Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/35

 speech in the Sanhedrin (Acts v. 36 f.). In the full account of the succession of Archelaus we may discover the historical event which suggested our Lord's parable of the nobleman travelling to a far country (Luke xix. 12 ff.). We have independent narratives, partly inconsistent with those in the N.T., of the marriage of Herod the Tetrarch with Herodias and of the death of Herod Agrippa I. In a beautiful story we read of a royal lady who, like Paul and Barnabas, brought relief to famine-stricken Jerusalem in the days of Claudius. The expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Tiberius forms a precedent for the similar action of Claudius (Acts xviii. 2). With the later scenes in St. Paul's life we may compare what is told us of Felix and Festus, and again of Agrippa II and the marriage of Felix and Drusilla; while the account of the Cypriot magician and his influence over Felix strangely resembles that of Elymas and Sergius Paulus (Acts xiii. 6 ff.). We may read, moreover, of the death of James "the Lord's brother"; of the use of the word "Corban" (Mark vii. 11) as an oath;[10] of the tenets of the Jewish sects (in more than one passage),[11] and how the Pharisees acquired their power a century before the time of Christ;[12] we have a detailed account of the Jewish treatment in the first century of a case of demoniacal possession;[13] and, last but not least, we find in the scenes from the Jewish War the fulfilment of our Lord's predictions of the fate of Jerusalem.

Other alleged connexions between Josephus and the N.T. are open to serious question. Few will be inclined to follow Wellhausen, who finds in the murder of Zacharias son of Baris (or Bariscæus or Baruch)[14] the