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Luke and Josephus.Now Tacitus lived somewhat too remote, both as to time and place, to be compared with either of those Jewish writers, in a matter concerning the Jews in Judea in their own days, and concerning a sister of Agrippa, junior, with which Agrippa Josephus was himself so well acquainted.It is probable that Tacitus may say true, when he informs us that this Felix (who had in all three wives, or queens, as Suetonius in Claudius, sect.28, assures us) did once marry such a grandchild of Antonius and Cleopatra; and finding the name of one of them to have been Drusilla, he mistook her for that other wife, whose name he did not know.
(14) This eruption of Vesuvius was one of the greatest we have in history.See Bianchini's curious and important observations on this Vesuvius, and its seven several great eruptions, with their remains vitrified, and still existing, in so many different strata under ground, till the diggers came to the antediluvian waters, with their proportionable interstices, implying the deluge to have been above two thousand five hundred years before the Christian era, according to our exactest chronology.
(15) This is now wanting.
(16) This also is now wanting.
(17) This duration of the reign of Claudius agrees with Dio, as Dr.Hudson here remarks; as he also remarks that Nero's name, which was at first L.Domitius Aenobarbus, after Claudius had adopted him was Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus.This Soleus as [own Life, sect.11, as also] by Dio Cassius andTaeims, as Dr.Hudson informs us.
(18) This agrees with Josephus's frequent accounts elsewhere in his own Life, that Tibetans, and Taricheae, and Gamala were under this Agrippa, junior, till Justus, the son of Pistus, seized for the Jews, upon the breaking out of the war.
(19) This treacherous and barbarous murder of the good high priest Jonathan, by the contrivance of this wicked procurator, Felix, was the immediate occasion of the ensuing murders by the Sicarii or ruffians, and one great cause of the following horrid cruelties and miseries of the Jewish nation, as Josephus here supposes; whose excellent reflection on the gross wickedness of that nation, as the direct cause of their terrible destruction, is well worthy the attention of every Jewish and of every Christian reader.And since we are soon coming to the catalogue of the Jewish high priests, it may not be amiss, with Reland, to insert this Jonathan among them, and to transcribe his particular catalogue of the last twenty-eight high priests, taken out of Josephus, and begin with Ananelus, who was made by Herod the Great.See Antiq.B.XV.ch.2.sect.4, and the note there.
1.Ananelus.
2.Aristobulus.
3.Jesus, the son of Fabus.
4.Simon, the son of Boethus.
5.Marthias, the son of Theophiltu.
6.Joazar, the son of Boethus.
7.Eleazar, the son of Boethus.
8.Jesus, the son of Sic.
9.[Annas, or] Ananus, the son of Seth.
10.Ismael, the son of Fabus.
11.Eleazar, the son of Ananus.
12.Simon, the son of Camithus.
13.Josephus Caiaphas, the son-in-law to Ananus.
14.Jonathan, the son of Ananus.
15.Theophilus, his brother, and son of Ananus.
16.Simon, the son of Boethus.
17.Matthias, the brother of Jonathan, and son of Ananus.
18.Aljoneus.
19.Josephus, the son of Camydus.
20.Ananias, the son of Nebedeus.
21.Jonathas.
22.Ismael, the son of Fabi.
23.Joseph Cabi, the son of Simon.
24.Ananus, the son of Artanus.
25.Jesus, the son of Damnetas.
26.Jesus, the son of Gamaliel.
27.Matthias, the son of Theophilus.
28.Phannias, the son of Samuel.
As for Ananus and Joseph Caiaphas, here mentioned about the middle of this catalogue, they are no other than those Annas and Caiaphas so often mentioned in the four Gospels; and that Ananias, the son of Nebedeus, was that high priest before whom St.Paul pleaded his own cause, Acts 24.
(20) Of these Jewish impostors and false prophets, with many other circumstances and miseries of the Jews, till their utter destruction, foretold by our Savior, see Lit.Accompl.of Proph.
p.58-75.Of this Egyptian impostor, and the number of his followers, in Josephus, see Acts 21:38.
(21) The wickedness here was very peculiar and extraordinary, that the high priests should so oppress their brethren the priests, as to starve the poorest of them to death.See the like presently, ch.9.sect.2.Such fatal crimes are covetousness and tyranny in the clergy, as well as in the laity, in all ages.