Page:The Archko Volume (1896).djvu/25

Rh known histories in this country. Dr. Rashi, D.D., who wrote in Paris in the twelfth century, says in Vol. III., page 190, that in the formation of the ancient libraries there were men appointed called "baalie suphoths," which means "book-compilers." The business of these men was to take the sheets of parchment of the various authors and pin their dates together, bind them in bundles and have them bound with clasps between cedar boards. This was a trade, and it required the best of scholars to do it. They were called baalie suphoths. We find that the works of Philo were compiled by Pseudonymaus Joseph Ben Gorion, 150. This Ben Gorion was a Jewish rabbi, a Pharisean doctor. Josephus was compiled by Ekaba, another Jewish doctor, at the close of the second century; and so with all the historians who lived near the Christian era. Josephus was published in book-form by Havercamp, in Amsterdam, in 1729. Now all he had to guide him was what Ben Gorion had said. So it is with Philo, which was put in book-form by Mangey, in London, in 1742; all he had was what Ekaba had pleased to compile of his works, and, as there was deadly hatred between Jews and Christians at that time, it is most reasonable to believe that those compilers would leave everything out that would favor the Christians. It was to their own interest at that time to bury the very name of Christ in eternal oblivion; and this is the reason that all the historians who lived and wrote, in those days are made to say so very little about Christ or his followers.