thood must
propagate of a wife of the same nation, without having any regard to
money, or any other dignities; but he is to make a scrutiny, and take
his wife's genealogy from the ancient tables, and procure many witnesses
to it. [7] And this is our practice not only in Judea, but wheresoever
any body of men of our nation do live; and even there an exact catalogue
of our priests' marriages is kept; I mean at Egypt and at Babylon, or
in any other place of the rest of the habitable earth, whithersoever our
priests are scattered; for they send to Jerusalem the ancient names of
their parents in writing, as well as those of their remoter ancestors,
and signify who are the witnesses also. But if any war falls out,
such as have fallen out a great many of them already, when Antiochus
Epiphanes made an invasion upon our country, as also when Pompey the
Great and Quintilius Varus did so also, and principally in the wars that
have happened in our own times, those priests that survive them
compose new tables of genealogy out of the old records, and examine the
circumstances of the women that remain; for still they do not admit of
those that have been captives, as suspecting that they had conversation
with some foreigners. But what is the strongest argument of our exact
management in this matter is what I am now going to say, that we have
the names of our high priests from father to son set down in our records
for the interval of two thousand years; and if any of these have been
transgressors of these rules, they are prohibited to present themselves
at the altar, or to be partakers of any other of our purifications; and
this is justly, or rather necessarily done, because every one is
not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any
disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have
written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned
them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath
happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also.

8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us,
disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,]
but only twenty-two books, [8] which contain the records of all the past
times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong
to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of
mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three
th