book of his Antiquities, adds the following: " But Quirinius, who belonged to the senate, and having enjoying other offices, advanced through all the grades of office to the consulship, a man also of great dignity in other respects, by the appointment of Cesar, came to Syria, with a small force, and with judicial power over the people, to take a valuation of their property." A little after he says: " But Judas, the Gaulonite, sprung from the town called Gamala, together with Sadducus, a Pharisee, headed a revolt of the people, saying that the assessment had nothing else in view but manifest slavery; and they exhorted the people to assert their liberty." He also writes in the second book of the history of the Jewish War, concerning the same man: " About this time a certain Judas of Galilee, stimulated the inhabitants to revolt, urging it as a reproach, that they endured paying tribute, and that they who had God for their master, suffered mortals to usurp the sovereignty over them." Thus far Josephus.
CHAPTER VI.
About the time of our Lord, agreeably to prophecy , those rulers ceased that had formerly governed the nation of the Jews by regular succession, and Herod was the first foreigner that reigned over them.
At the time that Herod was king, who was the first foreigner that reigned over the Jewish people, the prophecy recorded by Moses received its fulfilment, viz. " That a prince should not fail of Judah, nor a ruler from his loins, until he should come for whom it is reserved."[1] The same, he also shows, would be the expectation of the nations. The prediction was evidently not accomplished, as long as they were at liberty to have their own native rulers, which continued from the time of Moses down to the reign of Augustus. Under him, Herod was the first foreigner that obtained the government of the Jews. Since, as Josephus has writ-
- ↑ This celebrated passage we here give after the Septuagint, which Eusebius invariably quotes.
