[2731] Nothing is known of this writer.
[2732] Dardanus, the ancestor of the Trojans, if he is the person here meant, is said to have introduced the worship of the gods into Samothrace.
[2733] The works of Homer were transmitted in a similar manner.
[2734] Moses, no doubt, was represented by the Egyptian priesthood as a magician, in reference more particularly to the miracles wrought by him before Pharaoh. From them the Greeks would receive the notion.
[2735] In 2 Tim. iii. 8, we find the words, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth.” Eusebius, in his Præparatio Evangelica, B. ix., states that Jannes and Jambres, or Mambres, were the names of Egyptian writers, who practised Magic, and opposed Moses before Pharaoh. This contest was probably represented by the Egyptian priesthood as merely a dispute between two antagonistic schools of Magic.
[2736] Of this person nothing is known. The former editions mostly have “Jotapea.” “Jotapata” was the name of a town in Syria, the birthplace of Josephus.
[2737] He is mistaken here as to the nation to which Jannes belonged.
[2738] By some it has been supposed that this bears reference to Christianity, as introduced into Cyprus by the Apostle Barnabas. Owing to the miracles wrought in the infancy of the Church, the religion of the Christians was very generally looked upon as a sort of Magic. The point is very doubtful.
[2739] His itinerary, Ajasson remarks, would have been a great curiosity.
[2740] B. xxviii. c. 4.