the same accusations which the others have
laid against us, some things that he hath added are very frigid and
contemptible, and for the greatest part of what he says, it is very
scurrilous, and, to speak no more than the plain truth, it shows him
to be a very unlearned person, and what he lays together looks like the
work of a man of very bad morals, and of one no better in his whole
life than a mountebank. Yet, because there are a great many men so very
foolish, that they are rather caught by such orations than by what
is written with care, and take pleasure in reproaching other men, and
cannot abide to hear them commended, I thought it to be necessary not
to let this man go off without examination, who had written such an
accusation against us, as if he would bring us to make an answer in open
court. For I also have observed, that many men are very much delighted
when they see a man who first began to reproach another, to be himself
exposed to contempt on account of the vices he hath himself been
guilty of. However, it is not a very easy thing to go over this man's
discourse, nor to know plainly what he means; yet does he seem, amidst a
great confusion and disorder in his falsehoods, to produce, in the first
place, such things as resemble what we have examined already, and relate
to the departure of our forefathers out of Egypt; and, in the second
place, he accuses those Jews that are inhabitants of Alexandria; as, in
the third place, he mixes with those things such accusations as concern
the sacred purifications, with the other legal rites used in the temple.

2. Now although I cannot but think that I have already demonstrated,
and that abundantly more than was necessary, that our fathers were not
originally Egyptians, nor were thence expelled, either on account
of bodily diseases, or any other calamities of that sort; yet will I
briefly take notice of what Apion adds upon that subject; for in his
third book, which relates to the affairs of Egypt, he speaks thus: "I
have heard of the ancient men of Egypt, that Moses was of Heliopolis,
and that he thought himself obliged to follow the customs of his
forefathers, and offered his prayers in the open air, towards the city
walls; but that he reduced them all to be directed towards sun-rising,
which was agreeable to the situation of Heliopolis; that he also set
up pillars instead of gnomons, [3] under which was represented a cavity
like that of a boat, and the shadow that