59. BOOK II, CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII.
The history of the spurious Alexander, Archelaus is banished, and Glaphyra dies, after what was to happen to both of them had been shored them in dreams.
1. In the meantime there was a man, who was by birth a Jew, but brought up at Sidon with one of the Roman freed men, who falsely pretended, on account of the resemblance of their countenances, that he was that Alexander who was slain by Herod. This man came to Rome, in hopes of not being detected. He had one who was his assistant, of his own nation, and who knew all the affairs of the kingdom, and instructed him to say, how those that were sent to kill him and Aristobulus had pity upon them and stole them away, by putting bodies that were like theirs in their places. This man deceived the Jews that were at Crete, and got a great deal of money of them for travelling in splendour: and thence sailed to Melos, where he was thought so certainly genuine, that he got a great deal more money, and prevailed with those that had treated him to sail along with him to Rome. So he landed at Dicearchia, [Puteoli,] and got very large presents from the Jews who dwelt there, and was conducted by his father's friends as if he were a king; nay, the resemblance in his countenance procured him so much credit, that those who had seen Alexander, and had known him very well, would take their oaths that he was the very same person. Accordingly, the whole body of the Jews that were at Rome, ran out in crowds to see him, and an innumerable multitude there was who stood in the narrow places, through which he was carried; for those of Melos were so far distracted, that they carried him in a sedan, and maintained a royal attendance for him at their own proper charges.
2. But Cæsar, who knew perfectly well the lineaments of Alexander's face, because he had been accused by Herod before him, doubted the truth of the story, even before he saw the man. However, he suffered the agreeable fame that went of him to have some weight with him, and sent Celedus, one who well knew Alexander, and ordered him to bring the young man to him. But when Cæsar saw him, he immediately discerned a difference in his countenance, and when he had discovered that his whole body was of a more robust texture, and like that of a slave, he understood the whole was a contrivance. But the impudence of what he said greatly provoked him to be angry at him; for when he was asked about Aristobulus, he said, That "he was also preserved alive, and was left on purpose in Cyprus for fear of treachery, because it would be harder for plotters to get them both into their power while they were separate." Then did Cæsar take him by himself privately, and said to him, "I will give thee thy life, if thou wilt discover who it was that persuaded thee to forge such stories." So he said, that he would discover him, and followed Cæsar, and pointed to that Jew who abused the resemblance of his face to get money; for that he had received more presents in every city than ever Alexander did when he was alive. Cæsar laughed at the contrivance, and put this spurious Alexander among his rowers, on account of the strength of his body, but ordered him that persuaded him to be put to death. But for the people of Melos, they had been sufficiently punished for their folly, by the expenses they had been at on his account.
3. And now Archelaus took possession of his ethnarchy, and used not the Jews only, but the Samaritans also, barbarously; and this out of his resentment of their old quarrels with him. Whereupon they both of them sent ambassadors against him to Cæsar, and in the ninth year of his government he was banished to Vienna, a city of Gaul, and his effects were put into Cæsar's treasury. But the report goes, that before he was sent for by Cæsar, he seemed to see nine ears of corn, full and large, but devoured by oxen. When, therefore, he had sent for the diviners, and some of the Chaldeans, and inquired of them what they thought it portended, and when one of them had one interpretation, and another had another, Simon, one of the sect of the Essens, said, That "he thought the ears of corn denoted years, and the oxen denoted a mutation of things, because by their ploughing they made an alteration of the country. That therefore he should reign as many years as there were ears of corn, and after he had passed through various alterations of fortune, should die." Now five days after Archelaus had heard this interpretation, he was called to his trial.
4. I cannot also but think it worthy to be recorded, what dream Glaphyra, the daughter of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, had, who had at first been wife to Alexander, who was the brother of Archelaus, concerning whom we have been discoursing. This Alexander was the son of Herod the king, by whom he was put to death, as we have already related. This Glaphyra was married, after his death, to Juba, king of Lybia, and after his death, was returned home, and lived a widow with her father. Then it was that Archelaus, the ethnarch, saw her, and fell so deeply in love with her, that he divorced Mariamne, who was then his wife, and married her. When, therefore, she was come into Judea, and had been there for a little while, she thought she saw Alexander stand by her, and that he said to her, "Thy marriage with the king of Lybia might have been sufficient for thee; but thou wast not contented with him, but art returned again to my family, to a third husband, and him, thou impudent woman, hast thou chosen for thine husband, who is my brother. However, I shall not overlook the injury thou hast offered me; I shall [soon] have thee again, whether thou wilt or no." Now Glaphyra hardly survived the narration of this dream of hers two days.
CHAPTER VIII.
Archelaus' ethnarchy is reduced into a [Roman] province. The sedition of Judas of Galilee. The three sects of the Jews.
1. AND now Archelaus' part of Judea was reduced into a province; and Coponius, one of the equestrian order among the Romans, was sent as a procurator.
having the power of [life and death] put into his hands by Caesar. Under his administration it was, that a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, prevailed with his countrymen to revolt, and said they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would, after God, submit to mortal men as their lords. This man was a teacher of a peculiar sect of his own, and was not at all like the rest of those their leaders.
2. For there are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees, of the second the Sadducees, and the third sect, which pretends to a severe discipline, are called Essens. These last are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essens reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem continence, and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock, but choose out other persons' children while they are pliable and fit for learning, and esteem them to be of their kindred, and form them according to their own manners. They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage, and the succession of mankind thereby continued; but they guard against the lascivious behaviour of women, and are persuaded that none of them preserve their fidelity to one man.
3. These men are despisers of riches, and so very communicative as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who hath more than another; for it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order, insomuch that among them all there is no appearance of poverty, or excess of riches, but every one's possessions are intermingled with every other's possessions, and so there is, as it were, one patrimony among all the brethren. They think that oil is a defilement; and if any one of them be anointed, without his own approbation, it is wiped off his body; for they think to be sweaty is a good thing, as they do also to be clothed in white garments. They also have stewards appointed to take care of their common affairs, who, every one of them, have no separate business for any, but what is for the uses of them all.
4. They have no one certain city, but many of them dwell in every city; and if any of their sect come from other places, what they have lies open for them, just as if it were their own, and they go into such as they never knew before, as if they had been ever so long acquainted with them. For which reason they carry nothing at all with them when they travel into remote parts, though still they take their weapons with them, for fear of thieves. Accordingly, there is, in every city where they live, one appointed particularly to take care of strangers, and to provide garments and other necessaries for them. But the habit and management of their bodies is such as children use who are in fear of their masters. Nor do they allow of the change of garments or of shoes, till they first be entirely torn to pieces, or worn out by time. Nor do they either buy or sell any thing to one another, but every one of them gives what he hath to him that wanteth it, and receives from him again in lieu of it what may be convenient for himself; and although there be no requital made, they are fully allowed to take what they want of whomsoever they please.
5. And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary; for, before sun-rising, they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers, which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising. After this every one of them is sent away by their curators to exercise some of those arts wherein they are skilled, in which they labour with great diligence till the fifth hour. After which they assemble themselves together again into one place, and when they have clothed themselves in white veils, they then bathe their bodies in cold water. And after this purification is over, they every one meet together in an apartment of their own, into which it is not permitted to any of another sect to enter; while they go, after a pure manner, into the dining-room, as into a certain holy temple, and quietly set themselves down: upon which the baker lays them loaves in order; the cook also brings a single plate of one sort of good, and sets it before every one of them; but a priest says grace before meat, and it is unlawful for any one to taste of the food before grace be said. The same priest, when he hath dined, says grace again after meat, and when they begin, and when they end, they praise God, as he that bestows their food upon them; after which they lay aside their [white] garments, and betake themselves to their labours again till the evening, then they return home to supper, after the same manner, and if there be any strangers there, they sit down with them. Nor is there ever any clamour or disturbance to pollute their house, but they give every one leave to speak in their turn; which silence thus kept in their house, appears to foreigners like some tremendous mystery; the cause of which is that perpetual sobriety they exercise, and the same settled measure of meat and drink that is allotted them, and that such as is abundantly sufficient for them.
6. And truly, as for other things they do nothing but according to the injunctions of their curators: only these two things are done among them at every one's own free-will, which are to assist those that want it, and to show mercy; for they are permitted of their own accord to afford succour to such as deserve it, when they stand in need of it, and to bestow food on those that are in distress; but they cannot give any thing to their kindred without the curators. They dispense their anger after a just manner, and restrain their passion. They are eminent for fidelity, and are the ministers of peace; whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury; for they say, that he who cannot be believed, without [swearing by] God, is already condemned. They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients, and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body, and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers.
7. But now, if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use, for a year, while he continues excluded, and they give also a small hatchet, and the forementioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet he is not even now admitted to live with them: for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years, and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that in the first place he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be an assistant to the righteous, that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority; because no one obtains the government, without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will in no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavour to outshine his subjects, either in his garments or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal any thing from those of his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others; no, not though any one should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels [or messengers.] These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.
8. But for those that are caught in any heinous sins, they cast them out of their society, and he who is thus separated from them, does often die after a miserable manner; for as he is bound by the oath he had taken, and by the customs he hath been engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets
¹ This mention of the names of angels, so particularly preserved by the Essens (if it meant more than those messengers which were employed to bring them the peculiar books of their sect,) looks like a prelude to that worshipping of angels, blamed by St. Paul, as superstitious and unlawful, in some such sort of people as these Essens were, Col. ii 8, as is the prayer to, or towards the sun for his rising every morning, mentioned before, sect. 5, very like those not much later observances made mention of in the preaching of Peter, Authent. Rec. Part II, p. 669, and regarding a kind of worship of angels, of the month, and of the moon, and not celebrating the new moons, or other festivals, unless the moon appeared. Which indeed seems to me the earliest mention of any regard to the moon's phasis in fixing the Jewish calendar, of which the Talmud and later Rabbins talk so much, and upon so very little ancient foundation.
with elsewhere, but is forced to eat grass, and to famish his body with hunger, till he perish; for which reason they receive many of them again, when they are at their last gasp, out of compassion to them, as thinking the miseries they have endured till they came to the very brink of death, to be a sufficient punishment for the sins they had been guilty of.
9. But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than a hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number it is unalterable. What they most of all honour, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses,] whom if any one blaspheme, he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them, or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labours on the seventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stool thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle, (which kind of hatchet is given them, when they are first admitted among them,) and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit, and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a defilement to them.
10. Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet, nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.
11. For their doctrine is this, That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bands of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never ceasing punishments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes, and demigods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixon, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue, and deportations from wickedness collected, whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hopes they have of reward after their death, and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the divine doctrines of the Essens¹ about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.
12. There are also those among them who undertake to² foretell things to come, by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and
¹ Of these Jewish or Essene, and indeed Christian, doctrines, concerning souls, both good and bad in Hades, see that excellent discourse or homily of our Josephus' concerning Hades, at the end of Vol. IV.
Dean Aldrich reckons up three examples of this gift of prophecy in several of these Essens out of Josephus himself, viz. in the History of the War, B. I. ch. III. sect. 5, Vol. III., Judas foretold the death of Antigonus at Strato's Tower; B. II. ch. vii. sect. 3, Simon foretold that Archelaus should reign but nine or ten years; and Antiq. B. XV. ch. x. sect. 1, 5, Vol. II., Manahom foretold that Herod should be king, and should reign tyrannically, and that for more than twenty or even thirty years. All which came to pass accordingly.
being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets: and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions.
13. Moreover, there in another order of Essens, who agree with the rest as to their way of living, and customs, and laws, but differ from them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of succession; nay rather, that if all men should be of the same opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses for three years, and if they find that they have their natural purgations thrice, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they then actually marry them. But they do not use to accompany with their wives when they are with child, as a demonstration that they do not marry out of regard to pleasure, but for the sake of posterity. Now the women go into the baths with some of their garments on, as the men do with somewhat girded about them. And these are the customs of this order of Essens.
14. But then as to the two other orders at first mentioned, the Pharisees are those who are esteemed most skilful in the exact explication of their laws, and introduce the first sect. These ascribe all to fate, [or providence,] and to God, and yet allow, that to act what is right, or the contrary, is principally in the power of men: although fate does co-operate in every action. They say, that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are
¹ There is so much more here about the Essens, than is cited from Josephus in Porphyry and Eusebius, and yet so much less about the Pharisees and Saddinees, the two other Jewish sects, than would naturally be expected in proportion to the Essens or third sect, nay, than seems to be referred to by himself elsewhere, that one is tempted to suppose Josephus had at first written less of the one, and more of the two others than his present copies afford us; as also that, by some unknown accident, our present copies are here made up of the larger edition in the first removed into other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment. But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good or what is evil, is at men's own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord, and regard for the public; but the behaviour of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them. And this is what I had to say concerning the philosophic sects among the Jews.
case, and of the smaller in the second. However, what Josephus says in the name of the Pharisees, that only the souls of good men go out of one body into another, although all souls be immortal, and still the souls of the bad are liable to eternal punishment; as also what he says afterwards, Antiq. B. XVIII. ch. 1, sect 3, Vol. III., that the soul's vigour is immortal, and that under the earth they receive rewards or punishments according as their lives have been virtuous or vicious in the present world; that to the bad is allotted an eternal prison, but that the good are permitted to live again in this world, are nearly agreeable to the doctrines of Christianity. Only Josephus' rejection of the return of the wicked into other bodies, or into this world, which he grants to the good, looks somewhat like a contradiction to St. Paul's account of the doctrine of the Jews, that "they themselves allowed that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Acts xxiv. 15. Yet because Josephus' account is that of the Pharisees, and St. Paul's that of the Jews in general, and of himself, the contradiction is not very certain.