children of his own, made
him a sort of perpetual high priest, and was perhaps the occasion that
former high priests kept their titles ever afterwards; for I believe it
is hardly met with be fore him.

[26] This insolent petition of some of the Levites, to wear the
sacerdotal garments when they sung hymns to God in the temple, was very
probably owing to the great depression and contempt the haughty high
priests had now brought their brethren the priests into; of which see
ch. 8. sect. 8, and ch. 9, sect. 2.

[27] Of these cloisters of Solomon, see the description of the temple,
ch. 13. They seem, by Josephus's words, to have been built from the
bottom of the valley.

[28] See the Life at the beginning of the volume.

[29] What Josephus here declares his intention to do, if God permitted,
to give the public again an abridgement of the Jewish War hear of it
elsewhere, whether he performed what he now intended or not. Some of the
reasons of this design of his might possibly be, his observation of the
many errors he had been guilty of in the two first of those seven books
of the War, which were written when he was comparatively young, and less
acquainted with the Jewish antiquities than he now was, and in which
abridgement we might have hoped to find those many passages which
himself, as well as those several passages which others refer to, as
written by him, but which are not extant in his present works. However,
since many of his own references to what he had written elsewhere, as
well as most of his own errors, belong to such early times as could not
well come into this abridgement of the Jewish War; and since none of
those that quote things not now extant in his works, including himself
as well as others, ever cite any such abridgement; I am forced rather
to suppose that he never did publish any such work at all; I mean, as
distinct from his own Life, written by himself, for an appendix to these
Antiquities, and this at least seven years after these Antiquities were
finished. Nor indeed does it appear to me that Josephus ever published
that other work here mentioned, as intended by him for the public also:
I mean the three or four books concerning God and his essence, and
concerning the Jewish laws; why, according to them, some things were
permitted the Jews, and others prohibited; which last seems to be the
same work which Josephus had also promised, if God permitted, at the
conclusion of his preface to these Anti