The Ecclesiastical History. Eusebius
the inner temple, which was of bronze and very massive, and which at evening was closed with difficulty by twenty men, and rested upon iron-bound beams, and had bars sunk deep in the ground, was seen at the sixth hour of the night to open of itself.
5. And not many days after the feast, on the twenty-first of the month Artemisium,4 a certain marvelous vision was seen which passes belief. The prodigy might seem fabulous were it not related by those who saw it, and were not the calamities which followed deserving of such signs. For before the setting of the sun chariots and armed troops were seen throughout the whole region in mid-air, wheeling through the clouds and encircling the cities.
6. And at the feast which is called Pentecost, when the priests entered the temple at night, as was their custom, to perform the services, they said that at first they perceived a movement and a noise, and afterward a voice as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us go hence.’5
7. But what follows is still more terrible; for a certain Jesus, the son of Ananias, a common countryman, four years before the war,6 when the city was particularly prosperous and peaceful, came to the feast, at which it was customary for all to make tents at the temple to the honor of God,7 and suddenly began to cry out: ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the temple, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against all the people.’ Day and night he went through all the alleys crying thus.
8. But certain of the more distinguished citizens, vexed at the ominous cry, seized the man and beat him with many stripes. But without uttering a word in his own behalf, or saying anything in particular to those that were present, he continued to cry out in the same words as before.
9. And the rulers, thinking, as was true, that the man was moved by a higher power, brought him before the Roman governor.8 And then, though he was scourged to the bone, he neither made supplication nor shed tears, but, changing his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, he answered each stroke with the words, ‘Woe, woe unto Jerusalem.’”
10. The same historian records another fact still more wonderful than this. He says9 that a certain oracle was found in their sacred writings which declared that at that time a certain person should go forth from their country to rule the world. He himself understood that this was fulfilled in Vespasian.
11. But Vespasian did not rule the whole world, but only that part of it which was subject to the Romans. With better right could it be applied to Christ; to whom it was said by the Father, “Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession.”10 At that very time, indeed, the voice of his holy apostles “went throughout all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”11
1 Josephus, B. J. Bk. VI. chap. 5, §3. 2 καταψευδόμενοι τοῦ θεοῦ. In the previous paragraph Josephus says that a great many false prophets were suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people. It is to these false prophets therefore that he refers here, and I have consequently felt at liberty thus to translate the Greek word given above, instead of rendering merely “liars against God” (as Crusè does), which is indefinite, and might have various meanings. 3 The feast referred to is the feast of the Passover. The Greek name of the month used here is ξανθικός, which was the name of a Macedonian month corresponding to our April. According to Whiston, Josephus regularly used this name for the Jewish month Nisan (the first month of the Jewish year), in which case this event took place six days before the Passover, which began on the 14th of Nisan. 4 ᾽Αρτεμίσιος. According to Liddell and Scott, this was a Spartan and Macedonian month corresponding to a part of the ninth Attic month (ἐλαφηβολιών), which in turn corresponded to the latter part of our March and the early part of April. According to Wieseler, Josephus used the word to denote the second month of the Jewish year, the month Iyar. 5 The majority of the mss. of Eusebius read μεταβαίνομεν, “we go hence.” But at least one of the best mss. and a majority of the mss. of Josephus, supported by Rufinus and Jerome (who render migremus), read μεταβαίνωμεν, “let us go hence,” and I have followed Stephanus, Valesius, Stroth, and the English and German translators in adopting that reading. 6 That is, in 62 a.d. for, according to Josephus, the war began in 66 a.d. A little further on, Josephus says that he continued his cry for seven years and five months, when he was slain during the siege of Jerusalem. This shows that he is here, as well as elsewhere, reckoning the date of the beginning of the war as 66 a.d. 7 That is, the Feast of Tabernacles, which began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish year, and continued seven days. 8 This was Albinus, as we should know from the date of the event, and as Josephus directly states in the context. He was procurator from 61 or 62 to 64 a.d. See above, Bk. II. chap. 23, note 35, and chap. 22, note 1. 9 See Josephus, B. J. VI. 5.4, and cf. ibid. III. 8. 9. 10 Ps. ii. 8. 11 Ps. xix. 4.
Chapter IX.—Josephus and the Works which he has left.
1. After all this it is fitting that we should know something in regard to the origin and family of Josephus, who has contributed so much to the history in hand. He himself gives us information on this point in the following words:1 “Josephus, the son of Mattathias, a priest of Jerusalem, who himself fought against the Romans in the beginning and was compelled to be present at what happened afterward.”
2. He was the most noted of all the Jews of that day, not only among his own people, but also among the Romans, so that he was honored by the erection of a statue in Rome,2 and his works were deemed worthy of a place in the library.3
3. He wrote the whole of the Antiquities of the Jews4 in twenty books, and a history of the war with the Romans which took place in his time, in seven books.5 He himself testifies that the latter work was not only written in Greek, but that it was also translated by himself into his native tongue.6 He is worthy of credit here because of his truthfulness in other matters.
4. There are extant also two other books of his which are worth reading. They treat of the antiquity of the Jews,7