18 ([return])
[ This agrees with Josephus's frequent accounts elsewhere in his own Life, that Tibetans, and Taricheae, and Gamala were under this Agrippa, junior, till Justus, the son of Pistus, seized for the Jews, upon the breaking out of the war.]
19 ([return])
[ This treacherous and barbarous murder of the good high priest Jonathan, by the contrivance of this wicked procurator, Felix, was the immediate occasion of the ensuing murders by the Sicarii or ruffians, and one great cause of the following horrid cruelties and miseries of the Jewish nation, as Josephus here supposes; whose excellent reflection on the gross wickedness of that nation, as the direct cause of their terrible destruction, is well worthy the attention of every Jewish and of every Christian reader. And since we are soon coming to the catalogue of the Jewish high priests, it may not be amiss, with Reland, to insert this Jonathan among them, and to transcribe his particular catalogue of the last twenty-eight high priests, taken out of Josephus, and begin with Ananelus, who was made by Herod the Great. See Antiq. B. XV. ch. 2. sect. 4, and the note there. 1. Ananelus. 2. Aristobulus. 3. Jesus, the son of Fabus. 4. Simon, the son of Boethus. 5. Marthias, the son of Theophiltu. 6. Joazar, the son of Boethus. 7. Eleazar, the son of Boethus. 8. Jesus, the son of Sic. 9. [Annas, or] Ananus, the son of Seth. 10. Ismael, the son of Fabus. 11. Eleazar, the son of Ananus. 12. Simon, the son of Camithus. 13. Josephus Caiaphas, the son-in-law to Ananus. 14. Jonathan, the son of Ananus. 15. Theophilus, his brother, and son of Ananus. 16. Simon, the son of Boethus. 17. Matthias, the brother of Jonathan, and son of Ananus. 18. Aljoneus. 19. Josephus, the son of Camydus. 20. Ananias, the son of Nebedeus. 21. Jonathas. 22. Ismael, the son of Fabi. 23. Joseph Cabi, the son of Simon. 24. Ananus, the son of Artanus. 25. Jesus, the son of Damnetas. 26. Jesus, the son of Gamaliel. 27. Matthias, the son of Theophilus. 28. Phannias, the son of Samuel. As for Ananus and Joseph Caiaphas, here mentioned about the middle of this catalogue, they are no other than those Annas and Caiaphas so often mentioned in the four Gospels; and that Ananias, the son of Nebedeus, was that high priest before whom St. Paul pleaded his own cause, Acts 24.]
20 ([return])
[ Of these Jewish impostors and false prophets, with many other circumstances and miseries of the Jews, till their utter destruction, foretold by our Savior, see Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 58-75. Of this Egyptian impostor, and the number of his followers, in Josephus, see Acts 21:38.]
21 ([return])
[ The wickedness here was very peculiar and extraordinary, that the high priests should so oppress their brethren the priests, as to starve the poorest of them to death. See the like presently, ch. 9. sect. 2. Such fatal crimes are covetousness and tyranny in the clergy, as well as in the laity, in all ages.]
22 ([return])
[ We have here one eminent example of Nero's mildness and goodness in his government towards the Jews, during the first five years of his reign, so famous in antiquity; we have perhaps another in Josephus's own Life, sect. 3; and a third, though of a very different nature here, in sect. 9, just before. However, both the generous acts of kindness were obtained of Nero by his queen Poppea, who was a religious lady, and perhaps privately a Jewish proselyte, and so were not owing entirely to Nero's own goodness.]