the polluted people, and beat them, and slew a great many of
them, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria." These and the
like accounts are written by Manetho. But I will demonstrate that
he trifles, and tells arrant lies, after I have made a
distinction which will relate to what I am going to say about
him; for this Manetho had granted and confessed that this nation
was not originally Egyptian, but that they had come from another
country, and subdued Egypt, and then went away again out of it.
But that. those Egyptians who were thus diseased in their bodies
were not mingled with us afterward, and that Moses who brought
the people out was not one of that company, but lived many
generations earlier, I shall endeavor to demonstrate from
Manetho's own accounts themselves.

28. Now, for the first occasion of this fiction, Manetho supposes
what is no better than a ridiculous thing; for he says that" king
Amenophis desired to see the gods." What gods, I pray, did he
desire to see? If he meant the gods whom their laws ordained to
be worshipped, the ox, the goat, the crocodile, and the baboon,
he saw them already; but for the heavenly gods, how could he see
them, and what should occasion this his desire? To be sure? it
was because another king before him had already seen them. He had
then been informed what sort of gods they were, and after what
manner they had been seen, insomuch that he did not stand in need
of any new artifice for obtaining this sight. However, the
prophet by whose means the king thought to compass his design was
a wise man. If so, how came he not to know that such his desire
was impossible to be accomplished? for the event did not succeed.
And what pretense could there be to suppose that the gods would
not be seen by reason of the people's maims in their bodies, or