Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/207

Rh and not to be estimated by numbers." (Antiquities of the Jews, book xi. ch. v. § 2.) In his 'History of the Wars of the Jews,' Josephus represents king Agrippa asking the people, "Does any of you extend his hopes as far as beyond the Euphrates, and suppose that those of your own nation that dwell in Adiabene will come to your assistance? But certainly these will not embarrass themselves with an unjust war, nor, if they will follow such ill advice, will the Parthians permit them so to do, for it is their concern to maintain the truce that is between them and the Romans, and they will be supposed to break the covenant between them, if any under their government march against the Romans." (Book ii. ch. 16. § 4.)

From these passages it appears, that though in the time of Josephus there was beyond the Euphrates an immense multitude of Israelites, descendants of the ten tribes, as he declares them, yet they were still under the government and control of the Parthians. To the same effect St. Jerome, in the 5th century, as has been also previously stated, says "Unto this day the ten tribes are subject to the kings of the Parthians; nor has their captivity ever been loosed." And again, "The ten tribes inhabit at this day the cities and mountains of the Medes." These statements are at any rate decisive against the story of those tribes having taken counsel among themselves to leave the multitude of the heathen and go forth into a "further country where never mankind dwelt." But we have further to contend, that both Josephus and St. Jerome were misinformed in these particulars, especially the former, in saying that the main body of the Israelites remained beyond the Euphrates, and that there were in his time only two tribes in Europe and Asia subject to the Romans.

Beyond the supposition of a mistake, however, on this point, we may find in the contents of the 11th book of the 'Antiquities' good reason to conclude, that it has not been handed down to us correctly as Josephus wrote it. Whatever commendations have been passed on him by early writers "as a lover of truth," must be considered as referring to the 'History of the Wars,' of which, as an agent in them on the part of the Romans against his own country, he gave an account agreeable to the Gentile world, such as to merit their approbation. They neither knew nor cared aught about the ancient history of the Jews, and his may justly be pronounced exceedingly fallacious. The most learned of modern critics, Casaubon, Brinch and others (as collected in Havercamp's edition, Ams. 1726), have been