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UPON THE PASSAGES TAKEN OUT OF TACITUS.

I. We see here what great regard the best of the Roman historians of that age, Tacitus, had to the history of Josephus, while, though he never names him, as he very rarely names any of those Roman authors whence he derives other parts of his history, yet does it appear that he refers to his seven books of the Jewish Wars several times in a very few pages, and almost always depends on his accounts of the affairs of the Romans and Parthians, as well as of the Jews, during no fewer than two hundred and forty years, to which those books extend.

II. Yet does it appear, that when he now and then followed other historians or reports concerning the Romans, the Parthians, or the Jews, during that long interval, he was commonly mistaken in them, and had better have kept close to Josephus than hearken to any of his other authors or informers.

III. It also appears highly probable that Tacitus had seen the Antiquities of Josephus, and knew that the most part of the accounts he produced of the origin of the Jewish nation entirely contradicted those Antiquities. He also could hardly avoid seeing that those accounts contradicted one another also, and were childish, absurd, and supported by no good evidence whatsoever as also he could hardly avoid seeing that Josephus's accounts in those Antiquities were authentic, substantial, and thoroughly attested to by the ancient records of the nation, and of the neighbouring nations, which indeed no one can now avoid seeing that carefully peruses and considers them.

IV. Tacitus, therefore, in concealing the greatest part of the true ancient history of the Jewish nation, which lay before him in Josephus, and producing such fabulous, ill-grounded, and partial histories, which he had from the heathens, acted a most unfair part: and this procedure of his is here the more gross, in regard he professed such great impartiality, Hist. B. i. cap. i. and is allowed to have observed that impartiality in the Roman affairs also.

V. Tacitus's hatred and contempt of God's peculiar people, the Jews, and his attachment to the grossest idolatry, superstition, and astral fatality of the Romans, were there

fore so strong in him as to overbear all restraints of sober reason and equity in the case of those Jews, though he be allowed so exactly to have followed them on other occasions relating to the Romans.

VI. Since therefore Tacitus was so bitter against the Jews, and since he knew that Christ was a Jew himself, and that his apostles and first followers were Jews, and also knew that the christian religion was derived into the Roman provinces from Judea, it is no wonder that this hatred and contempt of the Jews extended itself to the christians also, whom the Romans usually confounded with the Jews: as therefore his hard words of the Jews appears to have been generally groundless, and hurt his own reputation instead of theirs, so ought we to esteem his alike hard words of the christians to be blots on his own character, and not on theirs.

VII. Since therefore Tacitus, soon after the publication of Josephus's Antiquities, and in contradiction to them, was determined to produce such idle stories about the Jews, and since one of those idle stories is much the same with that published in Josephus against Apion, from Manetho and Lysimachus, and no where else met with so fully in all antiquity, it is most probable that these Antiquities of Josephus were the very occasion of Tacitus giving us these stories, as we know from Josephus himself, contr. Apion, B. i. sec. 1. that the same Antiquities were the very occasion of Apion's publication of his equally scandalous stories about them, and which Josephus so thoroughly confuted in his two books written against them. And if Tacitus, as I suppose, had also read these two books, his procedure in publishing such stories, after he had seen so thorough a confutation of them, was still more highly criminal. Nor will Tacitus's fault be much less, though we suppose he neither saw the Antiquities, nor the books against Apion, because it was so very easy for him, then at Rome, to have had more authentic accounts of the origin of the Jewish nation, and of the nature of the Jewish and christian religions, from the Jews and christians themselves, which he owns were very numerous there in his days: so that his publication of such idle stories is still utterly inexcusable.

VIII. It is therefore very plain, after all, that notwithstanding the encomiums of several of our learned critics upon Tacitus, and hard suspicions upon Josephus, that all the [involuntary] mistakes of Josephus, in all his large works

put together, their quality, as well as quantity, considered, do not amount to near so great a sum as do these gross errors and misrepresentations of Tacitus's about the Jews amount to in a few pages, so little reason have some of our later and lesser critics to prefer the Greek and Roman profane historians and writers to the Jewish, and particularly to Josephus. Such later and lesser critics should have learned more judgment and modesty from their great father Joseph Scaliger, when, as we have seen, after all his deeper inquiries, he solemnly pronounces, De Emend. Temp. Prolegom. p. 17. That " Josephus was the most diligent and the greatest lover of truth of all writers;" and is not afraid to affirm, that "it is more safe to believe him, not only as to the affairs of the Jews, but also as to those that are foreign to them, than all the Greek and Latin writers, and this because his fidelity and compass of learning are every where conspicuous."

TABLE

OF THE JEWISH WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, PARTICULARLY OF THOSE MENTIONED IN JOSEPHUS'S WORKS.

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OF THE JEWISH WEIGHTS AND COINS.

Stater, Siclus, or shekel of the sanctuary, the standard,

Tyrian Coin, equal to the shekel,

Bekah, half of the shekel,

Drachma Attica, one fourth,

Drachma Alexandrina, or Darchmon, or Adarchmon, one half,

Gerah, or Obolus, one twentieth, .

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6637

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Maneh, or Mna-100 shekels in weight-21900

grains Troy.

Maneh, Mna, or Mina, as a coin,-60 shekels,

Talent of silver,—3000 shekels,

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TABLE

OF THE NAMES OF THE JEWISH MONTHS IN JOSEPHUS AND OTHERS, WITH THE SYROMACEDONIAN NAMES JOSEPHUS GIVES THEM, AND OF THE JULIAN OR ROMAN

MONTHS CORRESPONDING TO THEM.

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