r
declamation composed formerly, in the person of Judas, and in the way
of oratory, that lay by him, and which he thought fit to insert on this
occasion. See two more such speeches or declamations, Antiq. B. VI. ch.
14. sect. 4

[10] In all this speech of Judas we may observe, that Josephus still
supposed that death was the punishment of theft in Egypt, in the days of
Joseph, though it never was so among the Jews, by the law of Moses.

[11] All the Greek copies of Josephus have the negative particle here,
that Jacob himself was not reckoned one of the 70 souls that came into
Egypt; but the old Latin copies want it, and directly assure us he
was one of them. It is therefore hardly certain which of these was
Josephus's true reading, since the number 70 is made up without him, if
we reckon Leah for one; but if she be not reckoned, Jacob must himself
be one, to complete the number.

[12] Josephus thought that the Egyptians hated or despised the
employment of a shepherd in the days of Joseph; whereas Bishop
Cumberland has shown that they rather hated such Poehnician or Canaanite
shepherds that had long enslaved the Egyptians of old time. See his
Sanchoniatho, p. 361, 362.

[13] Reland here puts the question, how Josephus could complain of its
not raining in Egypt during this famine, while the ancients affirm
that it never does naturally rain there. His answer is, that when the
ancients deny that it rains in Egypt, they only mean the Upper Egypt
above the Delta, which is called Egypt in the strictest sense; but that
in the Delta [and by consequence in the Lower Egypt adjoining to it] it
did of old, and still does, rain sometimes. See the note on Antiq. B.
III. ch. 1. sect. 6.

[14] Josephus supposes that Joseph now restored the Egyptians their
lands again upon the payment of a fifth part as tribute. It seems to
me rather that the land was now considered as Pharaoh's land, and this
fifth part as its rent, to be paid to him, as he was their landlord,
and they his tenants; and that the lands were not properly restored, and
this fifth part reserved as tribute only, till the days of Sesostris.
See Essay on the Old Testament, Append. 148, 149.

[15] As to this encomium upon Joseph, as preparatory to Jacob's adopting
Ephraim and Manasses into his own family, and to be admitted for two
tribes, which Josephus here mentions, all our copies of Genesis omit it,
ch. 48.; nor do we know whence he took it, or whether it be not his ow