"If we may believe
Tacitus." Pears. Anhal. Paulin. p. 8; Marshall's Tables, at A.D. 49.

[17] i.e. Herod king of Chalcis.

[18] Not long after this beginning of Florus, the wickedest of all the
Roman procurators of Judea, and the immediate occasion of the Jewish
war, at the twelfth year of Nero, and the seventeenth of Agrippa, or
A.D. 66, the history in the twenty books of Josephus's Antiquities ends,
although Josephus did not finish these books till the thirteenth of
Domitian, or A.D. 93, twenty-seven years afterward; as he did not finish
their Appendix, containing an account of his own life, till Agrippa was
dead, which happened in the third year of Trajan, or A. D. 100, as I
have several times observed before.

[19] Here we may note, that three millions of the Jews were present at
the passover, A.D. 65; which confirms what Josephus elsewhere informs
us of, that at a passover a little later they counted two hundred and
fifty-six thousand five hundred paschal lambs, which, at twelve to each
lamb, which is no immoderate calculation, come to three millions and
seventy-eight thousand. See B. VI. ch. 9. sect. 3.

[20] Take here Dr. Hudson's very pertinent note. "By this action," says
he, "the killing of a bird over an earthen vessel, the Jews were exposed
as a leprous people; for that was to be done by the law in the cleansing
of a leper, Leviticus 14. It is also known that the Gentiles reproached
the Jews as subject to the leprosy, and believed that they were driven
out of Egypt on that account. This that eminent person Mr. Reland
suggested to me."

[21] Here we have examples of native Jews who were of the equestrian
order among the Romans, and so ought never to have been whipped or
crucified, according to the Roman laws. See almost the like case in St.
Paul himself, Acts 22:25-29.

[22] This vow which Bernice [here and elsewhere called queen, not only
as daughter and sister to two kings, Agrippa the Great, and Agrippa
junior, but the widow of Herod king of Chalcis] came now to accomplish
at Jerusalem was not that of a Nazarite, but such a one as religious
Jews used to make, in hopes of any deliverance from a disease, or other
danger, as Josephus here intimates. However, these thirty days' abode at
Jerusalem, for fasting and preparation against the oblation of a proper
sacrifice, seems to be too long, unless it were wholly voluntary in
this great lady. It is not required in the law of Moses relating to
Nazarites, N