The Wars of the Jews [315]
was managed. Of which history, how good the style is, must be left to the determination of the readers; but as for its agreement with the facts, I shall not scruple to say, and that boldly, that truth hath been what I have alone aimed at through its entire composition.
WAR BOOK 7 FOOTNOTES
(1) Why the great Bochart should say, (De Phoenic. Colon. B. 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. B. III. ch. 6. sect. 4; see also Antiq. B. lit. ch. 6. sect. 1; as he here presently uses, for a large and splendid synagogue of the Jews at Antioch, B. 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. B. 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
WAR BOOK 7 FOOTNOTES
(1) Why the great Bochart should say, (De Phoenic. Colon. B. 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. B. III. ch. 6. sect. 4; see also Antiq. B. lit. ch. 6. sect. 1; as he here presently uses, for a large and splendid synagogue of the Jews at Antioch, B. 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. B. 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