XLV

OF JOSEPHUS, THE JEWISH HISTORIAN

WE SHOULD not be astonished that the history of Flavian Josephus should meet with antagonists, when it appeared at Rome. It is true there were but very few copies of it: an able copyist could not transcribe it in less than three months. The books were very dear and very scarce: few Romans deigned to read the Annals of an insignificant nation of slaves, whom the nobles and the plebeians equally despised. It nevertheless appears by Josephus’s answer to Appion, that he met with a small number of readers; and we also find that this small number looked upon him as a liar and a visionary.

We should put ourselves in the place of the Romans in the time of Titus, to conceive with what contempt mixed with horror the conquerors of the known world, and the legislators of nations, must have looked upon the history of the Jewish people. These Romans could scarce know that Josephus had drawn the greatest part of his facts from the sacred books dictated by the Holy Ghost. They could not have been instructed that Josephus had added many things to the Bible, and had passed many over in silence. They were unacquainted that he had taken the foundation of some of his stories from the third book of Esdras; and that this book of Esdras is one of those that are called Apocryphal.

What must a Roman senator think in reading these Eastern tales? Josephus relates (book X, chap. xii) that Darius, the son of Astyages, had appointed the prophet Daniel governor of three hundred and sixty cities, when he forbade, upon pain of death, to pray to any God for a month. Certainly the scripture does not say that Daniel governed three hundred and sixty cities.

Josephus seems to imagine afterwards that all the Persians turned Jews.

The same Josephus gives the second temple of the Jews rebuilt by Zorobabel a singular origin.

“Zorobabel,” says he, “was the intimate friend of King Darius.” A Jewish slave an intimate friend of the king of kings! this is much the same as if one of our historians should tell us, that a fanatic of the Cevennes released from the galleys was the intimate friend of Louis XIV.

Be this as it may, according to Flavian Josephus, Darius, who was a very sensible prince, proposed to all his court a question worthy of the Mercure Gallant,13 namely which had the most power, wine, kings, or women? The person who gave the best answer was to be recompensed with a flaxen head-dress, a purple robe, a golden necklace, to drink out of a golden cup, lie in a golden bed, ride in a golden chariot, drawn by horses with golden harnesses, and become the king’s cousin by patent.

Darius feted himself upon his golden throne to hear the answers of his academy of wits. One entered into a dissertation in favor of wine, another was for kings. Zorobabel was an advocate for women. There is nothing so powerful as them; for I have seen, said he, Apamea, the mistress of the king my master, give his sacred majesty gentle slaps on the face, and take off his turban to dress her head with.

Darius found Zorobabel’s answer so smart, that he immediately caused the temple of Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

This story is nearly similar to that which one of our most ingenious academics relates of Soliman and a turnup-nose, which has served for the ground-work of a very pretty burlesque opera. But we are compelled to acknowledge, that the author of the turnup-nose has not been gratified with either a golden bed, or a golden coach, and that the king of France has never called him cousin: we are no longer in the time of Darius.

These reveries, with which Josephus has crammed the holy books were doubtless, amongst the pagans, prejudicial to the facts which the Bible contains. The Romans could not distinguish between what had been drawn from an impure spring, and what Josephus had extracted from a pure spring. This sacred Bible, which we have, was either unknown to the Romans, or as much despised by them as Josephus himself. The whole was equally the object of raillery and that sovereign contempt which the readers conceived for the Jewish history. The apparitions of angels to the patriarchs, the passage of the Red Sea, the ten plagues of Egypt, the inconceivable multiplication of the Jewish people in so short a time, and in so circumscribed a spot; all the prodigies which signalized this unknown nation, were treated with that disdain which a people, conquerors of so many nations, a regal people, but to whom God had not divulged himself, naturally had for a little people reduced to slavery.

Josephus knew very well that all he wrote would be irreconcilable to profane writers: he says in several places, “the reader shall form what judgment he pleases of this.” He is afraid of startling the minds of people; he diminishes as much as possible the faith that is due to miracles. We find he is every moment ashamed of being a Jew, at the very time he is exerting himself to make his nation appear amiable to their conquerors. The Romans, who were endowed with no other than common sense, and as yet had not faith, should doubtless be forgiven, for not considering the history of Josephus as any other than a miserable collection of ridiculous fables, related to them in order to extract some money from his masters. Bless God, we who have the happiness to be more enlightened than the Tituses, the Trajans, the Antoniuses, and the whole senate of Roman knights our masters; we, who are enlightened by superior luminaries, can distinguish between the absurd fables of Josephus, and the sublime truths that are declared to us by the holy scripture.