Preparation for the Gospel — Book IX

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1.1| Our acceptance of the oracles of the Hebrews has been shown to have come about not without reasoning but by judgment and examined thought, and the demonstration of it has been brought into full view. It is now time to see that even the most eminent of the Greeks themselves were not unacquainted with Hebrew affairs: some of them bore witness to the truth both of these men's way of life and of the historical narratives current among them, while others, like them, also laid hold of their doctrinal theology.

1.2| I shall set out first things first, showing how many of the Greek writers have mentioned by name the Jews and Hebrews, the philosophy practised among them of old, and the history of their ancestors from the earliest times.

1.3| My account will begin with the way of life of these men, so that you may learn that we have preferred, and not without sober reasoning, the philosophy of the people in question to that of the Greeks.

1.4| That their practice of ethical discipline, too, was carried out in keeping with what was examined in the preceding book is attested not only by their own sacred books but also by the most eminent of the Greek philosophers, celebrated even in our own day. Take, then, and read the words of Theophrastus found in Porphyry's work On Abstinence from Living Creatures, which run as follows:

2.1| "And yet, though among the Syrians the Jews, because of their sacrifice from the beginning, still sacrifice living creatures even now," says Theophrastus, "if anyone bade us sacrifice in the same way, we would shrink from the practice. For they do not feast on the victims; they burn them whole by night, pouring much honey and wine over them, and so consume the sacrifice quickly, so that not even the all-seeing one may be a spectator of the dreadful thing.

2.2| And they do this while fasting on the days in between; and through all this time, being philosophers by race, they talk with one another about the divine, and at night they contemplate the stars, gazing up at them and calling on God in their prayers. For these were the first to begin the sacrifice both of the other animals and of themselves, and they did it from necessity, not from desire."

3.1| Porphyry gives the following account of the same people in that treatise's fourth book: "The Essenes, then, are Jews by race, but they love one another even more than the rest do.

3.2| They turn away from pleasures as a vice, and regard self-control and not giving way to the passions as virtue. They disdain marriage, but they take in other people's children while still young and pliable for learning, treat them as kin, and mould them in their own ways. They do not abolish marriage and the succession it brings, but they guard against the wantonness of women. They despise wealth, and their sharing of goods is remarkable; you will not find anyone among them who has more property than another.

3.3| For it is a law that those who enter the sect hand their property over to the order, so that among all of them one sees neither the abasement of poverty nor the superiority of wealth; the possessions of each are pooled, and all, like brothers, have a single estate.

3.4| They consider oil a defilement, and if anyone is anointed against his will, he wipes his body clean; for they think it a fine thing to keep the skin dry and to wear white at all times.

3.5| The overseers of the common property are elected, and each of them is appointed by all, without distinction, to the various duties. They have no single city, but many of them settle in every city, and to members of the sect who come from elsewhere all that they have is thrown open; and men they have never seen before go in to them as to intimate friends. That is why they take nothing with them for expenses when they travel.

3.6| They do not change clothes or shoes until these are completely torn to pieces or worn out with time. Nor do they buy or sell anything among themselves; each gives what he has to whoever needs it and receives in return from him what is useful to himself; and even without giving anything in return, they are free to take a share from whomever they wish."

3.7| "Toward the divine they are pious in a way of their own. Before the sun rises they utter no profane word, but offer to it certain ancestral prayers, as though entreating it to rise. After this they are sent off by the overseers to the crafts that each of them knows, and when they have worked hard until the fifth hour, they gather again in one place, gird themselves with cloths, and so bathe their bodies in cold water. After this purification they come together in a building of their own, which no one of a different belief is permitted to enter.

3.8| They themselves, pure, enter the dining hall as if into some holy precinct. When they have sat down in silence, the baker sets out loaves in order, and the cook one dish with a single food for each. The priest prays before the meal, for the food is holy and pure, and no one may taste it before the prayer; and when the meal is over he prays again, so that at the start and at the finish alike they honor God.

3.9| Then, laying aside their garments as sacred, they turn again to their work until evening. On returning they dine in the same way, the guests sitting down with them, if any happen to be present.

3.10| No shouting ever defiles the house, nor any disturbance; they yield the speaking to one another in order, and to outsiders, the quiet of those inside appears like some awe-inspiring mystery. The cause of this is their continual sobriety, and the measuring out among them of food and drink only up to satisfaction."

3.11| For those who seek the sect there is no immediate entry; for a year, while remaining outside, he is set to the same regimen, being given a little axe, a girdle, and a white garment. When, in this period, he has shown his self-control, he comes nearer to the way of life and shares in the purer waters for purification,

3.12| but he is not yet received into their common living; for after the proof of endurance his character is tested for two more years, and when he has appeared worthy, he is then admitted to the company.

3.13| But before touching the common food, he swears to them terrible oaths: first, to be pious toward the divine; next, to observe justice toward men, and neither to harm anyone intentionally nor at another's command; always to hate the unjust and to share the wrongs suffered by the just; to show faith to all, but especially to those in authority, since rule does not come to anyone apart from God. And if he himself rules, never to act insolently in his power, nor to outshine his subordinates by clothing or any greater finery; always to love truth and to expose liars; to keep his hands clean from theft and his soul from unholy gain, and neither to hide anything from those of the sect nor to reveal any of their affairs to others, even if someone should compel him to the point of death.

3.14| In addition to these, he swears to impart the doctrines to no one otherwise than as he himself received them, to abstain from robbery, and likewise to guard alike the angels' names and the books belonging to their sect.

3.15| Such are the oaths. Those who are caught and expelled perish by an evil fate. For bound by the oaths and customs, they cannot share in the food of others, and eating grass and wasting away with hunger, they die.

3.16| For this reason they took many back, out of pity, in their last extremities, thinking that torment unto death was sufficient punishment for their offenses."

3.17| "They give the small hoe to those about to join the sect, since they themselves do not sit down to relieve themselves otherwise than by digging a pit a foot deep and wrapping their cloak around them, so as not to insult the rays of God.

3.18| So great is their simplicity and frugality in their way of life that on the seventh day, which they customarily devote to hymns to God and to rest, they have no need to relieve themselves.

3.19| From this discipline they have acquired such endurance that, though twisted and bent and burned, and going through every one of the instruments of torture, so that they may either blaspheme the lawgiver or eat something they are not accustomed to, they endure neither.

3.20| They showed this in the war against the Romans. For they would not flatter their tormentors, nor endure to weep, but smiling in their pains and mocking the people who brought the tortures, they gave up their souls in good cheer, as men who would receive them back. For this conviction is strong among them: that bodies are perishable and their matter not lasting, but that souls remain immortal forever; and that, coming from the finest ether, they become entangled [in bodies], drawn down by a natural pull, but once they are set free from the fleshly bonds, as if rescued from a long slavery, then they rejoice and are borne aloft.

3.21| From such a way of life, and from the discipline toward truth and piety, it is natural that many among them foreknow the future, since they are trained in sacred books and in various purifications and in the pronouncements of the prophets; and it is rare that they miss the mark in their predictions."

3.22| This is what Porphyry, drawing, as one would expect, on ancient readings, attested to the piety and philosophy of the men described, in the fourth book of the work he composed On Abstinence from Animal Food.

4.1| Hecataeus of Abdera, a philosopher and also a most capable man of affairs, devoted a separate book to his history of the Jews and goes through a great many things about them. For the present it will be enough to set out the following passages:

4.2| "Many of the Jews' strongholds and villages are scattered over the country, but there is one fortified city, Jerusalem, about fifty stadia in circumference, inhabited by some twelve myriads of people; they call it Hierosolyma.

4.3| Near the very middle of the city there is an enclosure of stone, about five plethra long and a hundred cubits wide, with double gates. Inside it is a square altar built of unhewn stones, gathered loose and unworked, each side twenty cubits long and the height twelve cubits.

4.4| Beside it stands a large building, in which there is an altar and a lampstand, both of gold, weighing two talents. On these a light burns that is never put out, night and day. There is no image there at all, no votive offering, no planting of any kind, nothing like a grove or the like.

4.5| Priests spend both nights and days in it, performing certain rites of purity, and they drink no wine at all in the temple."

4.6| After saying this, he goes on to attest that the Jews also served in the army with Alexander the king, and afterwards with his successors. I shall set down one incident, done by a Jewish man during the campaign, at which he says he himself was present. He speaks as follows:

4.7| "While I was marching toward the Red Sea, there was among the horsemen of the Jews who escorted us a man named Mosomamus, a man of sound spirit, strong, and acknowledged by all, Greeks and barbarians alike, to be the best of archers.

4.8| Now when many people were travelling along the road, a seer was taking omens from a bird and asked everyone to halt. This man asked why they were waiting. The seer pointed the bird out to him and said that if it remained where it was, it was best for all to wait; if it rose and flew forward, to advance; and if backward, to withdraw again. Saying nothing, he drew his bow, shot, struck the bird, and killed it.

4.9| The seer and some others were angry and cursed him. 'Why are you raving, you wretches?' he said. Then he took the bird in his hands and said, 'How could this creature, which did not foresee its own safety, have told us anything sound about our journey? For if it had been able to know the future, it would never have come into this place, fearing that Mosomamus the Jew would shoot and kill it.'" So much for Hecataeus.

5.1| "Clearchus the Peripatetic philosopher, in the first book On Sleep, attributes to Aristotle the philosopher the following account about the Jews, writing word for word thus:

5.2| 'But to tell most of it would take long; as for those things of his that have some wonder and philosophy in them, it is just as well to go through them too. But know clearly, Hyperochides,' he said, 'that I shall seem to you to be saying something marvellous, like dreams.'

5.3| And Hyperochides, cautious, said, 'That is exactly why we all want to hear it.'

5.4| 'Then,' said Aristotle, 'following the precept of the rhetoricians, let us first go through his origin, so that we do not disobey the teachers of the art of narration.'

5.5| 'Say it so, then,' said Hyperochides, 'if you think best.'

5.6| 'That man, then, was a Jew by race, from Coele-Syria. These people are descended from the philosophers of India. The philosophers are called, they say, Calani among the Indians and Jews among the Syrians, taking their name from the place, since the place they inhabit is called Judaea. Their city's name is very awkward: they call it Jerusalem.

5.7| Now this man, entertained as a guest by many and going down from the upper country to the coastal regions, was Greek not only in his speech but also in his soul. At that time, while we were staying in Asia, the man put in at the same places and met us and some other scholars, putting their wisdom to the test. And since he had been intimate with many men of learning, it was rather he who imparted something of what he had.' This too is Clearchus.

6.1| Our own Clement also mentions him in the first book of the Miscellanies, where he says the following:

6.2| Clearchus the Peripatetic says he knew a certain Jew who was a companion of Aristotle." And after other matter he adds:

6.3| "Numa, king of the Romans, was a Pythagorean, but having benefited from the writings of Moses, he prevented the Romans from fashioning an image of God in human or animal form.

6.4| At any rate, though they built temples, for the first hundred and seventy years they made no statue of any kind, neither molded nor painted. For Numa showed them, by concealing the matter, that the best cannot be grasped by the tongue, but only by the mind." Going on further after this, he says the following:

6.5| "Most plainly of all, the historian Megasthenes, who lived with Seleucus Nicator, writes thus in the third book of his Indian History: 'Everything, indeed, that the ancients have said about nature is also said by those outside Greece who practise philosophy, some among the Indians by the Brahmans, and some in Syria by those called Jews.'"

6.6| Furthermore, Clement mentions both Aristobulus the Peripatetic and Numenius the Pythagorean, and says: "Aristobulus writes in the first book of his work addressed to Philometor, word for word: 'Plato followed our legislation, and it is clear that he studied closely each of the things said in it.

6.7| Before Demetrius, and before the dominion of Alexander and of the Persians, the account of the departure of our fellow citizens the Hebrews from Egypt, the manifestation of everything that happened to them, the seizure of the country, and the exposition of the whole legislation had been translated by others.

6.8| So it is quite clear that the philosopher mentioned took over many things; for he was very learned, just as Pythagoras also carried over many of our doctrines into his own system of teaching.'

6.9| And Numenius the Pythagorean philosopher writes outright: 'For what is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?'" This is Clement.

7.1| I shall also set down the following from the Pythagorean philosopher himself, namely Numenius, from the first book On the Good: "For this purpose it will be necessary, after speaking and marking the point with the testimonies of Plato, to withdraw and bind it to the words of Pythagoras, and to call in the nations of good repute, adducing their rites and doctrines and the establishments that are carried out in agreement with Plato, all that the Brahmans and Jews and Magi and Egyptians have arranged." So much, then, on these matters.

8.1| And in the third book the same writer mentions Moses, saying the following: "Next, Jannes and Jambres, Egyptian sacred scribes, men considered inferior to none in magic, at the time the Jews were being expelled from Egypt.

8.2| These were the men whom the multitude of the Egyptians thought worthy to stand beside Musaeus, the leader of the Jews, a man most powerful in praying to God; and of the calamities that Musaeus brought upon Egypt, they were seen to be able to undo the most violent."

8.3| By these words Numenius testifies both to the marvellous wonders Moses performed and to Moses himself as a man dear to God.

9.1| "Choerilus too, an ancient poet, mentions the nation of the Jews, and says that they marched with King Xerxes against Greece. He speaks as follows: 'Behind them marched a race marvellous to behold, letting a Phoenician tongue go from their mouths. They dwelt in the Solymian mountains, by a broad lake, their heads unkempt, their hair cropped round; and above they wore the flayed faces of horses, dried hard in smoke.'

9.2| It is clear that he said this about the Jews, because Jerusalem lies in what are called by the Greeks the Solymian mountains, and the Asphalt Lake is near, being, as the poet says, very broad and larger than all the lakes in Syria." So much, then, from this author as well.

10.1| Porphyry, in Book One of his Philosophy from Oracles, brings in his own god testifying to the wisdom of the Hebrew race together with the other nations renowned for understanding.

10.2| The Apollo he has speaks in the oracle that he sets out as follows. After setting out the oracle about sacrifices, he goes on to add, as passages to which one must pay attention, since they are full of all knowledge of God: "Steep is the road of the blessed, and very rough, opened at first by gates bound in bronze; and there are countless paths grown up, which the first of mortals showed for boundless effort, those who drink the fair water of the Nile land. Many roads of the blessed the Phoenicians learned too, the Assyrians and Lydians and the race of the Hebrew men," and what follows these. To these the writer adds:

10.3| "For the way to the gods is bound in bronze, steep and rough; many of its paths the barbarians discovered, but the Greeks went astray, and those already in power even corrupted them. The god bore witness that the discovery belonged to the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Chaldeans (for these are the Assyrians), the Lydians, and the Hebrews.

10.4| Furthermore, in another oracle Apollo says: 'Only the Chaldeans won wisdom, and the Hebrews too, who purely worship the self-begotten king, God.'

10.5| And again, when he was asked for what reason people speak of many heavens, he gave this oracle: 'One is the circle of the world in all, but it is borne along the starry pathways with seven belts, which the Chaldeans and the much-envied Hebrews have named heavens, moving on a seventh course.'"

10.6| Let this much, then, be set out about the names of the Jews and Hebrews and about the piety and philosophy that anciently distinguished them. Now see how many agreed with their ancestral history.

10.7| Moses, in his accounts of the origins of the universe, related a flood and told how the man called Noah among the Hebrews was kept safe with his household in an ark made of wood. How the historians Berossus the Chaldean, Hieronymus the Egyptian, and Nicolaus of Damascus mentioned the same events Josephus sets out in the first book of the Antiquities in this way:

11.1| "All who have written the histories of the barbarians mention this flood and the ark, and among them is Berossus the Chaldean. In narrating the events of the flood he goes through them somewhere like this:

11.2| It is also said that a part of the ship still remains in Armenia, near the mountain of the Cordyaeans, and that some people scrape off the pitch and carry it away. People use what is brought back chiefly for averting evils.

11.3| Hieronymus the Egyptian, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, also mentions these things, as do Mnaseas and many others. And Nicolaus of Damascus in his ninety-sixth book gives an account of them, speaking thus:

11.4| There is a great mountain in Armenia above Minyas, called Baris, to which, the story goes, many took refuge at the time of the flood and were saved; and one man, carried on an ark, came to rest on the summit, and the remains of the timbers were kept for a long while. This might be the one of which Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, also wrote." So much from Josephus.

12.1| Having gone through the Median and Assyrian matters, I shall set down for you the following words of Abydenus' writing on the same history:

12.2| "After him others ruled, and Sisithrus, to whom Cronus foretold that there would be a great quantity of rain on the fifteenth of Daesius, and commanded him to hide away everything that had writing on it in the city of the Sun at Sippara.

12.3| Sisithrus, when he had finished these tasks, immediately sailed to Armenia, and at once what the god had foretold came upon him. On the third day, once the rain had stopped, he sent out birds to make trial, to see whether they might see anywhere land emerging from the water.

12.4| But the birds, facing an immense open sea, unable to find anywhere to put in, returned to Sisithrus, and then others after them.

12.5| When it went well with the third group (for they returned with their feet covered in mud), the gods took him away from among men. The ship in Armenia furnished the local people with timbers hung up as charms against harm." So much from this author.

13.1| Again, when Moses said that the first men to be born were long-lived, Josephus sets out Greek historians as witnesses of this statement as well, saying:

13.2| "Let no one, comparing the present life and the shortness of the years we live, suppose that what is said of the ancients is false, reasoning that since no one now stretches out so long a time in life, those men could not have reached such a length of life either.

13.3| For they were dear to God and made by God himself, and because their food was better suited to a longer span, they reasonably lived such a number of years.

13.4| Then too, because of their virtue and the usefulness of what they were devising, astronomy and geometry, God granted them a longer life; and these things could not have been safely foretold by them unless they had lived six hundred years, for the Great Year is completed through that period.

13.5| All who have written ancient histories among Greeks and barbarians bear witness to my statement. For Manetho, who compiled the record of Egyptian affairs, and Berossus, who collected the Chaldean matters, and Molus and Hestiaeus, and besides them Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phoenician histories, agree with what I say; and Hesiod, Hecataeus, Hellanicus and Acusilaus, and in addition Ephorus and Nicolaus, report that the ancients lived for a thousand years. On these matters, then, let each consider as he pleases."

14.1| Again, Moses related the construction of the tower and how people were confounded from one language into many dialects, and the writer mentioned a little earlier, in the work called On the Assyrians, bears similar witness, saying as follows:

14.2| "There are those who say that the first men, springing from the earth, grew arrogant in strength and size and, despising the gods, thought themselves better than they, and raised a towering tower where Babylon now is. Already it was near to heaven when the winds came to the gods' aid and overturned the contrivance upon them; its ruins are said to be called Babylon. Until then they had all had one language, but by the gods' doing a many-voiced speech was brought upon them, and afterwards war arose between Cronus and Titan.

14.3| "Babylon is the name now given to the place where they built the tower, because of the confusion of what had at first been a clear language. For the Hebrews call confusion Babel."

15.1| "Of this tower and the difference of speech among men the Sibyl also makes mention, saying: 'When all human beings were of one speech, some built a very high tower, as though they would climb up to heaven by it. But the gods sent winds and overturned the tower, and gave each a voice of his own, and for this reason the city came to be called Babylon.' And of the plain called Shinar in the land of Babylonia, Hestiaeus makes mention, saying: 'Those of the priests who had been saved took the sacred objects of Zeus Enyalius and came to Shinar in Babylonia. From there, because of their sharing one language, they were scattered thereafter, making settlements everywhere, and each group took possession of whatever land they chanced upon.'"

16.1| Again, Moses set out at length the story of Abraham, the forefather of the Hebrews, and Josephus says that historians from outside bear witness to him too, in these words:

16.2| "Berossus mentions our father Abraham, though without naming him, speaking as follows: 'After the flood, in the tenth generation, there lived among the Chaldeans a certain man, righteous and great, and skilled in the heavenly things.'

16.3| Hecataeus went further than mention: he composed a book about him and left it behind.

16.4| And Nicolaus of Damascus speaks thus in book four of his Histories: 'Abraham reigned over Damascus, having come as a newcomer with an army from the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans. Not long after, he rose up and left this country too, and with his people migrated to the land then called Canaan but now Judaea, and his descendants multiplied there; of whom I shall relate the recorded history in another account.

16.5| Even now the name of Abraham is honored in the territory of Damascus, where a village is shown that bears his name, called Abraham's Dwelling.' At a later time, when famine seized Canaan, Abram, hearing that the Egyptians were prospering, was eager to cross over to them, to share in their abundance and to hear the priests on what they said about the gods; for he would either follow them if he found them better, or he would change them for the better, being himself of sounder mind."

16.6| Then he adds next: "And he was in the company of the most learned among the Egyptians, and as a result his virtue and the reputation attached to it became more famous.

16.7| For the Egyptians were each pleased with different customs and disparaged one another's practices, and for that reason were hostile to one another. He met with each of them in turn, and, spitting on the arguments they made about their own customs, showed them to be empty and to contain nothing true.

16.8| Admired by them in their meetings as a most intelligent man, clever not only at understanding but also at persuading when he spoke on whatever he undertook to teach, he made them a gift of arithmetic and handed on to them the lore of astronomy. For before Abraham came, the Egyptians were ignorant of these things. They came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from there passed to the Greeks." This is Josephus.

17.1| Alexander Polyhistor agrees with these writers. He was a man of wide learning and was very well known to those Greeks who did not treat the fruit of education as a side issue. In his treatise On the Jews he records the story of this Abraham, word for word, in the following manner:

17.2| "Eupolemus, in his work On the Jews, says that the Assyrian city of Babylon was first founded by those who had been saved from the flood; they were giants, and they were building the tower of which the story is told.

17.3| When it fell through the action of God, the giants were scattered over the whole earth. In the tenth generation, he says, in a city of Babylonia called Camarine (some say it is the city Uria, which when translated means city of the Chaldeans), Abraham was born in the thirteenth generation, a man who surpassed all in noble birth and wisdom; he it was who discovered astronomy and the Chaldean art, and who, setting out toward piety, pleased God.

17.4| At God's commands this man went to Phoenicia and settled there, and having taught the Phoenicians the turnings of the sun and moon and everything else, he pleased their king. Later the Armenians marched against the Phoenicians; they were victorious and took Abraham's nephew captive. Abraham came to the rescue with his household servants, overcame the captors, and took captive the children and wives of the enemy.

17.5| When envoys came to him so that he might take money and release these captives, he chose not to trample on the unfortunate; he took only provisions for the young men and gave back the prisoners. He was entertained by a city, a sanctuary called Aryarixin, which means, when translated, mountain of the Most High;

17.6| and from Melchizedek, who was priest of God and ruled as king, he received gifts. When a famine occurred, Abraham departed with his whole household to Egypt and settled there, and the king of the Egyptians married his wife, since he had said she was his sister.

17.7| He further recorded that the king could not have intercourse with her, and that his people and household began to perish. When he summoned seers, they declared the woman not to be a widow; and so the king of the Egyptians learned that she was Abraham's wife, and returned her to her husband.

17.8| Abraham lived in Heliopolis with the Egyptian priests and taught them many things; he introduced astronomy and the rest to them, saying that the Babylonians and he himself had discovered these things, but he traced their discovery back to Enoch, and said that Enoch, not the Egyptians, had first discovered astronomy.

17.9| For the Babylonians say that the first to be born was Belus, who is Cronus. From him were born Belus and Canaan, and this Canaan fathered the father of the Phoenicians; of him Chum was the son, whom the Greeks call Asbolus, the father of the Ethiopians and brother of Mestraim, who was the father of the Egyptians. The Greeks say that Atlas discovered astronomy; but Atlas is the same as Enoch. Enoch's son was Methuselah, who learned everything through the angels of God, and so we too came to know it."

18.1| "Artapanus says in his Jewish History that the Jews were called Hermiuth, which translated into the Greek tongue means Jews, and that they got the name Hebrews from Abraham. He says that this man came to Egypt with his whole household, to Pharethones, king of the Egyptians, and taught him astronomy; after staying there twenty years he went back to the regions of Syria, though many of his companions stayed on in Egypt, owing to the richness of the land.

18.2| In anonymous writings we have found Abraham traced back to the giants, who lived in Babylonia and were destroyed by the gods because of their impiety; one of them, Belus, escaped death and settled in Babylon, built a tower and lived in it, and the tower was named Belus after Belus who built it. Abram, educated in the science of the stars, first came to Phoenicia and taught the Phoenicians astronomy, and later reached Egypt.

19.1| "Molon, the author of the plot against the Jews, says that during the flood the man who was left over departed from Armenia with his sons, driven out by the people of his own country; crossing the intervening land, he came to the mountain region of Syria, which was empty of inhabitants.

19.2| Three generations later Abraham was born, whose name is interpreted "friend of the father"; he became wise and pursued the wilderness. He took two wives, one a native woman, a kinswoman, and the other an Egyptian, a servant; by the Egyptian he fathered twelve sons, who went off to Arabia, divided the country among themselves, and were the first to reign over the natives there; hence even down to our own time there are twelve kings of the Arabs bearing the same names as those sons.

19.3| By his wedded wife he had one son, who was named in Greek Gelos. Abraham died of old age, and Gelos had by a native wife eleven sons, with Joseph as the twelfth, and from him in the third generation Moses."

19.4| So much from Polyhistor. After other matter he adds, saying: "Not long afterward God ordered Abraham to make a whole burnt offering to him of his son Isaac. He led the boy up the mountain, built a pyre, and laid Isaac on it; but as he was about to slay him he was prevented by an angel, who provided him a ram for the offering. Abraham took the boy down from the pyre and offered the ram."

20.1| "Philo too speaks of this matter in the first book of his On Jerusalem: 'I have heard how once, by the primeval laws, Abraham, of far-sounding fame, overflowed, radiant, above the bond of fetters, with proudly boasted reasonings, charms dear to God. For to him who left the splendid fence of the terribly planted, holding the praised kindling of the loud-voiced one, he made his own saying immortal; from that day his offspring of that dread begetter has gained a glory sung by many,' and what follows. A little further on he adds: 'Just as his hand was readying the sharp sword with resolve, and the throat was drawn together, bent aside, he, however, put into his hands a horned ram,' and what follows this."

20.2| This is from the aforesaid work of Polyhistor. And Josephus also mentions the same man in the first book of the Antiquities, in these words: "It is said that this Aphren, marching against Libya, took it, and that his grandsons, settling in it, named the land Africa after his name.

20.3| Alexander Polyhistor bears witness to my statement, saying as follows: Cleodemus the prophet, also called Malchas, relating the history of the Jews just as Moses their lawgiver recorded it, says that by Keturah Abraham had a good number of children. He gives their names also, naming three: Apher, Asour, and Aphran.

20.4| From Asour, he says, Assyria received its name; and from the other two, Aphra and Apher, the city Aphra and the country Africa. These men campaigned with Heracles against Libya and Antaeus; Heracles married the daughter of Aphra and had by her a son, Diodorus, and from him came Sophonas, from whom the barbarians are called Sophas." Let this much about Abraham, then, be set out, briefly as it is.

21.1| Let us go back again to Polyhistor: "Demetrius says that Jacob, when he was seventy-five years old, fled to Haran in Mesopotamia, sent by his parents because of his brother Esau's secret hatred, since Jacob had received the blessing from his father, who took him for Esau, and so that he might take a wife from there.

21.2| Jacob thus set out for Haran in Mesopotamia, leaving his father Isaac at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven, himself being seventy-seven.

21.3| After he had spent seven years there, he took two daughters of his mother's brother, Leah and Rachel, at the age of eighty-four; and in another seven years twelve children were born to him: in the eighth year, tenth month, Reuben; in the ninth year, eighth month, Simeon; in the tenth year, sixth month, Levi; in the eleventh year, fourth month, Judah. Rachel, who was not bearing, grew jealous of her sister and gave her own maidservant Zilpha to Jacob, at the same time as Bilha conceived Naphtali, in the eleventh year, fifth month, and bore in the twelfth year, second month, a son, whom Leah named Gad; and from the same woman, in the same year, twelfth month, another, whom Leah also named Asher.

21.4| And again Leah, in exchange for the mandrake apples that Reuben brought to Rachel, conceived; and at the same time her maidservant Zilpah, in the twelfth year, third month, and she bore in the twelfth month of the same year a son, and named him Issachar.

21.5| And again Leah, in the thirteenth year, tenth month, bore another son, whose name was Zebulun, and in the fourteenth year, eighth month, she bore a son named Dan. In the year in which Leah bore a daughter, Dinah, Rachel conceived at the same time, and in the fourteenth year, eighth month, bore a son called Joseph; so that in the seven years with Laban twelve children were born.

21.6| When Jacob wished to go away to his father in Canaan, he was asked by Laban to stay six more years, so that in all he stayed in Haran with Laban twenty years.

21.7| As he was travelling to Canaan, an angel of God wrestled with him and touched the broad part of Jacob's thigh, and Jacob, numbed, went limping; hence the sinew in the thighs of animals is not eaten. The angel told him that from then on he would no longer be named Jacob but Israel.

21.8| He came with his children to another city in the land of Canaan, Shechem: Reuben, twelve years and two months old; Simeon, eleven years and four months; Levi, ten years and six months; Judah, nine years and eight months; Naphtali, eight years and ten months; Gad, eight years and ten months; Asher, eight years; Issachar, eight years; Zebulun, seven years and two months; Dinah, six years and four months; Joseph, six years and four months.

21.9| Israel dwelt as a stranger near Hamor for ten years, and Israel's daughter Dinah was violated by Shechem, the son of Hamor, when she was sixteen years and four months old. The sons of Israel rushed out, Simeon, being twenty-one years and four months of age, and Levi, twenty years and six months of age, and killed Hamor and his son Shechem and all the males because of the violation of Dinah; and Jacob was then one hundred and seven.

21.10| When he came to Luza, which is Bethel, God said that his name should no longer be Jacob but Israel. From there he went to Chaphratha, and from there arrived at Ephratha, which is Bethlehem, and there he fathered Benjamin, and Rachel died, having borne Benjamin; Jacob had lived with Rachel for twenty-three years.

21.11| From there Jacob went to Mamre in Hebron, to Isaac his father. Joseph was then seventeen, and he was sold into Egypt and stayed in prison thirteen years, so that he was thirty, and Jacob one hundred and ten; and in this year Isaac had died one year before, being one hundred and eighty.

21.12| Joseph interpreted the king's dreams and ruled Egypt for seven years, during which he also married Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, the priest of Heliopolis, and fathered Manasseh and Ephraim; and the famine followed for two years.

21.13| For nine years, though prosperous, Joseph did not send word to his father, because he and his brothers were shepherds, and shepherding was a disgrace among the Egyptians; that this was why he did not send for him, he made clear. For when his kinsmen came, he told them that if they were called by the king and asked what they did, they should say they were herdsmen.

21.14| The question is raised why Joseph at the dinner gave Benjamin a fivefold portion, when he could not eat so much meat. He did this because seven sons had been born to his father by Leah, and two by Rachel, his mother; for this reason he laid five portions beside Benjamin, and he himself took two. That made seven, the same number the sons of Leah received.

21.15| In the same way, when he gave each one a double set of garments, he gave Benjamin three hundred and five pieces of gold, and sent his father the same, so that his mother's household might be equal.

21.16| They dwelt in the land of Canaan; from the time when Abraham was chosen out of the nations and moved to Canaan, Abraham being twenty-five years old, Isaac sixty, and Jacob one hundred and thirty, the whole time in the land of Canaan comes to two hundred and fifteen years.

21.17| And in the famine's third year in Egypt Jacob went to Egypt, being one hundred and thirty, with Reuben forty-five, Simeon forty-four, Levi forty-three, Judah forty-two and three months, Asher forty and eight months, Naphtali forty-one and six months, Gad forty-one and three months, Zebulun forty, Dinah thirty-nine, Benjamin twenty-eight.

21.18| He says that Joseph lived in Egypt thirty-nine years. From Adam until the entry of Joseph's kinsmen into Egypt, he says, the years numbered three thousand six hundred and twenty-four; from the flood until Jacob's arrival in Egypt, [….] years; and from the time Abraham was chosen out of the nations and came from Haran to Canaan until Jacob and his household went down to Egypt, two hundred and fifteen years.

21.19| Jacob came from Haran to Laban at the age of eighty and fathered Levi. Levi was in Egypt seventeen years after he came from Canaan to Egypt, so that he was sixty, and he fathered Kohath. In the same year in which Kohath was born, Jacob died in Egypt, having blessed the sons of Joseph, at the age of one hundred and forty-seven, leaving Joseph at fifty-six. Levi died at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven. Kohath, at the age of forty, fathered Amram, who was fourteen when Joseph died in Egypt at the age of one hundred and ten; Kohath died at one hundred and thirty-three. Amram took as wife his uncle's daughter Jochebed, and at the age of seventy-five fathered Aaron and Moses; Amram fathered Moses when he was seventy-eight, and died at the age of one hundred and thirty-six." Let this much be set down from the writing of Alexander Polyhistor. Next let the following be joined to it.

22.1| "Theodotus, in his work On the Jews, says that Shechem took its name from Sicimius, son of Hermes, who also founded the city. He describes its location in his poem on the Jews thus: 'It was good, rich in goats, and well watered; the road to reach the city from the fields was not long, and the shaggy woodlands gave no trouble. Very near it two strong mountains come into view, full of grass and timber; between them is cut a narrow path, hollow like a pipe; and on the other side shines the holy Shechem, a sacred town, built at the base below, with a smooth wall about the foot of the hill, and a rampart running up steeply beneath.'

22.2| He says that afterward it was occupied by the Hebrews, when Hamor was ruling; for Hamor fathered a son, Shechem. He says: 'From there, stranger, Jacob came as a shepherd to the broad city of Shechem; over the men of that place Hamor was ruler with his son Shechem, two unyielding men.'

22.3| Then, about Jacob and his coming to Mesopotamia, his marriage to two wives, the birth of his children, and his journey from Mesopotamia to Shechem: 'Jacob came to Syria, land of herdsmen, and left the broad stream of the roaring river Euphrates. For he came there too, having left behind his brother's bitter threats. Laban gladly received him into his house; he was his kinsman, but at that time ruled Syria alone, having the blood of a new line. He promised Jacob the hand of his youngest daughter and nodded assent; but he had no intention of fulfilling it at all, and devised a trick, sending Leah, the elder, to the man's bed. Yet she did not wholly escape his notice, but he perceived the villainy, and accepted the other daughter as well, and he united himself with both sisters. To him were born eleven sons, wonderfully quick of mind, and a daughter, Dinah, of surpassing beauty, a graceful body and blameless spirit.'

22.4| From the Euphrates, he says, Jacob came to Shechem, to Hamor, who received him and gave him part of the land. Jacob himself farmed the land, his eleven sons tended the flocks, and his daughter Dinah and the women worked wool. Dinah, a virgin, went into Shechem during a festival, wishing to see the city; Shechem, the son of Hamor, saw her and fell in love, seized her, carried her to his own house, and violated her.

22.5| Later, coming with his father to Jacob, he asked for her in marriage; Jacob said that he would not give her before all who lived in Shechem had been circumcised and become Jews. Hamor said he would persuade them. Of the need for them to be circumcised, Jacob says:

22.6| 'For it is not permitted to the Hebrews to bring sons-in-law from elsewhere into the house as husbands for their daughters, but only a man who boasts of being of the same stock.'

22.7| Then, going on to speak of circumcision: 'He who once led godlike Abraham out of his fatherland, himself from heaven bade a man, with his whole house, strip the flesh from the foreskin; and Abraham did it. The command is unshakable, since God himself spoke it.'

22.8| So when Hamor went to the city and urged those under his rule to be circumcised, one of Jacob's sons, Simeon by name, resolved to kill Hamor and Shechem, unwilling to bear his sister's outrage in a civil manner. Having decided this, he shared it with his brother Levi; and having won his agreement to the deed, he urged him on, citing an oracle in which God had declared that he would give ten nations to the descendants of Abraham.

22.9| Simeon speaks to Levi thus: 'For I have learned well the word of God: he said that he would one day give ten nations to the children of Abraham.' He says that God put this thought in their mind because the people of Shechem were impious. He says: 'God was harming the dwellers of Shechem, for they gave no honor to anyone who came among them, whether bad or good; they held no trials in the city and no decrees of justice; deadly were the works that they cared for.'

22.10| So Levi and Simeon came into the city armed, and first they killed those they happened upon, and then they slew Hamor and Shechem.

22.11| He speaks of their slaying like this: 'Then Simeon rushed upon Hamor and struck his head, took his neck in his left hand, and left him still gasping, for other labor was rising. Meanwhile uncontrollable fury seized Levi against Shechem, who clasped his knees raging beyond words; he struck him in the middle of the collarbone, and the sharp sword went through his entrails and chest, and the life left the body at once.' The other brothers, learning of their deed, came to help, sacked the city, and, having rescued their sister, brought her with the captives to their father's farmstead."

23.1| To these let the following about Joseph be joined from the same work of Polyhistor: "Artapanus, in his work On the Jews, says that Joseph was descended from Abraham and was a son of Jacob; that, surpassing the others in understanding and prudence, he was plotted against by his brothers, and, foreseeing the conspiracy, asked the neighboring Arabs to carry him to Egypt; and they did as requested. For the kings of the Arabs were descendants of Israel, sons of Abraham and brothers of Isaac.

23.2| On coming to Egypt, he was commended to the king and became administrator of the whole country. Earlier the Egyptians had farmed the land in disorder, since the country was undivided and the weaker were wronged by the stronger; it was he who first partitioned the land and marked it off with boundaries, made much uncultivated land fit for farming, and assigned some of the fields to the priests.

23.3| He also invented measures, and was greatly beloved by the Egyptians for this. He married the daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, Asenath, and had children by her. After this his father and brothers came to him, bringing much property, and were settled in the city of Kaisan, and the Syrians multiplied in Egypt.

23.4| These people, he says, who were called Esmiuth, also built the temple at Athos and the one at Heliopolis. After this Joseph died, and the king of the Egyptians. Joseph, holding Egypt, had laid up the grain of seven years, which in the harvest had been boundless, and became master of Egypt."

24.1| "Philo too bears witness to the sacred books in the fourteenth book of his work On Jerusalem, speaking thus: 'For them the great Lord, the Most High, founded a blessed seat of the whole earth, and before that from Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob rich in children, the offspring Joseph, interpreter of dreams, sceptre-bearer on the thrones of Egypt, turning secretly in the flood tide of time's fate,' and what follows. So much also about Joseph."

25.1| "Hear what the same writer relates also about Job. Aristeas says in his work On the Jews that Esau, having married Bassara in Edom, fathered Job; that he lived in the land of Ausitis, on the borders of Idumaea and Arabia.

25.2| He was righteous and rich in cattle: he acquired seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, and five hundred grazing she-asses; and he had in addition considerable farmlands.

25.3| This Job was formerly called Jobab. God, putting him to the test, persisted, and surrounded him with great misfortunes. First robbers drove off his asses and oxen; then his sheep were burned up, along with the shepherds, by fire falling from heaven; shortly afterward his camels too were carried off by robbers, and then his children died when the house fell; and on the same day his body broke out in sores.

25.4| While he was in a bad way, Eliphaz the king of the Temanites came to visit him, and Bildad the ruler of the Sauchaeans, and Zophar the king of the Minaeans; Elihu, son of Barachiel, the Zobite, came too. When they consoled him, he said that even without consolation he would remain firm in his piety and in his terrible suffering. God, admiring his steadfastness, freed him from his disease and made him lord of many possessions." So much Polyhistor says on these matters.

26.1| Concerning Moses the same author again sets out a great deal, which is also worth hearing: "Eupolemus says that Moses was the first wise man, that he first gave letters to the Jews, that the Phoenicians received them from the Jews and the Greeks from the Phoenicians, and that Moses was the first to write laws for the Jews."

27.1| "Artapanus says in his work On the Jews that when Abraham died, and his son Mempsasthenoth, and likewise the king of the Egyptians, the king's son Palmanothes took over the rule.

27.2| He treated the Jews badly. First he built Kessan and set up the temple in it; then he constructed the temple at Heliopolis.

27.3| He had a daughter, Merris, and gave her in betrothal to a certain Chenephres, who was king of the regions above Memphis (for at that time many were kings of Egypt). She was barren and passed off as her own the child of one of the Jews, and named him Moses; when he grew to manhood he was called Musaeus by the Greeks.

27.4| This Moses was the teacher of Orpheus. Having come to manhood, he gave humankind many useful things. For he invented ships, and machines for setting stones, and Egyptian weapons, and instruments for drawing water and for war, and philosophy; furthermore he divided the city into thirty-six nomes, and appointed for each of the nomes the god to be worshipped, and the sacred letters for the priests; and these were to be cats and dogs and ibises; and he assigned the priests a special land.

27.5| All this he did in order to secure the monarchy for Chenephres. For previously the multitudes, being unruly, at one time expelled kings and at another set them up, often the same men, sometimes others.

27.6| For these reasons Moses was loved by the multitudes, and the priests deemed him worthy of honor equal to a god's and called him Hermes, because of his interpretation of the sacred letters.

27.7| Chenephres, seeing the excellence of Moses, envied him and sought to kill him on some plausible ground. And when once the Ethiopians invaded Egypt, Chenephres, supposing he had found a favorable opportunity, sent Moses against them as general with a force; he gave him a mass of farmers as his army, supposing that because of the weakness of the soldiers he would be easily destroyed by the enemy.

27.8| Moses came to the nome called the Hermopolite, with about ten myriads of farmers, and encamped there; he sent out generals to hold the country in advance, and they clearly had the better of the battles. The people of Heliopolis, he says, report that this war lasted ten years.

27.9| Because of the size of the army, then, Moses' men founded a city in that place and consecrated the ibis in it, because it kills the creatures that harm human beings. They named it the city of Hermes.

27.10| So well, in fact, did the Ethiopians, though enemies, come to love Moses that they learned from him the circumcision of the genitals; and not only they but all the priests as well.

27.11| When the war was over, Chenephres received him in words, but in fact plotted against him. Taking the multitudes away from him, he sent some to the borders of Ethiopia as a guard, and ordered others to pull down the temple in the city of Zeus, built of baked brick, and to build another of stone, quarrying the neighboring mountain; and he appointed Nacherotes as overseer of the building.

27.12| Chenephres went with Moses to Memphis and asked him if there was anything else useful to humankind; Moses said the race of cattle, because the land is ploughed by them. Chenephres then named the bull Apis, ordered the multitudes to set up a sanctuary for it, and commanded that the animals consecrated by Moses be brought there and buried, wishing to conceal Moses' inventions.

27.13| When the Egyptians turned away from him, Chenephres bound his friends by oath not to reveal to Moses the plot being formed against him, and put forward men to kill him.

27.14| When no one obeyed, Chenephres reproached Chanethothes, whom he addressed most of all; and the one reproached promised to carry out the attack when he found an opportunity.

27.15| About this time Merris died, and Chenephres promised Moses and Chanethothes that they would carry the body to the regions above Egypt and bury it, thinking that Moses would be killed by Chanethothes.

27.16| As they were travelling, one of those who knew of the plot revealed it to Moses. Moses, guarding against him, buried Merris, and called the river and the city on it Meroe. This Merris is honored by the natives no less than Isis.

27.17| Aaron, the brother of Moses, learning of the plot, advised his brother to flee to Arabia. Persuaded, Moses crossed the Nile from Memphis and departed for Arabia.

27.18| Chanethothes, learning of Moses' flight, lay in wait to kill him; when he saw him approaching, he drew his sword on him, but Moses was quicker, seized his hand, drew the blade, and killed Chanethothes.

27.19| Moses escaped to Arabia, where he lived with Raguel, the ruler of those parts, and took his daughter as wife. Raguel wished to make war on the Egyptians, wanting to bring Moses back and to secure the rule for his son-in-law and daughter; but Moses prevented this, taking thought for his kinsmen. Raguel, being prevented from making war, ordered the Arabs to plunder Egypt.

27.20| About the same time Chenephres, first of all men, was struck with elephantiasis and died. He fell into this affliction because he had ordered that the Jews should wear linen garments, not woolen clothing, so that, being conspicuous, they might be punished by him.

27.21| Moses prayed to God to put an end at last to the sufferings of the peoples. As he was making supplication, he says, fire suddenly blazed up out of the ground and burned, though there was no brushwood or any other timber in the place. Moses was afraid at what had happened and fled; but a divine voice told him to march against Egypt and to bring the Jews safely back to their ancient homeland.

27.22| Taking courage, he decided to march with a hostile force against the Egyptians. He first went to his brother Aaron. The king of the Egyptians, learning of Moses' arrival, summoned him and asked why he had come; Moses said it was because the Master of the world commanded him to release the Jews.

27.23| On hearing this, the king shut him up in prison. When night came, all the doors of the prison opened of their own accord; some of the guards died, others were overcome by sleep, and the weapons were broken.

27.24| Moses went out and came to the palace. Finding the doors open, he went in, and there, as the guards lay slack, he woke the king. The king, astonished at what had happened, mocked him and told Moses to say the name of the god who had sent him.

27.25| Moses bent to his ear and said it; the king, hearing it, fell down speechless, and revived again when Moses held him.

27.26| Moses wrote the name on a tablet and sealed it. One of the priests, who treated the writing on the tablet with contempt, gave up his life in convulsions.

27.27| The king told him to perform some sign for him. Moses threw down the rod he had and made it a serpent; and while all were terrified, he took hold of the tail, raised it, and made it a rod once more.

27.28| Going on a little further, he struck the Nile with the rod. The river, becoming greatly swollen, flooded all Egypt; and from that time its flooding began. When the water was gathered, it boiled over and destroyed the creatures of the river, and the peoples were perishing from thirst.

27.29| When these portents occurred, the king declared that after a month he would release the peoples if Moses restored the river; and Moses, striking the water again with the rod, made the flow contract.

27.30| When this had happened, the king summoned the priests above Memphis and said he would kill them and raze the temples unless they too worked some wonder. Then, by means of certain tricks and incantations, they made a serpent and changed the color of the river.

27.31| The king, puffed up at what had happened, tormented the Jews with every kind of punishment and chastisement. Moses, seeing this, performed other signs, and striking the ground with the rod he sent up some winged creature to plague the Egyptians, and the bodies of all of them broke out in sores. When the physicians could not heal the sick, the Jews thus gained relief again.

27.32| Moses again sent up frogs by means of the rod, and besides these locusts and gnats. For this reason, in every temple, the Egyptians dedicate the rod, and likewise to Isis, because the earth is Isis, and when struck with the rod it sent up the portents.

27.33| While the king was still in his folly, Moses brought about hail and earthquakes during the night, so that those who fled the earthquake were destroyed by the hail, and those who avoided the hail were destroyed by the earthquakes. All the houses fell then, and most of the temples.

27.34| At last, overtaken by such disasters, the king released the Jews. They borrowed from the Egyptians many drinking cups, no little clothing, and a great deal of other treasure, crossed the rivers in Arabia, and after crossing a considerable stretch of country reached the Red Sea on the third day.

27.35| The people of Memphis report that Moses, being familiar with the country, watched for the ebb tide and took the multitude across the sea on dry ground. The people of Heliopolis relate that the king pursued them with a great force, together with the consecrated animals, since the Jews were carrying off the property they had borrowed from the Egyptians.

27.36| A divine voice came to Moses to strike the sea with the rod, and it would divide. Moses, hearing it, touched the water with the rod, and thus the stream parted and the host went on a dry road.

27.37| When the Egyptians entered along with them in pursuit, he says that fire flashed upon them from in front, and the sea flowed back over the road; and the Egyptians were wholly destroyed by the fire and the flood. The Jews, having escaped the danger, spent forty years in the desert, while God rained on them a food of crumbs like millet, resembling snow in color. He says that Moses was tall, ruddy, white-haired, long-haired, and dignified. He did these things at about eighty-nine years of age."

28.1| "The tragic poet Ezekiel also tells how Moses was set out by his mother in the marsh, picked up by the king's daughter, and raised, taking up the story from the beginning, from those who came to Joseph in Egypt with Jacob. He speaks thus, bringing Moses on to say: 'Since Jacob left the land of Canaan and came down to Egypt with seven times ten souls with him, and begot a great people, who fared badly and were oppressed up to this very time, ill-treated by wicked men and the hand of power. For seeing our race grown sufficiently numerous, King Pharaoh devised a great trick against us, afflicting men with brickmaking and the burdens of building, and raising up cities with towers, by the labor of our unfortunate people. Then he proclaims that the males of the Hebrew race be cast into the deep-flowing river. Then my mother who bore me hid me three months, as she told it. Not escaping notice any longer, she set me out, dressing me in finery, by the edge of the river, in the thick, shaggy marsh. My sister Miriam watched from nearby. And then the king's daughter came down with her handmaids to wash her fair skin in the bath; and seeing me at once she took me up, and recognized me as a Hebrew. And Miriam, my sister, ran up to the princess and said these words: "Do you want me to find you quickly a nurse for this child from among the Hebrews?" She urged the girl on; and going, she told my mother, who came quickly, and herself took me into her arms. And the king's daughter said: "Woman, nurse this child, and I will pay you your wage. She named him Moses, because she had drawn him up out of the wet bank of the river." After other lines Ezekiel adds in his tragedy more on these matters, bringing on Moses to say: "When the time of my infancy had passed, my mother led me to the palace of the princess, having told her the whole story, and having told me of my father's race and the gifts of God. As long as we were in the time of boyhood, she promised me everything, with royal nurture and instruction, as though I came from her own womb. But when the fullness of the days had come, I went out from the royal house; for my spirit urged me to deeds, and so did the scheming of the king. First I see two men fighting hand to hand, one a Hebrew by birth, the other an Egyptian. Seeing no one else, and that no one was present, I rescued my brother, and the other I killed, and hid him in the sand, so that no one else should see us and expose the murder. The next day I saw two men again, both of them kinsmen, being trampled, and I said: 'Why do you strike one weaker than yourself?' And he said: 'Who sent you to us as judge or overseer here? Will you kill me, as you killed the man yesterday?' And I, afraid, said: 'How has this become known?' And he quickly reported all this to the king. Pharaoh seeks to take my life; and I, hearing it, withdraw out of the way, and now I wander in a foreign land." Then he takes up the matter of Raguel's daughters thus: "I see some seven maidens here. When he asked them who the maidens were, Zipporah says: 'The whole land is called Libya, stranger, and tribes of all kinds of races inhabit it, Ethiopian men, black; the ruler of the land is one man, king and sole general. The ruler of this city, who judges mortals, is a priest, who is the father of me and of these.'" Then, having gone through the watering of the flocks, he takes up the marriage of Zipporah, bringing Chum and Zipporah on in alternating speech: "Z. Nevertheless you must tell the following, Zipporah. C. My father gave me to this stranger as wife."

29.1| "Demetrius gives an account of the killing of the Egyptian and of the quarrel with the man who informed against him, like the writer of the sacred book; Moses, however, fled to Midian and settled there with Jethro's daughter Zipporah, who was, as one can conjecture from the names, of the line of those born of Keturah, of Abraham's stock, from Jezan the son born to Abraham by Keturah. From Jezan was born Dedan, from Dedan Raguel, from Raguel Jethro and Hobab, and from Jethro Zipporah, whom Moses married.

29.2| The generations also agree: Moses was seventh from Abraham, while Zipporah was sixth. For Isaac, from whom Moses descends, being already married, Abraham married Keturah at the age of one hundred and forty, and had Isaar by her as a second son; but he had begotten Isaac when he was one hundred years old. So Isaar was born forty-two years later, from whom Zipporah's genealogy is traced.

29.3| Nothing, therefore, prevents Moses and Zipporah from having lived at the same time. They dwelt in the city of Midian, which was named for one of Abraham's sons. For he says that Abraham sent his sons to the east to settle; and for this reason Aaron and Miriam said at Aseroth that Moses had married an Ethiopian woman.

29.4| Ezekiel also speaks about this in the Exodus, adding the dream that Moses saw, which his father-in-law interpreted. Moses himself speaks in alternating lines to his father-in-law, in this way:

29.5| 'It seemed to me that on the top of the mountain of Sinai there was a great throne reaching to the folds of heaven, on which sat a noble man wearing a crown and holding a great sceptre in his left hand. He beckoned me with his right, and I stood before the throne. He handed me the sceptre and told me to sit on the great throne; he gave me the royal crown, and himself left the throne. And I looked upon the whole earth round about, beneath the earth and above heaven, and a multitude of stars fell at my knees, and I counted them all, and they passed before me like an army of mortals. Then, filled with fear, I rose up from sleep.'

29.6| His father-in-law interprets the dream thus: "O stranger, God has shown you a good sign. May I live to see these things happen to you. Surely you will raise up some great throne, and you yourself will rule and lead mortals. As for your looking on the whole inhabited earth, and what is below, and what is above God's heaven, you will see what is, what was before, and what shall be after."

29.7| Concerning the burning bush and his mission to Pharaoh, he again brings Moses on in alternating speech, conversing with God. Moses says: "Ha! What is this sign from the bush, a marvel, and to mortals an unbelievable thing? Suddenly the bush burns with a great fire, yet all that grows on it remains green. What is this? I will go forward and see this very great marvel; for it brings no credence to human beings."

29.8| Then God addresses him: "Stop, most excellent Moses, do not come near before you loose the sandals from your feet; for holy is the ground on which you stand. A divine word shines out to you from the bush: take courage, child, and hear my words. To see my face is impossible for one who is mortal, but it is permitted you to hear my words, for the sake of which I have come. I am the God of your forefathers, of whom you speak, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the third. Remembering them, and my gifts, I am here to save my people of the Hebrews, having seen the ill-treatment and the toil of my servants. But go, and announce my words, first to all the Hebrews together, then to the king, the orders given by me, so that you may lead my people out of the land."

29.9| Then, a little further on, Moses himself says in answer: "I am not eloquent, and my tongue is hard of speech, thin-voiced, so that my words would fail before the king."

29.10| In reply to this God answers him: "Send quickly for Aaron, your brother, to whom you will tell all that has been said by me, and he will speak before the king; you speaking for us, and he taking from you."

29.11| Of the rod and the other wonders he speaks thus in alternating lines: "G. What do you have in your hands? Say quickly. M. A rod, the chastiser of beasts and of mortals. G. Throw it to the ground and step back quickly. It will be a serpent, fearful, so as to cause wonder. M. Look, it is thrown. Lord, be merciful; how fearful, how monstrous; have pity on me, I shudder at the sight, and the limbs of my body tremble. G. Fear nothing, but stretch out your hand and take it by the tail, and it will be a rod again as before. Put your hand in your bosom, and bring it out. Look, as ordered, it has become like snow. Put it again in your bosom, and it will be as it was."

29.12| After some intervening matter he adds the following, saying: "Ezekiel too says this in the Exodus, bringing God on to speak thus about the signs: 'With this rod you will work all the evils. First the river's blood shall flow, and all springs and gatherings of waters. I will put a multitude of frogs and gnats upon the land. Then I will scatter furnace ash, and bitter, dreadful sores will break out on mortals. The dog-fly will come, and will afflict many of the Egyptians. After this there will be a plague again, and those will die who have a hard heart. I will embitter the heaven; now hail with fire will fall and make mortals dead. Crops will perish, and the bodies of beasts. I will set darkness for three whole days, and send locusts, and they will devour all the surplus food and the green of the crop. On top of all these things I will kill the firstborn children of mortals, and I will stop the arrogance of wicked men. Pharaoh the king will be persuaded by nothing I say, except that he will have his firstborn child dead; and then, in fear, he will send the people out quickly. To this you will say to all the Hebrews together: "This month is the first of the year for you; in it I will lead the people away to another land, the one I promised to the fathers of the Hebrew race." You will tell the whole people, at the middle of the month of which I speak, to sacrifice the Passover to God on the preceding night and to touch the doors with blood, so that the dread angel may pass over at the sign. And you shall eat roast meat by night. In haste the king will drive the whole crowd out. When you are about to depart, I will give the people favor, and each woman will receive from her neighbor vessels and all the adornment a person wears, gold and silver and garments, that in return for what they have done they may pay a wage to mortals. And when you enter your own land, in the same way as on the morning you fled, traveling from Egypt a road of seven days, you shall for as many days in the year eat unleavened bread and serve God, sacrificing to God the firstborn of the animals, and every male child that virgins bear first, opening the mothers' wombs.'"

29.13| And again, about this feast itself, he says that the poet, working it out more exactly, said: "'Take, in this month, by kinships, sheep and bullocks without blemish, on the tenth; let them be kept until the fourteenth dawns, and toward evening sacrifice them, and roasted whole with their inward parts, so you shall eat them: girded, with sandals bound on your feet, and a staff in your hand. For in haste the king will command you all to be driven out of the land; and all will be summoned. When you have sacrificed, take a bunch of hyssop in your hands, dip it in the blood, and touch the two doorposts, so that death may pass by the Hebrews. This feast you shall keep for the Master, seven days of unleavened bread; and no leaven shall be eaten. For from these evils you will be released, and in this month God gives the exodus; and this is to be the beginning of months and of times.'"

29.14| Again, after other matter, he adds: "Ezekiel, too, in the drama entitled Exodus, brings on a messenger to describe both the disposition of the Hebrews and the ruin of the Egyptians in this way: 'When King Pharaoh set out from his house with this throng, with countless arms, with all his cavalry and four-horse chariots, and with front-rank men and flank guards together, it was a dreadful host of men drawn up. The foot soldiers and phalanx men were in the middle, with spaces for the chariots to run through; the horsemen he drew up, some on the left and some on the right of the Egyptian army. I asked the number of the whole army: there were a hundred myriads of stalwart men. When my army met the Hebrews, they were encamped close by the shore of the Red Sea, gathered together. Some were giving food to their little children, together with their wives, weary from toil; there were many cattle and the baggage of their households, and they themselves were all unarmed for battle. Seeing us, they raised a tearful cry, and all together stretched themselves toward the heavens, to their ancestral God. There was a great crowd of men. A joy took hold of all of us in turn. Then we made camp near them, at a city called by men Baal-zephon. When the Titan sun was nearing its setting we halted, wishing to fight at dawn, trusting in our people and our dreadful arms. Then marvels of divine wonder began, wonderful to see. Suddenly a great pillar of cloud stood on the ground, great, between our camp and that of the Hebrews. Then their leader Moses took the rod of God, with which he had earlier devised evil signs and portents for Egypt, struck the back of the Red Sea, and split its depth through the middle. And they all dashed swiftly through the salt path. We went after them along it quickly, on their tracks, and charged in by night with a battle cry. But suddenly the chariots no longer turned, but were fastened as though they were in bonds. From heaven a great brightness as of fire appeared to us; as one might guess, God was present as their helper. And when they were already across the sea, a great wave roared near us; someone, seeing it, cried out: Let us flee home, away from the hands of the Most High. For to some he is a helper, but to us wretches he brings destruction. And the passage of the Red Sea was swept together and destroyed the army.'"

29.15| And again, after a few lines: "From there they came after three days, as Demetrius himself reports; the sacred book agrees with him. There was no sweet water there, but bitter; and when God told them to throw a piece of wood into the spring, the water became sweet. From there they went on to Elim, where they found twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees. Of these, and of the bird that appeared, Ezekiel in the Exodus brings someone on to speak to Moses; about the palms and the twelve springs he says thus:

29.16| 'Most excellent Moses, attend: see what a place we have found, right by this pleasant grove. It is there, as you yourself perhaps see. From there a light shone upon it in the night, like a pillar of fire as a sign. Here we found a shady meadow and well-watered pools, a rich, deep place, drawing up twelve springs from a single rock; and there are many strong stems of palms, fruitful, ten times seven, and the grass is well watered, pasture for the flocks.' Then, going on, he tells of the bird that appeared: 'And besides these we saw another creature, strange, marvelous, such as no one has ever seen. For its length was nearly twice that of an eagle, with feathers of many kinds and colors. Its breast appeared purple, its legs red, and about the neck it was adorned with saffron-colored wool. Its head was like that of tame cocks, and it looked around with an apple-yellow eye; the pupil appeared like a berry of scarlet. Its voice was the most excellent of all. It seemed to be king of all birds, as one could perceive; for all the winged creatures together rushed after it in terror, while it went in front, strutting like a bull, lifting a swift step of its foot.' And after a few lines: "Someone asks how the Israelites had weapons when they went out unarmed. For they said that, having gone out a journey of three days and sacrificed, they would come back again. It appears, then, that those who were not drowned used the weapons of the others.'

30.1| "Eupolemus says in a certain work On the Prophecy of Elijah that Moses prophesied for forty years; then Joshua, the son of Nun, for thirty; that he lived one hundred and ten years, and fixed the holy tent in Shiloh.

30.2| After this Samuel became prophet. Then, by the will of God, Saul was chosen king by Samuel, and after reigning twenty-one years he died.

30.3| Then David, his son, ruled, who subdued the Syrians dwelling by the Euphrates, and Commagene, and the Assyrians who are in Galadene, and the Phoenicians. He likewise campaigned against the Idumaeans, Ammonites, Moabites, Ituraeans, Nabataeans, and Nabdaeans.

30.4| Again he campaigned against Souron, king of Tyre and Phoenicia, and compelled them to pay tribute to the Jews; and with Vaphres, the king of the Egyptians, he made a treaty of friendship.

30.5| David, wishing to build a temple to God, asked God to show him the place of the altar; there an angel appeared to him standing above the place in Jerusalem where the altar was to be set, and forbade him to establish the temple, because he was stained with human blood and had waged many years of war.

30.6| His name was Dianathan; and he commanded him to entrust the building to his son, while David himself should prepare what pertained to the construction: gold, silver, bronze, stones, cypress and cedar timber.

30.7| David, on hearing this, built ships at Ailana, a city in Arabia, and dispatched miners to the island of Ourphe, which lies in the Red Sea and has gold mines; and the miners carried the gold from there to Judaea.

30.8| David, after reigning forty years, handed the rule to his son Solomon, then twelve years of age, before Eli the high priest and the twelve tribal leaders; he handed over to him the gold, silver, bronze, stone, and cypress and cedar timber. He then died, and Solomon reigned, and wrote to Vaphres, the king of Egypt, the letter written below."

31.1| "King Solomon to Vaphres, king of Egypt, his father's friend, greetings. Know that the kingdom has come to me from my father David through the greatest God, and that he has commanded me to build a temple for God, who created heaven and earth. At the same time I write to you to send me some of the people under you, who will assist me until I finish everything as needed, as has been commanded."

32.1| "King Vaphres to the great King Solomon, greetings. As soon as I read your letter I was greatly delighted, and I and my whole force held a bright day of festival because you have received the kingdom from a good man, one approved by so great a God. As to what you write me about the peoples under us, I have sent you eight myriads, and I have made clear to you the numbers and where they come from: from the Sebrithite nome ten thousand, from the Mendesian and Sebennyte twenty thousand, from the Busirite, Leontopolite, and Athribite ten thousand each. Take care also of what they need, and of the rest, so that they may be well ordered, and that they may be sent back to their own country when they have done what is needed."

33.1| "King Solomon to Souron, king of Tyre and Sidon and Phoenicia, friend of his father, greetings. Know that I have received the kingdom from David my father through the greatest God, and that he has commanded me to build a temple to God, who created heaven and earth; and at the same time I write to you to send me some of the people under you, who will stand by us until we finish what God's work requires, as has been commanded me. I have also written to Galilee, Samaritis, Moabitis, Ammanitis, and Galaaditis that what they need be supplied to them from the country each month: ten thousand kors of wheat (the kor is six artabas), and ten thousand kors of wine (the kor of wine is ten measures). The oil and the rest will be furnished to them from Judaea, and sacrificial animals for meat from Arabia."

34.1| "Souron to the great King Solomon, greetings. Blessed be God, who created heaven and earth, who chose a good man from a good man. As soon as I read your letter I was greatly delighted, and blessed God that you have received the kingdom.

34.2| As to what you write me about the peoples under us, I have sent you eighty thousand Tyrians and Phoenicians, and I have sent you an architect, a Tyrian man, whose mother was Jewish, of the tribe of David. Whatever of all things under heaven you ask him, in the matter of architecture also, he will instruct you and carry it out.

34.3| As for what is needed for the boys sent to you, you will do well to instruct the local governors so that what is necessary may be supplied."

34.4| Solomon, going with his father's friends to the mountain of Lebanon, together with the Sidonians and Tyrians, brought the timber already cut by his father by sea to Joppa, and from there on foot to Jerusalem. He began to build God's temple at the age of thirteen; the nations mentioned before worked, and twelve tribes of the Jews supplied everything needed for the hundred and sixty thousand, one tribe each month. He laid the foundation of the temple of God, sixty cubits long and sixty cubits wide, and the width of the building and the foundations ten cubits; for so Nathan, the prophet of God, commanded him.

34.5| He built in alternation a course of stone and a binding course of cypress, fastening the two courses together with bronze clamps of a talent's weight. Having built it so, he paneled it on the outside with cedar and cypress timber, so that the stone building did not show; and he gilded the temple inside, lining it with gold plates of five cubits, and adding them, nailing them on with silver nails weighing a talent each, shaped like breasts, four in number.

34.6| So he gilded it from the floor to the roof; he made the ceiling of gold panels, and the roof he made of bronze, of bronze tiles, casting the bronze and pouring it over. He made two bronze pillars and covered them with pure gold, a finger thick.

34.7| The pillars were as tall as the temple, and each column was ten cubits around; they stood one at the right of the house and one at the left. He also made golden lampstands, each weighing ten talents, taking as a pattern the one set up by Moses in the tent of witness.

34.8| He set them on each side of the sanctuary, some on the right side and some on the left. He also made seventy gold lamps, so that seven burned on each lampstand. He built the temple's gates and decorated them in gold and silver, and covered them over with coffered panels of cedar and cypress.

34.9| He also made a portico at the north side of the temple and set under it forty-eight bronze pillars. He constructed a bronze laver, twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide, and five cubits high. On it he made a rim at the base, projecting outward one cubit, so that the priests, stepping up, might wash their feet and wash their hands. He also made the bases of the laver, twelve of them, wrought and cast, as tall as a man, and set them behind, under the laver, on the right of the altar.

34.10| He also made a bronze platform two cubits high, opposite the laver, on which the king would stand when he prayed, so as to be seen by the people of the Jews. He built the altar twenty-five cubits by twenty, and twelve cubits high.

34.11| He also made two bronze rings with chains, and set them on devices rising twenty cubits above the temple, so as to throw shade over the whole temple; and from each he hung a net with four hundred bronze bells, each of a talent's weight. He made the nets all about so that the bells would ring and scare away the birds, so that none might settle on the temple, nor nest in the panels of the gates and porticoes, nor soil the temple with their droppings.

34.12| He also surrounded the city of Jerusalem with walls, towers, and ditches, and built a palace for himself.

34.13| The sanctuary was first called the temple of Solomon, and later, by corruption, the city was named Jerusalem from the temple, while the Greeks aptly called it Hierosolyma.

34.14| When he had finished the temple and walled the city, he then went to Shiloh and offered God a thousand oxen as a whole burnt offering. Taking the tent and the altar and the vessels that Moses had made, he carried them to Jerusalem and placed them in the house.

34.15| The ark, the golden altar, the lampstand, the table, and the other vessels he put there, as the prophet had commanded him.

34.16| He offered to God a sacrifice of ten thousand victims, two thousand sheep, and three thousand five hundred calves. The whole of the gold used for the temple and the two pillars was four hundred and six myriads of talents; for the nails and the other construction, silver talents to the amount of one thousand two hundred and thirty-two; and of bronze for the columns, the laver, and the portico, eighteen thousand and fifty talents.

34.17| Solomon sent away the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, each to his own country, giving each ten shekels of gold; the talent is a shekel. To Vaphres, king of Egypt, he sent ten thousand metretes of oil, a thousand artabas of dates, a hundred jars of honey, and spices.

34.18| To Souron at Tyre he sent the golden column, which was dedicated in Tyre in the temple of Zeus.

34.19| Theophilus says that Solomon sent the surplus gold to the king of the Tyrians, and that he had a full-length figure made as a likeness of his daughter, and put the golden column around the statue as a casing.

34.20| Eupolemus says that Solomon also made a thousand golden shields, each worth five hundred pieces of gold. His life lasted fifty-two years, and forty of them he reigned in peace.

35.1| "Timochares says in his work On Antiochus that Jerusalem has a circumference of forty stadia; that it is hard to capture, being enclosed on every side by steep ravines; that the whole city is watered by streams, so that even the gardens are irrigated from the water flowing out of the city; and that the land between, for forty stadia from the city, is waterless, but from the forty stadia onward is again well watered."

36.1| "In his first book the writer of the Survey of Syria says that Jerusalem lies on a high and rough place; that part of the wall is built of dressed stone but the greater part of gravel; that the city has a circumference of twenty-seven stadia; and that there is also a spring in the place, flowing with abundant water."

37.1| Philo says in his work On Jerusalem that there is a spring there, which dries up in winter and fills in summer. He says in the first book: "Floating above, another most astonishing sight, with song fills the deep flow, from the baths of the great-ruling stream that sends it forth," and what follows.

37.2| Going on from these lines, he adds about its filling: "For the high-shining stream, rushing in rainy snows, full of joy, circles above the towering mountains, and on the dusty dry ground it displays the far-shining, highest marvels of the spring to the peoples," and what follows.

37.3| Then again he goes through the spring of the high priest and the drainage thus: "Steeply the pipes spit out the water through the earth, bearing it," and all else that follows. So much from the writings of Alexander Polyhistor.

38.1| Concerning the waters in Jerusalem, Aristeas also, in the book he wrote On the Translation of the Law of the Jews, reports the following:

38.2| "The house faces east, and its back is toward the west. The whole floor is paved with stone and has slopes toward the proper places for the flow of water, which occurs for the washing away of the blood shed in the sacrifices; for many myriads of animals are offered on the days of the festivals.

38.3| There is an unfailing supply of water, as though a copious spring flowed naturally from within, and besides there are marvelous and indescribable reservoirs under the ground, as they showed us, extending five stadia around the foundation of the temple, and from these countless conduits, with the streams joining one another at each point; and all these are lined with lead on the floors and the walls, and over these a great mass of plaster has been poured, all of it carried out with care."

39.1| After these things, since Polyhistor also mentioned the prophecy of Jeremiah, it would be most unreasonable for us to pass over it in silence. Let it, too, be set down:

39.2| "Then Jehoiakim. In his time the prophet Jeremiah prophesied. Sent by God, he found the Jews sacrificing to a golden idol, whose name was Baal.

39.3| He declared to them the misfortune that was coming. Jehoiakim undertook to burn him alive; but Jeremiah said that with this wood they would cook for the Babylonians, and that, taken captive, they would dig the channels of the Tigris and Euphrates.

39.4| Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, hearing what Jeremiah had prophesied, called on Astibares, king of the Medes, to take part with him in the campaign.

39.5| Taking with him Babylonians and Medes, and having gathered eighteen myriads of infantry, twelve myriads of cavalry, and ten thousand chariots, he first brought Samaritis under his power, Galilee, Scythopolis, and the Jews living in Galaaditis; then he took Jerusalem and captured the king of the Jews, Jehoiakim alive; and they collected the gold, silver, and bronze in the temple and sent it to Babylon, except for the ark and the tablets in it; these Jeremiah kept."

40.1| To this we must add the account of how the Jews were taken captive under Nebuchadnezzar: "Nebuchadnezzar, engaging the rebel and fighting a battle, gained control of him and again brought the country under his kingdom.

40.2| It happened that his father Nabopolassar, who fell ill at this time, died in the city of the Babylonians, having reigned twenty-one years. Nebuchadnezzar, learning of his father's death not long after, put in order the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country, and assigned the captives of the Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, and the nations in Egypt to some of his friends, and came to Babylonia."

40.3| And after other matter he says: "Nebuchadnezzar, after beginning the aforementioned wall, fell ill and died, having reigned forty-three years, and his son Evilmaluruchus became master of the kingdom.

40.4| He, taking charge of affairs lawlessly and licentiously, was plotted against by Neriglissar, who was married to his sister, and was killed, having reigned two years.

40.5| After he was killed, Neriglissar, the man who had plotted against him, took over the rule and reigned four years. His son Chabaessoarachus became master of the kingdom, as a boy, for nine months; but because he displayed many wicked traits, he was plotted against and beaten to death by his friends.

40.6| When he had perished, those who had plotted against him came together and jointly placed the kingship on Nabonnedus, a Babylonian who belonged to the same conspiracy.

40.7| In his time the walls along the river of the city of the Babylonians were adorned with baked brick and bitumen. When his reign was in its seventeenth year, Cyrus came up from Persis with a large force, and having overthrown the whole remaining kingdom, set out for Babylonia.

40.8| Nabonnedus, learning of his approach, met him with his force and fought a battle; defeated in the fight, he fled with a few men and was shut up in the city of the Borsippenes.

40.9| Cyrus took Babylon and ordered the outer walls of the city to be razed, because the city appeared to him very troublesome and hard to take; then he marched off to Borsippa to besiege Nabonnedus.

40.10| Nabonnedus did not hold out for the siege but gave himself up first, and Cyrus treated him kindly, gave him Carmania as a dwelling, and sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonnedus then spent the rest of his time in that country and ended his life there."

40.11| This agrees in truth with our books. For it is written in them that in the eighteenth year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar laid waste our temple, and it was out of sight for fifty years. In the second year of Cyrus' reign the foundations were put down, and again in the tenth year of Darius' reign it was finished." This is Josephus.

41.1| I have also found in the writing of Abydenus on the Assyrians these things about Nebuchadnezzar: "Megasthenes says that Nebuchadnezzar, having become more valiant than Heracles, campaigned against Libya and Iberia, and, having overpowered them, he settled a portion of them on the right shore of the Pontus.

41.2| Afterward, it is said by the Chaldeans, he went up onto the royal palace and was seized by some god, and speaking out he said: 'I, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonians, announce to you the disaster that is coming, which Belus my ancestor and queen Beltis are unable to persuade the Fates to turn aside.

41.3| A Persian mule will come, using your own gods as allies; and he will bring slavery. His partner in this will be the Mede, the pride of the Assyrians. Would that before he betrays the citizens some Charybdis or sea would sweep him away, root and branch, into a reservoir; or that he would turn and be carried by other roads through the wilderness, where there are neither cities nor any path of men, but wild beasts have their pasture and birds wander, he alone wandering among rocks and ravines; and that I, before I took this into my mind, might have met a better end.'

41.4| The one who prophesied vanished at once; and his son Amilmarudocus reigned. His brother-in-law Iglisares killed him and left a son, Labassoarascus. When he died a violent death, they appointed Nabannidochus king, who was no relation of his. Cyrus, taking Babylon, gave him the governorship of Carmania."

41.5| Concerning Nebuchadnezzar's founding of Babylon, the same author writes: "It is said that in the beginning all was water, called sea. Belus put an end to it, assigning each part its place, and surrounded Babylon with a wall; but in the course of time the wall vanished.

41.6| Nebuchadnezzar walled it again, and it remained, with its bronze gates, until the Macedonian empire." And after other matter he adds:

41.7| "Nebuchadnezzar, succeeding to the rule, fortified Babylon with a threefold wall in fifteen days, and diverted the river Armacales, a branch of the Euphrates, and the Acracanus. Above the city of the Sipparenes he dug a reservoir, forty parasangs in circumference and twenty fathoms deep, and set up gates, by opening which they irrigated the plain; they call them 'channel-regulators'.

41.8| He also built defenses against the flooding of the Red Sea, and founded the city of Teredon against the Arab invasions; and he adorned the royal palace with trees, naming them the hanging gardens."

41.9| Let this too be set down by me from the writing mentioned, since it is recorded in the prophecy of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar, walking in the royal temple of his kingdom in Babylon, was lifted up with pride and spoke arrogantly, saying: "Is not this the great Babylon that I myself built as a royal house, by the might of my strength, for the honor of my glory?" While the word was still in his mouth, the overturning that came upon him took place.

42.1| So much, then, from us on these matters, sufficiently. Let there also be added to all this the passages from the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, where, setting down verbatim the words of countless writers, he adds the following:

42.2| “Still, the records of the Syrians, Chaldeans and Phoenicians are enough to prove our antiquity, and besides them so many Greek writers; and further, in addition to those already named, Theophilus, Theodotus, Mnaseas, Aristophanes and Hermogenes, Euhemerus, Comon and Zopyrion, and perhaps a good many others (for I have not come across every book myself), have made mention of us, and not in passing.

42.3| Most of the men named missed the truth about the earliest events, since they had not come upon our sacred books; yet all of them together have borne witness to our antiquity, which is what I set out to speak about here. Demetrius of Phalerum, however, along with Philo the elder and Eupolemus, did not stray far from the truth. They deserve to be pardoned, for it was not open to them to follow our writings with complete precision.”

42.4| So says Josephus as well. Anyone who cares to read this man's books on the antiquity of the Jews would find a great many testimonies there agreeing with the ones set out here. And a great crowd of other witnesses besides, writers both old and new, comes streaming in to us, setting their seal to the same verdict as those already cited; but out of regard for the due proportion of our work we shall leave their words for lovers of learning to seek out and examine, and pass on ourselves to the promise that remains.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/083-preparation-for-the-gospel-book-ix#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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