, and the tower of Antonia.

[15] What should be the meaning of this signal or watchword, when the
watchmen saw a stone coming from the engine, "The Stone Cometh," or what
mistake there is in the reading, I cannot tell. The MSS., both Greek and
Latin, all agree in this reading; and I cannot approve of any groundless
conjectural alteration of the text from ro to lop, that not the son or
a stone, but that the arrow or dart cometh; as hath been made by Dr.
Hudson, and not corrected by Havercamp. Had Josephus written even his
first edition of these books of the war in pure Hebrew, or had the Jews
then used the pure Hebrew at Jerusalem, the Hebrew word for a son is so
like that for a stone, ben and eben, that such a correction might have
been more easily admitted. But Josephus wrote his former edition for the
use of the Jews beyond Euphrates, and so in the Chaldee language, as he
did this second edition in the Greek language; and bar was the Chaldee
word for son, instead of the Hebrew ben, and was used not only in
Chaldea, etc. but in Judea also, as the New Testament informs us. Dio
lets us know that the very Romans at Rome pronounced the name of Simon
the son of Giora, Bar Poras for Bar Gioras, as we learn from Xiphiline,
p. 217. Reland takes notice, "that many will here look for a mystery, as
though the meaning were, that the Son of God came now to take vengeance
on the sins of the Jewish nation;" which is indeed the truth of the
fact, but hardly what the Jews could now mean; unless possibly by way
of derision of Christ's threatening so often made, that he would come
at the head of the Roman army for their destruction. But even this
interpretation has but a very small degree of probability. If I were to
make an emendation by mere conjecture, I would read instead of, though
the likeness be not so great as in lo; because that is the word used by
Josephus just before, as has been already noted on this very occasion,
while, an arrow or dart, is only a poetical word, and never used by
Josephus elsewhere, and is indeed no way suitable to the occasion, this
engine not throwing arrows or darts, but great stones, at this time.

[16] Josephus supposes, in this his admirable speech to the Jews, that
not Abraham only, but Pharaoh king of Egypt, prayed towards a temple
at Jerusalem, or towards Jerusalem itself, in which were Mount Sion and
Mount Moriah, on which the tabernacle and temple did afterwards stand;
and this long before eithe