15-ENDNOTES

ENDNOTES

1. This destruction of such a vast quantity of corn and other provisions, as was sufficient for many years, was the direct occasion of that terrible famine which consumed incredible numbers of Jews in Jerusalem during its siege. Nor probably could the Romans have takes this city, after all, had not these seditious Jews been so infatuated as thus madly to destroy what Josephus here justly styles “the nerves of their power.”

2. There being no gate on the west, and only on the west side of the court of the priests, and so no steps there, this was the only side that the seditious, under this John of Gischala could bring their engines close to the cloisters of that court endwise, though upon the floor of the court of Israel.

3. Josephus calls him Caesar and king, though he was neither as yet.

4. Here we see the reason why such vast multitudes were in Jerusalem during the from all parts of the country to keep this great festival in addition to the great numbers who had fled for safety to this strong city. Josephus says six hundred thousand were buried at the public charge, and that one million one hundred thousand perished, besides ninety-seven thousand captives.

5. There is quite a discrepancy between Josephus and Strabo: the latter affirms the city to be sixty furlongs in length.

6. All that is, or can be true here, is this, that when the court of the Gentiles was long afterward to be encompassed with cloisters, the southern foundation for these cloisters was found not to be large or firm enough, and was raised, and that additional foundation supported by great pillars and arches under ground, which Josephus speaks of elsewhere ( Antiq. b, xv, c, xi, sec. 3, vol. iv), and which Mr. Maundrell saw, and describes, p. 190, as extant under ground at this day.

7. Retand very properly takes notice here, how justly this judgment came upon the Jews, when they were crucified in such multitudes together that the Romans wanted room for the crosses, and the crosses for the bodies of these Jews, since they had brought this judgment on themselves by the crucifixion of their Messiah.

8. A furlong is 220 yards, 201 meters or 1/8 mile.

9. Josephus, both here and before, b. iv, e. vii, see. 4, esteems the land of Sodom, not as part of the lake Asphaltites, or under its waters, but near it only, as Tacitus also took the same notion from him, Hist. v, vi, 7, which the great Reland takes to be the very truth, both in his note on this place, and in his Palestine, torn. 1: pp. 254—258; though I rather suppose part of that region of Pentapolis to be now under the waters of the south part of that sea, but perhaps not the whole country.

10. Reland notes here, very pertinently, that the tower of Antonia stood higher than the floor of the temple, or court adjoining to it; and that accordingly they descended thence into the temple, as Josephus elsewhere speaks also. See b. vi, 100: ii, sec. 5.

11. The Romans, like the Muhammadans, promised future happiness to those who died bravely in battle.

12. No wonder that this Julian, who had so many nails in his shoes, slipped upon the pavement of the temple, which was smooth, and laid with marble of different colors.

13. This was in A. D. 70, and was a remarkable day indeed the prediction of the prophet Daniel, uttered centuries before, was now fulfilled, the war “in half a week having caused the sacrifice oblation to cease.” For from the month of February, A.D. 66, about which time Vespasian commenced the war, to this time, was just three years and a half, or half a prophetic week, a day standing for a year.

14. Reland, I think, here judges well, when he interprets these spikes (of those that stood on the top of the holy house) with sharp points; they were fixed into lead to prevent the birds from sitting there, and defiling the holy house; for such spikes there were now upon it, as Josephus himself has already assured us, b. v, 100: v, sec. 6, vol. 6:

15. Take Havercamp’s note here: “This,” says he, “is a remarkable place;” and Tertullian truly says, in his Apologetic, e. xvi, p. 162, that “the entire religion of the Roman camp almost consisted in worshiping the ensign, in swearing by the ensigns, and in preferring the ensigns before all other gods.” See, what Havercamp says upon that place of Tertullian.

16. What is here chiefly remarkable is this, that no foreign nation ever cams thus to destroy the Jews at any of their solemn festivals, from the days of Moses till this time, but came now, upon their apostasy from God, and from obedience to him. Nor is it possible, in the nature of things, that in any other nation such vast numbers should be gotten together, and perish in the siege of any one city whatsoever, as now happened in Jerusalem.

17. This Terentius Rufus, as Reland in part observes here, is the same person whom the Talmudists call Turnus Rufus, of whom they relate, that “he ploughed up Zion as a field, and made Jerusalem become as heaps, and the mountains of the house as the high places of a forest;” which was long before foretold by the prophetMicah 3:12and quoted from him in the prophecies ofJeremiah 26:18.