2.112
Nay, this miracle or piety derides us further, and adds the following
pretended facts to his former fable; for be says that this man related
how, "while the Jews were once in a long war with the Idumeans, there
came a man out of one of the cities of the Idumeans, who there had worshipped
Apollo. This man, whose name is said to have been Zabidus, came to the
Jews, and promised that he would deliver Apollo, the god of Dora, into
their hands, and that he would come to our temple, if they would all come
up with him, and bring the whole multitude of the Jews with them; that
Zabidus made him a certain wooden instrument, and put it round about him,
and set three rows of lamps therein, and walked after such a manner, that
he appeared to those that stood a great way off him to be a kind of star,
walking upon the earth; that the Jews were terribly affrighted at so surprising
an appearance, and stood very quiet at a distance; and that Zabidus, while
they continued so very quiet, went into the holy house, and carried off
that golden head of an ass, (for so facetiously does he write,) and then
went his way back again to Dora in great haste." And say you so, sir!
as I may reply; then does Apion load the ass, that is, himself, and lays
on him a burden of fooleries and lies; for he writes of places that have
no being, and not knowing the cities he speaks of, he changes their situation;
for Idumea borders upon our country, and is near to Gaza, in which there
is no such city as Dora; although there be, it is true, a city named Dora
in Phoenicia, near Mount Carmel, but it is four days' journey from Idumea.
note
Now, then, why does this man accuse us, because we have not gods in common
with other nations, if our fathers were so easily prevailed upon to have
Apollo come to them, and thought they saw him walking upon the earth, and
the stars with him? for certainly those who have so many festivals, wherein
they light lamps, must yet, at this rate, have never seen a candlestick!
But still it seems that while Zabidus took his journey over the country,
where were so many ten thousands of people, nobody met him. He also, it
seems, even in a time of war, found the walls of Jerusalem destitute of
guards. I omit the rest. Now the doors of the holy house were seventy note
cubits high, and twenty cubits broad; they were all plated over with gold,
and almost of solid gold itself, and there were no fewer than twenty note
men required to shut them every day; nor was it lawful ever to leave them
open, though it seems this lamp-bearer of ours opened them easily, or thought
he opened them, as he thought he had the ass's head in his hand. Whether,
therefore, he returned it to us again, or whether Apion took it, and brought
it into the temple again, that Antiochus might find it, and afford a handle
for a second fable of Apion's, is uncertain.
2.121
Apion also tells a false story, when he mentions an oath of ours,
as if we "swore by God, the Maker of the heaven, and earth, and sea,
to bear no good will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the
Greeks." Now this liar ought to have said directly that" we would
bear no good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Egyptians."
For then his story about the oath would have squared with the rest of his
original forgeries, in case our forefathers had been driven away by their
kinsmen, the Egyptians, not on account of any wickedness they had been
guilty of, but on account of the calamities they were under; for as to
the Grecians, we were rather remote from them in place, than different
from them in our institutions, insomuch that we have no enmity with them,
nor any jealousy of them. On the contrary, it hath so happened that many
of them have come over to our laws, and some of them have continued in
their observation, although others of them had not courage enough to persevere,
and so departed from them again; nor did any body ever hear this oath sworn
by us: Apion, it seems, was the only person that heard it, for he indeed
was the first composer of it.
2.125
However, Apion deserves to be admired for his great prudence, as
to what I am going to say, which is this," That there is a plain mark
among us, that we neither have just laws, nor worship God as we ought to
do, because we are not governors, but are rather in subjection to Gentiles,
sometimes to one nation, and sometimes to another; and that our city hath
been liable to several calamities, while their city [Alexandria] hath been
of old time an imperial city, and not used to be in subjection to the Romans."
But now this man had better leave off this bragging, for every body but
himself would think that Apion said what he hath said against himself;
for there are very few nations that have had the good fortune to continue
many generations in the principality, but still the mutations in human
affairs have put them into subjection under others; and most nations have
been often subdued, and brought into subjection by others. Now for the
Egyptians, perhaps they are the only nation that have had this extraordinary
privilege, to have never served any of those monarchs who subdued Asia
and Europe, and this on account, as they pretend, that the gods fled into
their country, and saved themselves by being changed into the shapes of
wild beasts! Whereas these Egyptians note
are the very people that appear to have never, in all the past ages, had
one day of freedom, no, not so much as from their own lords. For I will
not reproach them with relating the manner how the Persians used them,
and this not once only, but many times, when they laid their cities waste,
demolished their temples, and cut the throats of those animals whom they
esteemed to be gods; for it is not reasonable to imitate the clownish ignorance
of Apion, who hath no regard to the misfortunes of the Athenians, or of
the Lacedemonians, the latter of whom were styled by all men the most courageous,
and the former the most religious of the Grecians. I say nothing of such
kings as have been famous for piety, particularly of one of them, whose
name was Cresus, nor what calamities he met with in his life; I say nothing
of the citadel of Athens, of the temple at Ephesus, of that at Delphi,
nor of ten thousand others which have been burnt down, while nobody cast
reproaches on those that were the sufferers, but on those that were the
actors therein. But now we have met with Apion, an accuser of our nation,
though one that still forgets the miseries of his own people, the Egptians;
but it is that Sesostris who was once so celebrated a king of Egypt that
hath blinded him. Now we will not brag of our kings, David and Solomon,
though they conquered many nations; accordingly we will let them alone.
However, Apion is ignorant of what every body knows, that the Egyptians
were servants to the Persians, and afterwards to the Macedonians, when
they were lords of Asia, and were no better than slaves, while we have
enjoyed liberty formerly; nay, more than that, have had the dominion of
the cities that lie round about us, and this nearly for a hundred and twenty
years together, until Pompeius Magnus. And when all the kings every where
were conquered by the Romans, our ancestors were the only people who continued
to be esteemed their confederates and friends, on account of their fidelity
to them. note
