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[ Josephus's opinion is here well worth noting:— That every one is to be permitted to worship God according to his own conscience, and is not to be compelled in matters of religion: as one may here observe, on the contrary, that the rest of the Jews were still for obliging all those who married Jewesses to be circumcised, and become Jews, and were ready to destroy all that would not submit to do so. See sect. 31, and Luke 11:54.]
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[ How Josephus could say here that the Jewish laws forbade them to "spoil even their enemies," while yet, a little before his time, our Savior had mentioned it as then a current maxim with them, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy," Matthew 5:43, is worth our inquiry. I take it that Josephus, having been now for many years an Ebionite Christian, had learned this interpretation of the law of Moses from Christ, whom he owned for the true Melah, as it follows in the succeeding verses, which, though he might not read in St. Matthew's Gospel, yet might he have read much the same exposition in their own Ebionite or Nazarene Gospel itself; of which improvements made by Josephus, after he was become a Christian, we have already had several examples in this his life, sect. 3, 13, 15, 19, 21, 23, and shall have many more therein before its conclusion, as well as we have them elsewhere in all his later writings.]
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[ Here we may observe the vulgar Jewish notion of witchcraft, but that our Josephus was too wise to give any countenance to it.]
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[ In this section, as well as in the 18 and 33. those small vessels that sailed on the sea of Galilee, are called by Josephus, i.e. plainly ships; so that we need not wander at our evangelists, who still call them ships; nor ought we to render them boats, as some do, Their number was in all 230, as we learn from our author elsewhere. Jewish War. B. II. ch. 21. sect. 8.]
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[ Part of these fortifications on Mount Tabor may be those still remaining, and which were seen lately by Mr. Maundrel. See his Travels, p. 112.]