n the name of
the Pharisees, that only the souls of good men go out of one body into
another, although all souls be immortal, and still the souls of the
bad are liable to eternal punishment; as also what he says afterwards,
Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 1. sect. 3, that the soul's vigor is immortal, and
that under the earth they receive rewards or punishments according as
their lives have been virtuous or vicious in the present world; that to
the bad is allotted an eternal prison, but that the good are permitted
to live again in this world; are nearly agreeable to the doctrines of
Christianity. Only Josephus's rejection of the return of the wicked into
other bodies, or into this world, which he grants to the good, looks
somewhat like a contradiction to St. Paul's account of the doctrine
of the Jews, that they "themselves allowed that there should be a
resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust," Acts 24:15. Yet
because Josephus's account is that of the Pharisees, and St. Patti's
that of the Jews in general, and of himself the contradiction is not
very certain.

[9] We have here, in that Greek MS. which was once Alexander Petavius's,
but is now in the library at Leyden, two most remarkable additions to
the common copies, though declared worth little remark by the editor;
which, upon the mention of Tiberius's coming to the empire, inserts
first the famous testimony of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ, as it
stands verbatim in the Antiquities, B. XVIII. ch. 3. sect. 3, with
some parts of that excellent discourse or homily of Josephus concerning
Hades, annexed to the work. But what is here principally to be noted
is this, that in this homily, Josephus having just mentioned Christ,
as "God the Word, and the Judge of the world, appointed by the Father,"
etc., adds, that "he had himself elsewhere spoken about him more nicely
or particularly."

[10] This use of corban, or oblation, as here applied to the sacred
money dedicated to God in the treasury of the temple, illustrates our
Savior's words, Mark 7:11, 12.

[11] Tacitus owns that Caius commanded the Jews to place his effigies in
their temple, though he be mistaken when he adds that the Jews thereupon
took arms.

[12] This account of a place near the mouth of the river Belus in
Phoenicia, whence came that sand out of which the ancients made their
glass, is a known thing in history, particularly in Tacitus and Strabo,
and more largely in Pliny.

[13] This Memnon had