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[ We may here take notice, as well as in the parallel parts of the books Of the War, B. II. ch. 9. sect. 1, that after the death of Herod the Great, and the succession of Archelaus, Josephus is very brief in his accounts of Judea, till near his own time. I suppose the reason is, that after the large history of Nicolaus of Damascus, including the life of Herod, and probably the succession and first actions of his sons, he had but few good histories of those times before him.]
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[ Numbers 19:11-14.]
7 ([return])
[ This citation is now wanting.]
8 ([return])
[ These Jews, as they are here called, whose blood Pilate shed on this occasion, may very well be those very Galilean Jews, "whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices," Luke 13:1, 2; these tumults being usually excited at some of the Jews' great festivals, when they slew abundance of sacrifices, and the Galileans being commonly much more busy in such tumults than those of Judea and Jerusalem, as we learn from the history of Archelaus, Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 9. sect. 3 and ch. 10. sect. 2, 9; though, indeed, Josephus's present copies say not one word of "those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them," which the 4th verse of the same 13th chapter of St. Luke informs us of. But since our gospel teaches us, Luke 23:6, 7, that "when Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether Jesus were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod;" and ver. 12, "The same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together for before they had been at enmity between themselves;" take the very probable key of this matter in the words of the learned Noldius, de Herod. No. 219: "The cause of the enmity between Herod and Pilate [says he] seems to have been this, that Pilate had intermeddled with the tetrarch's jurisdiction, and had slain some of his Galilean subjects, Luke 13:1; and, as he was willing to correct that error, he sent Christ to Herod at this time.">[
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[ A.D. 33, April 3.]