[484] Josephus also alludes to this belief that the corruption of disease chained the soul to the buried body, while violent death freed it to live for ever in the air and protect posterity.
[485] Under the kings cremation was an honourable form of burial, but in Babylon the Jews came to regard fire as a sacred element which should not be thus defiled.
[486] This was over the door of the Temple. Aristobulus gave it as a present to Pompey.
[487] Plutarch shared this error, which seems somehow to have been based on a misinterpretation of the Feast of Tabernacles, at which they were to 'take ... the fruit of goodly trees, ... and willows of the brook; and ... rejoice before the Lord your God seven days' (Lev. xxiii. 40).
[488] Over Coele-Syria, from the range of Lebanon.
[489] i.e. from Mount Hermon, nearly 9,000 feet high.
[490] Merom; Gennesareth; the Dead Sea.
[491] 'Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain' (Gen. xix. 24).
[492] These were not concentric, but an enemy approaching from the north-west would have to carry all three before reaching the temple, which stood on Mount Moriah at the eastern extremity of the city.
[493] Cp. Luke i. 8-10, where Zacharias entered the temple to burn incense, 'and the whole multitude of the people were praying without.'