tutes of Mofes, and from the Care he took to prevent that Disease from fpreading and encreafing among the Jews; by confining Lepers to retired and separate Places, forbidding 'em to come into Towns and Villages, and declaring all impure that should touch them, or any Thing that belonged to them, or had the leaft Commerce and Communication with them; and by enjoining to those that were recovered from it, many Wafhings, Cleanfings, Shavings, Purifications, and Sacrifices, before they could be admitted into the Holy City again. And can it be reasonably fuppofed that one who had laboured under that Distemper himself, would have fhewn fuch extreme Severity to those infected People, and enacted fuch hard Laws, which could fo eafily have been retorted upon him, and muft needs have covered him with Shame and * Confufion? This is the Substance of Jofephus's Answer to this Slander of Manetho, which feems to be very folid and juft. But I wish he had proceeded farther, traced it to its Original, and fhewn us what it was that firft gave Rife to that Calumny; which I the more wonder he did not, fince it was fo plain and obvious, and might be so easily accounted for, from the Writings of Moses. I mean from the Plague of Boils and Blains, which the Egyptians were vifited with upon the Account of the Jews, and which, together with other Plagues and Judgments, prevailed at last upon their har

ከ

* Τοῖς γὰρ λεπρῶσιν ἀπείρηκε, μήτε μένειν ἐν Πόλες, μήτε ἐν κώμῃ κατοικεῖν, ἀλλὰ μόνες περιπατεῖν καλεχισμένες τα ἱμάτια, καὶ τὸν αψάμενον αυτῶν ἢ ὁμώροφον γενόμενον, καὶ καθατὸν ἡγεῖται. Καὶ μὴν κἂν θεραπευθῇ τὸ νόσημα, καὶ τὴν αὐτῇ φύσιν ἀπολάβῃ, προείρηκέ τινας αγνείας, καθαρμές πηγαίων ὑδάτων λατροῖς, καὶ ξυρήσεις πάσης τριχὸς, πολλάς τε κελέυει καὶ πατοίας ἐπιτελέσαντα θυσίας, τότε παρελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ἱερὰν πολιν. Κάιτοι τἐναντίον εἰκὸς ἦν προνοίᾳ τινὶ καὶ φιλαμθρωπίᾳ χρήσασθαι τὸν ἐν τῇ συμφορᾷ ταύτῃ γεγονότα πρὸς Tès quoins aule Jusuxhoarlas. Jofeph. contra Appion. Aurel. Allobrog, p. 1046.

B 4

den'd

4

*

den'd and unrelenting King to fuffer them to depart out of Egypt, and to go as they defired, to facrifice to God in the Wilderness. This, I make no doubt but the Egyptians in Procefs of Time were willing to forget, to fhift off the Scandal from their own Nation, and to fix that upon the Jews which in reality had happened to themselves. This, if it wants any Proof, feems to be confirm ed by the Account which Juftin has given of the Jews, which, tho' falfe and fabulous in the main, yet fets this very Matter in a clear and proper Light. When the Egyptians, fays he, fuffered Scabs and fcurfey Sores, fcabiem & vitiliginem, they confulted their Gods, who advised 'em, by all Means, to get rid of the Jews, and drive them out of their Country, left the Plague and Infection fhould fpread and increase among them; that the Jews departing out of their Coafts, under the Condua of Mofes, ftole away the Sacra, or facred Veffels of the Egyptians; that these pursued after them, but by Storms and Tempefts were baffled in their Defign, and obliged to return home. Who does not fee fome bright Gleams of Light break thro' this Narrative of Justin, which feems to be only a Repetition of the Account which Mofes has given of thefe Facts? Here the Egyptians are faid exprefly to have been vifited with Boils, Leprofy, and Scabs, and advised by the Gods to drive the Jews out of their Land; that they robbed and fpoiled the Egyptians, who pursuing after them, were obliged, not by Force, Battle, or open Violence, but by the visible Interpofition of

Sed Ægyptii cum fcabiem & vitiliginem (which laft Word, in Arnobius, fignifies Leprofy) paterentur refponfo moniti eum (Mofem) ne peftis ad plures ferperet, terminis Ægypti pellunt; dux igitur exfulum factus facra Ægyptiorum furto abftulit, quæ repetentes Ægyptii domum redire tempeftatibus compulfi funt, Tuit. lib. xxxvi. cap. 2.

Pro

Providence, and by Storms and Tempests, (which directly points out their Destruction in the RedSea) to return without Success to their Country + again. So that, upon the whole, the Account of the Roman Writer, like Telephus's Spear, carries its own Balm and Cure along with it; inftead of fhaking the Credit of the Hiftory of Mofes, confirms and ftrengthens it, and effectually confutes this Calumny, which Dio, Tacitus, and other Authors have copied from this Egyptian Writer. The next Author I fhall examine, who has fhewn his Spite and Ill-will against the Jews, is Appion the Grammarian, or, as fome write his Name, * Apion, with a fingle p, which, 'tis faid, he affumed by reafon of its Resemblance with Apis, one of the Deities which the Egyptians worthipped under the Figure of an Ox. But the Jews have no Reafon to be concerned at the Slanders of fuch a noify, vain, and empty Writer; who was fo puffed up with Pride, that he used to promife immortal Fame to those to whom he dedicated his Works, and whom he celebrated in his Writings. For his Noife, Emptiness, and Vanity, the Emperor Tiberius ufed to call him Cymbalum Mundi, the Drum or Cymbal of the World; tho' Pliny faith, he ought rather to have been called the Cymbal of Fame, from the harsh and difagreeable Sound he gave.

+ See Shuckford's 3d Vol.

This Name, and its Refemblance with the Greek Participle Tv, drew a late very celebrated Critick, the famous Father Rapin, into a very ridiculous Miftake, who quoting a Paffage of Euftathius upon Homer, who faith, that a certain Painter went to Athens, to confult that Poet's fine Defcription of Jupiter, in order to draw the Figure of that God after it, adds a gafs i. e. going home, he drew his Picture; which that learned Man very unluckily thus tranflates, " as is related by Apion." Whereas Apian is entirely out of the Queftion here; the Words implying no more than that the Painter, TV, going home, drew his Image of Jupiter by the Idea he had received from that Paffage

in Homer.

But

*

But he was for nothing more remarkable than for his inveterate Hatred to the Jews, which put him upon a Project that, without a particular Interpofition of Providence, muft have ended in their utter Deftruction. What I mean was, a Journey he undertook to Rome, to complain to the Emperor Caligula, that the Jews at Alexandria refufed to admit his Statues and Images in their Temple. This was touching that Prince to the Quick, and wounding in the tender Part one who had declar'd himfelf a God, and expected to be worfhipped as fuch by his Subjects. On this cruel and fpiteful Errand Appion was fent by the People of Alexandria, who were mortal Enemies to the Jews, of whom there were very great Numbers in that City. For, befides the old Grudge between the Egyptians and the Hebrews in the Time of Mofes, they had continual Jars and Heart-burnings among them, occafioned partly by the Difference of their Religions, and partly by the Zeal and Indifcretion of the Jews, who lived among them,

*The fame Complaint was made afterwards of the Jews at Jerufalem, to that Prince, who, incensed at the Disrespect they fhewed to his Statues, fent Orders to Petronius, the Governor there, to deftroy without Mercy, every one that made the least Oppofition to his Will: But that merciful Commander, when he faw the Obstinacy of the Jews, and that every Soul of them would be cut off rather than fuffer fuch a Profanation of the Temple, unwilling to deftroy fo many innocent People, that acted out of a Principle of Confcience, wrote to the Emperor, and begged of him to foften and mitigate the Sentence; but the cruel and unrelenting Prince was fo far from complying with this Re-' monftrance, that he fent an Exprefs to the other Officers of the Army to execute the Sentence with the utmost Rigour, and to cut off the Governor himself, who had prefumed to delay the Execution of his Orders. In these fad and melancholy Circumftances, when every Thing threatened the Ruin of the Jews, Prefentemque viris intentant omnia Mortem---the News came of the Murder of Caligula himself, which sheltered them from the Storm that was just ready to break in upon them, and faved them for that Time from Ruin and Destruction.

and

and who, fhocked at the grofs Acts of Idolatry
which they faw practifed in that City, where they
worshipped Bulls, Dogs, and other of the vileft
Animals, could not help infulting and reproaching
them for fo fhameful and scandalous a Worfhip;
which made those, to be even with them, invent
all Manner of Calumnies and spiteful Stories of the
Jews, and this ridiculous one among the reft, of
their worshipping the Head of an Afs in their
Temple. This was, firft published by Appion,
who writes, that when Antiochus Epiphanes broke
into the Temple and plundered it, he found an
Afs's Head of folid Gold, richly adorned, to
which they paid divine Honours, and worshipped
as a God. That this filly and improbable Story
was invented by the Egyptians, out of Revenge
for the Reproaches the Jews had caft upon their
Worship, feems plain from Jofephus's Anfwer, and
the Manner he retorts it upon Appion: Of all
Men in the World (faith he) the Egyptians have the
leaft Reafon to object this to our Nation, fince the
worshipping an Afs, was the Charge true, is not
worse than that of Ferrets, Goats, and other vile
Animals, which they themselves adore as their
Gods. If Appion had not the Ignorance and Stu-
pidity of an Afs, with the Impudence of a Dog,
which the Egyptians worship, he would never have
laid this to our Charge. We do not give that
Honour and Worship to this vile Animal, which
they pay to Afps, Crocodiles, and Vipers, e-
fteeming those happy, and Favourites of God,
who are ftung or deftroyed by them.
put our Affes to the fame Ufe as all other wife and
fenfible Nations do; we employ them in carrying
our Burdens, in our Works, Labours, and our
Agriculture, and punish and correct them when
they are lazy and fluggish, and do not perform

We