which rebuilding it
was called Nicopolis, is entirely different from that Emmaus which is
mentioned by St. Luke 24;13; see Reland's Paleestina, lib. II. p. 429,
and under the name Ammaus also. But he justly thinks that that in St.
Luke may well be the same with his Ammaus before us, especially since
the Greek copies here usually make it sixty furlongs distant from
Jerusalem, as does St. Luke, though the Latin copies say only thirty.
The place also allotted for these eight hundred soldiers, as for a Roman
garrison, in this place, would most naturally be not so remote from
Jerusalem as was the other Emmaus, or Nicopolis.

[14] Pliny and others confirm this strange paradox, that provisions laid
up against sieges will continue good for a hundred ears, as Spanheim
notes upon this place.

[15] The speeches in this and the next section, as introduced under the
person of this Eleazar, are exceeding remarkable, and oil the noblest
subjects, the contempt of death, and the dignity and immortality of the
soul; and that not only among the Jews, but among the Indians themselves
also; and are highly worthy the perusal of all the curious. It seems as
if that philosophic lady who survived, ch. 9. sect. 1, 2, remembered
the substance of these discourses, as spoken by Eleazar, and so Josephus
clothed them in his own words: at the lowest they contain the Jewish
notions on these heads, as understood then by our Josephus, and cannot
but deserve a suitable regard from us.

[16] See B. II. ch. 20. sect. 2, where the number of the slain is but
10,000.

[17] Reland here sets down a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish
Rabbins, "We are born that we may die, and die that we may live."

[18] Since Josephus here informs us that some of these Sicarii, or
ruffians, went from Alexandria [which was itself in Egypt, in a large
sense] into Egypt, and Thebes there situated, Reland well observes, from
Vossius, that Egypt sometimes denotes Proper or Upper Egypt, as distinct
from the Delta, and the lower parts near Palestine. Accordingly, as he
adds, those that say it never rains in Egypt must mean the Proper or
Upper Egypt, because it does sometimes rain in the other parts. See the
note on Antiq. B. II. ch. 7. sect. 7, and B. III. ch. 1. sect. 6.

[19] Of this temple of Onias's building in Egypt, see the notes on
Antiq. B. XIII. ch. 3. sect. 1. But whereas it is elsewhere, both of the
War, B. I. ch. 1. sect. 1, and in the Antiquities as now quoted, s