s it indeed
appear that, under the judges, or under Samuel the prophet, there was
any such public allowance to those governors at all. Those great charges
upon the public for maintaining courts came in with kings, as God
foretold they would, 1 Samuel 8:11-18. [4] Some pretended fragments of
these books of conjuration of Solomon are still extant in Fabricius's
Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. page 1054, though I entirely differ from
Josephus in this his supposal, that such books and arts of Solomon were
parts of that wisdom which was imparted to him by God in his younger
days; they must rather have belonged to such profane but curious arts as
we find mentioned Acts 19:13-20, and had been derived from the idolatry
and superstition of his heathen wives and concubines in his old age,
when he had forsaken God, and God had forsaken him, and given him up to
demoniacal delusions. Nor does Josephus's strange account of the root
Baara [Of the War, B. VIII. ch. 6. sect. 3] seem to be other than that
of its magical use in such conjurations. As for the following history,
it confirms what Christ says, Matthew 12;27 "If I by Beelzebub cast out
demons, by whom do your Sons cast them out?"

[5] These epistles of Solomon and Hiram are those in 1 Kings 5:3-9, and,
as enlarged, in 2 Chronicles 2:3-16, but here given us by Josephus in
his own words.

[6] What Josephus here puts into his copy of Hiram's epistle to Solomon,
and repeats afterwards, ch. 5. sect. 3, that Tyre was now an island,
is not in any of the three other copies, viz. that of the Kings,
Chronicles, or Eusebius; nor is it any other, I suppose, than his own
conjectural paraphrase; for when I, many years ago, inquired into
this matter, I found the state of this famous city, and of the island
whereupon it stood, to have been very different at different times. The
result of my inquiries in this matter, with the addition of some later
improvements, stands thus: That the best testimonies hereto relating,
imply, that Paketyrus, or Oldest Tyre, was no other than that most
ancient smaller fort or city Tyre, situated on the continent, and
mentioned in Joshua 19:29, out of which the Canaanite or Phoenician
inhabitants were driven into a large island, that lay not far off in the
sea, by Joshua: that this island was then joined to the continent at the
present remains of Paketyrus, by a neck of land over against Solomon's
cisterns, still so called; and the city's fresh water, probably, was
c