d made
war with the rest of the Egyptians, that they invited the people of
Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while Cheremon says only that
they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon three hundred and eighty
thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left there by Amenophis, and
so they invaded Egypt with them again; that thereupon Amenophis fled
into Ethiopia. But then this Cheremon commits a most ridiculous blunder
in not informing us who this army of so many ten thousands were, or
whence they came; whether they were native Egyptians, or whether they
came from a foreign country. Nor indeed has this man, who forged a dream
from Isis about the leprous people, assigned the reason why the king
would not bring them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down Joseph as
driven away at the same time with Moses, who yet died four generations
[25] before Moses, which four generations make almost one hundred and
seventy years. Besides all this, Ramesses, the son of Amenophis, by
Manetho's account, was a young man, and assisted his father in his war,
and left the country at the same time with him, and fled into Ethiopia.
But Cheremon makes him to have been born in a certain cave, after his
father was dead, and that he then overcame the Jews in battle, and
drove them into Syria, being in number about two hundred thousand. O the
levity of the man! for he had neither told us who these three hundred
and eighty thousand were, nor how the four hundred and thirty thousand
perished; whether they fell in war, or went over to Ramesses. And, what
is the strangest of all, it is not possible to learn out of him who they
were whom he calls Jews, or to which of these two parties he applies
that denomination, whether to the two hundred and fifty thousand leprous
people, or to the three hundred and eighty thousand that were about
Pelusium. But perhaps it will be looked upon as a silly thing in me
to make any larger confutation of such writers as sufficiently confute
themselves; for had they been only confuted by other men, it had been
more tolerable.

34. I shall now add to these accounts about Manethoand Cheremon somewhat
about Lysimachus, who hath taken the same topic of falsehood with those
forementioned, but hath gone far beyond them in the incredible nature of
his forgeries; which plainly demonstrates that he contrived them out of
his virulent hatred of our nation. His words are these: "The people of
the Jews being leprous and scabby, and