S

last mentioned, setting forward the rebuilding of the temple. And then he goes on, out of the same romance, to relate as consequential to this second return, (which is wholly fictitious) all that which the Scriptures tell us was done after the first; and in some particulars very much exceed the fictions of the romancer himself; for he makes those who came from Babylon to Judea, in this fictitious return, to be four millions eight thousand six hundred and eighty-four men, a monstrous number! and the women and children that belonged to them to be no more than forty thousand seven hundred and forty-two, a disproportion which is utterly incredible, especially among those who had plurality of wives. And he makes Xerxes, who succeeded Darius-Hystaspes, to have been that Artaxerxes of the holy Scriptures who sent Ezra and Nehemiah to Jerusalem; whereas the thirty-second year of that Artaxerxes is mentioned in Scripture; and it is certain the reign of Xerxes did not exceed twenty-one years. He brings not Nehemiah to Jerusalem" till the twenty-fifth year of that Artaxerxes; whereas the Scriptures tell us, he came thither in the twentieth; and he makes him to be employed there three years and an half in the rebuilding of the walls of the city; whereas we read in the saered text, that it was done in fifty-two days. And since Josephus hath in this book made all these mistakes, besides many more, which it would be too long to relate, I hope it will not be thought strange, that I assert what he saith in this same book, in reference to Sanballat, is a mistake also: for therein he tells us of him, That, being made governour of Samaria for the last Darius, he married his daughter to one whose father had been high priest of the Jews; and that this son-in-law having, for this marriage, as being contrary to the Jewish law, been deprived of his priesthood, and driven out of Jerusalem, he obtained from Alexander (to whom he revolted while at the siege of Tyre,) license to build on Mount Gerizim, near Sa

r Antiq. lib. 11, c. 5. s Neh. xiii, 6.

t Canon Ptolemæi.

u Antiq. lib. 11, c. §.

x Neh. ii, 1.

y Neh. vi, 15.

a Antiq. lib. 11, c. 7, 8.

maria, a temple like that at Jerusalem, and to make his son-in-law high priest of it; and that, after having attended Alexander at this siege of Tyre, and also at that of Gaza with eight thousand men, about the time of the taking of the last of those he died.' Thus far this historian. That Sanballat thus married his daughter to a son of an high priest of the Jews, and built a temple on Mount Gerizim for him, readily acknowledge; but that he built this temple by license from Alexander, or lived down to those times, is a great mistake in the relater as any that I have abovementioned: that he should build this temple by license from Alexander, is inconsistent with what Josephus himself tells us of the matter; for, according to him, Sanballat did not revolt to Alexander till he was set down before Tyre; and that siege and the siege of Gaza both together lasted only nine months. And therefore, if we suppose Sanballat to have obtained this license from Alexander in the very beginning of these nine months, he could have had but nine months wherein to build a temple like that at Jerusalem, which cost the labour of many years, and the work of a multitude of hands to erect it. And how is it possible such a structure could be built in so short a time, and that especially since all that while neither Sanballat himself could be present to attend it, nor those by whose hands and help the work was to be effected? For during all that time, Josephus tells us, Sanballat attended Alexander in the camp, and had eight thousand of his Samaritans there with him, who being the main strength and flower of that people, it is wholly improbable that, in their absence, those who were left behind should have capacity enough to undertake, or hands enough to go through with such a work, especially when the chief projector, Sanballat himself, by whose direction all was to be done, was absent also. It being therefore utterly improbable, if not altogether impossible, that this temple could have been built, by a license from Alexander, in the life-time of Sanballat, it must follow, that, if it were built at all by virtue of such a license from Alexander, it must have been built by the Samaritans after Sanballat was dead. But

c

a

the ill circumstances on which the Samaritans were with Alexander immediately after the time when Josephus saith Sanballat died, and the great misfortunes which they thereon fell into, make this as improbable as the former: for Alexander was no sooner gone into Egypt, where he immediately marched after his taking of Gaza, but the Samaritans, rising in a mutiny against Andromachus, a favourite of his, whom he had left governour of Syria, set fire to the house where he was, and burned him to death; which justly provoked Alexander to so severe a revenge against them, that, on his return, he put a great number of them to death, expelled all the rest of them out of their city, and gave it to be inhabited by a colony of his Macedonians, and added their country to that of the Jews. And as to the eight thousand men which had followed his camp, he sent them into Thebais, the remotest province of Egypt, and there settled them on such lands as he caused to be distributed among them in that province, without suffering them any more to return into their own country. The remainder that survived this ruin were permitted to dwell in Sechem, a small village near Samaria, which hath from that time been the head seat of that people; and there they have remained ever since, even unto this day. And whether a people, who had in so high a degree provoked Alexander, should be allowed to build such a temple by his favour, or, if they had, could be at all in a capacity, when thus broken and ruined, to accomplish it, is an easy question to answer. Whoever shall consider this in both its branches, will, no doubt, think it in each of them improbable; and that, with a license from Alexander, neither before the death of Sanballat, nor after it, could any such temple have been built by the Samaritans. However, I deny not, but that, as hath been already said, such a temple was built by Sanballat upon Mount Gerizim, and upon the occasion mentioned, that is, of the marriage of his daughter with a son of the high priest of the Jews.

a Eusebii Chronicon ad annum 1685. In Lat. Hieronymi, p. 137. in Græcis, p 56, 177. edit. ult Q. Curtius, lib. 4, c. 8.

b Josephus contra Apionem, lib. 2, p. 1063.

c Josephus Antiq. lib. 11, c. 8.

year

But this was done long before the time of the last Darius, who was called Codomannus, in the time of a former Darius, surnamed Nothus, who was king of Persia eighty-eight years before him; for it appears from Scripture, that this marriage was consummated d while Joiada the son of Eliashib was high priest of the Jews, and he entered on his office in the eleventh of this Darius; and four years afterwards, (that is, in the fifth year of the high priesthood of the said Joiada, and in the fifteenth year of Darius Nothus,) was it, that his son was thus married to the daughter of Sanballat; as will be hereafter shewn in its proper place. And upon this marriage followed all the rest which Josephus relates of the building of the temple upon Mount Gerizim by Sanballat, and the making of his son-in-law high priest of it. So that all this was done, not in the time of Darius Codomannus, in the last year of his reign, or by license from Alexander, but in the time of Darius Nothus, and by license from him only, granted in the fifteenth year of his reign to Sanballat for this purpose. And this clears the whole objection; for Darius Nothus, in Ptolemy's canon, immediately succeeded Artaxerxes Longimanus, in whose twentieth year Sanballat is first made mention of; and supposing him then to have been thirty-five years old, he would, in the fifteenth year of Darius Nothus, be no more than seventy-one; which is an age that more than the tenth part of mankind commonly arrive unto, if we may make a judgment hereof from the bills of mortality in London, where commonly the aged make a tenth part of the burials; and none that die there use to be put into those bills under that title unless they outlive seventy. That which led Josephus into this errour, I take it, was the common notion which hath long obtained among his countrymen, that the Darius whom Alexander conquered was the son of Ahasuerus by Esther; and therefore, on his making Artaxerxes Longimanus to be Abasuerus, he makes the Darius that succeeded him, that is,

d Neh. xiii, 28.

e R. Abraham Levita in Historiea Cabala. David Gantz in Zamach David. Abraham Zacutus in Juchasin, &.

Darius Nothus, to be the last Darius who was subdued by that conqueror. And that this was his opinion appears plainly from his history; for, having therein given us an account of all the kings of Persia, from Cyrus to Artaxerxes Longimanus, in that exact series of succession in which they reigned one after the other, without omitting so much as the Magian usurper, though he reigned only seven months, after Artaxerxes Longimanus he names none other but that last Darius, in whom the Persian empire ended; which is a plain argument, that he took that last Darius to have been the Darius that succeeded Artaxerxes Longimanus; and, if so, the age of Sanballat will then put no difficulty upon us. But fIsaac Vossius, by an emendation of the text of Josephus, introduceth thereinto another Artaxerxes, as mentioned by him to reign in Persia between Artaxerxes Longimanus and the last Darius for whereas, in the seventh chapter of the eleventh book of his Antiquities, in all the printed copies, we read of Bagoses, that he was general r λas 'Agražéęžu, that is, of the people of Artaxerxes; he would have it to be τε ἄλλο Αρταξέρξη, which may be rendered in English, either of the other Artaxerxes, or of another Artaxerxes; and, to justify the emendation, he brings the authority of Ruffinus, who, in his aversion of Josephus, translates this place as if the copy which he used had it ri ἄλλα ̓Αρταξέρξε. But Ruffinus' Latin version is no sufficient standard whereby to judge of the original, since in many places he fantastically varies from it. And since there were two Artaxerxeses that reigned in Persia after Artaxerxes Longimanus, that is, Artaxerxes Mnemon and Artaxerxes Ochus, whether by this ἄλλος Αρταξέρξης we understand the other Artaxerxes, or another Artaxerxes, the propriety of speech will bear neither of them in that place; and, if it could be, a long received reading ought in no ancient author to be varied from, without the authority of some good manuscript to justify the emendation; and there is none alleged in this case. So that all that Vossius saith about it can amount to no more than a conjecture, which we f In Chronologia Sacra, c. 10, p. 150.