul; and that not only among the Jews, but among the Indians themselves also; and are highly worthy the perusal of all the curious. It seems as if that philosophic lady who survived, ch. 9. sect. 1, 2, remembered the substance of these discourses, as spoken by Eleazar, and so Josephus clothed them in his own words: at the lowest they contain the Jewish notions on these heads, as understood then by our Josephus, and cannot but deserve a suitable regard from us.

(16) See Book II. ch. 20. sect. 2, where the number of the slain is but 10,000.

(17) Reland here sets down a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish Rabbins, "We are born that we may die, and die that we may live.'

(18) Since Josephus here informs us that some of these Sicarii, or ruffians, went from Alexandria (which was itself in Egypt, in a large sense) into Egypt, and Thebes there situated, Reland well observes, from Vossius, that Egypt sometimes denotes Proper or Upper Egypt, as distinct from the Delta, and the lower parts near Palestine. Accordingly, as he adds, those that say it never rains in Egypt must mean the Proper or Upper Egypt, because it does sometimes rain in the other parts. See the note on Antiq. Book II. ch. 7. sect. 7, and Book III. ch. 1. sect. 6.

(19) Of this temple of Onias's building in Egypt, see the notes on Antiq. Book XIII. ch. 3. sect. 1. But whereas it is elsewhere, both Of the War, Book I. ch. 1. sect. 1, and in the Antiquities as now quoted, said that this temple was like to that at Jerusalem, and here that it was not like it, but like a tower, sect. 3, there is some reason to suspect the reading here, and that either the negative particle is here to be blotted out, or the word entirely added.

(20) We must observe, that Josephus here speaks of Antiochus who profaned the temple as now alive, when Onias had leave given them by Philometer to build his temple; whereas it seems not to have been actually built till about fifteen years afterwards. Yet, because it is said in the Antiquities that Onias went to Philometer, Book XII. ch. 9. sect. 7, during the lifetime of that Antiochus, it is probable he petitioned, and perhaps obtained his leave then, though it were not actually built or finished till fifteen years afterward.