ip of Josephus's pen or memory in the place before us.

[12] Here is a plain example of a Jewish lady giving a bill of divorce
to her husband, though in the days of Josephus it was not esteemed
lawful for a woman so to do. See the like among the Parthians, Antiq.
B. XVIII. ch. 9. sect. 6. However, the Christian law, when it allowed
divorce for adultery, Matthew 5:32, allowed the innocent wife to divorce
her guilty husband, as well as the innocent husband to divorce his
guilty wife, as we learn from the shepherd of Hermas, Mand. B. IV.,
and from: the second apology of Justin Martyr, where a persecution was
brought upon the Christians upon such a divorce; and I think the Roman
laws permitted it at that time, as well as the laws of Christianity. Now
this Babas, who was one of the race of the Asamoneans or Maccabees, as
the latter end of this section informs us, is related by the Jews, as
Dr. Hudson here remarks, to have been so eminently religious in the
Jewish way, that, except the day following the tenth of Tisri, the great
day of atonement, when he seems to have supposed all his sins entirely
forgiven, he used every day of the whole year to offer a sacrifice for
his sins of ignorance, or such as he supposed he had been guilty of, but
did not distinctly remember. See somewhat like it of Agrippa the Great,
Antiq. B. XIX. ch. 3. sect. 3, and Job 1:4, 5.

[13] These grand plays, and shows, and Thymelici, or music meetings, and
chariot races, when the chariots were drawn by two, three, or four pair
of horses, etc., instituted by Herod in his theatres, were still, as we
see here, looked on by the sober Jews as heathenish sports, and tending
to corrupt the manners of the Jewish nation, and to bring them in
love with paganish idolatry, and paganish conduct of life, but to the
dissolution of the law of Moses, and accordingly were greatly and justly
condemned by them, as appears here and every where else in Josephus.
Nor is the case of our modern masquerades, plays, operas, and the like
"pomps and vanities of this wicked world," of any better tendency under
Christianity.

[14] Here we have an eminent example of the language of Josephus in his
writing to Gentiles, different from that when he wrote to Jews; in his
writing to whom he still derives all such judgments from the anger
of God; but because he knew many of the Gentiles thought they might
naturally come in certain periods, he complies with them in the
following sentence.