(1) The former part of this second book is written against the calumnies of Apion, and then, more briefly, against the like calumnies of Apollonius Molo. But after that, Josephus leaves off any more particular reply to those adversaries of the Jews, and gives us a large and excellent description and vindication of that theocracy which was settled for the Jewish nation by Moses, their great legislator.
(2) Called by Tiberius Cymbalum Mundi, The drum of the world.
(3) This seems to have been the first dial that had been made in Egypt, and was a little before the time that Ahaz made his [first] dial in Judea, and about anno 755, in the first year of the seventh olympiad, as we shall see presently. See 2 Kings 20:11; Isaiah 38:8.
(4) The burial-place for dead bodies, as I suppose.
(5) Here begins a great defect in the Greek copy; but the old Latin version fully supplies that defect.
(6) What error is here generally believed to have been committed by our Josephus in ascribing a deliverance of the Jews to the reign of Ptolemy Physco, the seventh of those Ptolemus, which has been universally supposed to have happened under Ptolemy Philopater, the fourth of them, is no better than a gross error of the moderns, and not of Josephus, as I have fully proved in the Authentic. Rec. Part I. p. 200-201, whither I refer the inquisitive reader.
(7) Sister's son, and adopted son.
(8) Called more properly Molo, or Apollonius Molo, as hereafter;for Apollonins, the son of Molo, was another person, as Strabo informs us, lib. xiv.
(9) Furones in the Latin, which what animal it denotes does not now appear.
(10) It is great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant in his time.
(11) It is remarkable that Josephus here, and, I think, no where else, reckons up four distinct courts of the temple; that of the Gentiles, that of the women of Israel, that of the men of Israel, and that of the priests; as also that the court of the women admitted of the men, (I suppose only of the husbands of those wives that were therein,) while the court of the men did not admit any women into it at all.
(12) Judea, in the Greek, by a gross mistake of the transcribers.
(13) Seven in the Greek, by a like gross mistake of the transcribers. See of the War, B. V. ch. 5. sect. 4.
(14) Two hundred in the Greek, contrary to the twenty in the War, B. VII. ch, 5. sect. 3.
(15) This notorious disgrace belonging peculiarly to the people of Egypt, ever since the times of the old prophets of the Jews, noted both sect. 4 already, and here, may be confirmed by the testimony of Isidorus, an Egyptian of Pelusium, Epist. lib. i.
Ep. 489. And this is a remarkable completion of the ancient prediction of God by Ezekiel 29:14, 15, that the Egyptians should be a base kingdom, the basest of the kingdoms," and that "it should not exalt itself any more above the nations."(16) The truth of which still further appears by the present observation of Josephus, that these Egyptians had never, in all the past ages since Sesostris, had one day of liberty, no, not so much as to have been free from despotic power under any of the monarchies to that day. And all this bas been found equally true in the latter ages, under the Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, from the days of Josephus till the present ago also.
(17) This language, that Moses, "persuaded himself" that what he did was according to God's will, can mean no more, by Josephus's own constant notions elsewhere, than that he was "firmly persuaded," that he had "fully satisfied himself" that so it was, viz. by the many revelations he had received from God, and the numerous miracles God had enabled him to work, as he both in these very two books against Apion, and in his Antiquities, most clearly and frequently assures us. This is further evident from several passages lower, where he affirms that Moses was no impostor nor deceiver, and where he assures that Moses's constitution of government was no other than a theocracy; and where he says they are to hope for deliverance out of their distresses by prayer to God, and that withal it was owing in part to this prophetic spirit of Moses that the Jews expected a resurrection from the dead. See almost as strange a use of the like words, "to persuade God," Antiq. B. VI. ch. 5. sect. 6.
