is is what is written in the Tyrian archives concerning
Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria.

3. But now the Cutheans, who removed into Samaria, [for that is the name
they have been called by to this time, because they were brought out of
the country called Cuthah, which is a country of Persia, and there is a
river of the same name in it,] each of them, according to their nations,
which were in number five, brought their own gods into Samaria, and
by worshipping them, as was the custom of their own countries, they
provoked Almighty God to be angry and displeased at them, for a plague
seized upon them, by which they were destroyed; and when they found no
cure for their miseries, they learned by the oracle that they ought to
worship Almighty God, as the method for their deliverance. So they sent
ambassadors to the king of Assyria, and desired him to send them some of
those priests of the Israelites whom he had taken captive. And when he
thereupon sent them, and the people were by them taught the laws, and
the holy worship of God, they worshipped him in a respectful manner, and
the plague ceased immediately; and indeed they continue to make use of
the very same customs to this very time, and are called in the Hebrew
tongue Cutlans, but in the Greek tongue Samaritans. And when they see
the Jews in prosperity, they pretend that they are changed, and allied
to them, and call them kinsmen, as though they were derived from Joseph,
and had by that means an original alliance with them; but when they see
them falling into a low condition, they say they are no way related to
them, and that the Jews have no right to expect any kindness or marks of
kindred from them, but they declare that they are sojourners, that
come from other countries. But of these we shall have a more seasonable
opportunity to discourse hereafter.

BOOK X. Containing The Interval Of One Hundred And Eighty-Two Years And
A Half.

From The Captivity Of The Ten Tribes To The First Year Of Cyrus.

CHAPTER 1. How Sennacherib Made An Expedition Against Hezekiah; What
Threatenings Rabshakeh Made To Hezekiah When Sennacherib Was Gone
Against The Egyptians; How Isaiah The Prophet Encouraged Him; How
Sennacherib Having Failed Of Success In Egypt, Returned Thence To
Jerusalem; And How Upon His Finding His Army Destroyed, He Returned
Home; And What Befell Him A Little Afterward.

1. It was now the fourteenth year of the government of Hezekiah, king
of the two trib