Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/16

 of his early manhood, his visit to Rome at the age of twenty-six—of all these things we may read in his own words. Although he finally threw in his lot with the Pharisees, we may judge from the three years' stay with Ban(n)us, the specially full account which he gives of the Essenes, and other indications, that the tenets and communistic life of that order left a lasting impression. If we may again attempt a synchronism with events in the life of St. Paul, we may say that the Rabbis were listening to the boy about the time of the first Council of the Church at Jerusalem, he was receiving his schooling during the third missionary journey, and his return to Jerusalem nearly coincided with the arrest of the Apostle in that city.

The journey to Rome ( 63-4), like St. Paul's a few years earlier, began with a shipwreck. Its nominal purpose was to plead the cause of certain priests who had been sent by Felix to Italy for trial. Chronology will hardly permit us to accept the suggestion of Edersheim to connect St. Paul's liberation with the mission of Josephus; but he cannot have failed, during his stay in the city on the eve of the Neronian persecution, to become acquainted, if not with the work of the Apostle, at least with the existence of the Christian community. Through the influence of Poppæa, the mistress and afterwards wife of Nero, who coquetted with Judaism (Josephus's words imply that she was a proselyte), he was successful in obtaining the release of the priests and returned to Judæa laden with presents. Besides the expressed object, was there any ulterior motive in this visit to the capital? Edersheim suggests that, foreseeing the trend of events, Josephus was already fired with the