30. Our nation, therefore, according to Manetho, was not derived
from Egypt, nor were any of the Egyptians mingled with us. For it
is to be supposed that many of the leprous and distempered people
were dead in the mines, since they had been there a long time,
and in so ill a condition; many others must be dead in the
battles that happened afterward, and more still in the last
battle and flight after it.

31. It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now
the Egyptians acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a
divine person; nay, they would willingly lay claim to him
themselves, though after a most abusive and incredible manner,
and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and one of the priests of
that place, and was ejected out of it among the rest, on account
of his leprosy; although it had been demonstrated out of their
records that he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier,
and then brought our forefathers out of Egypt into the country
that is now inhabited by us. But now that he was not subject in
his body to any such calamity, is evident from what he himself
tells us; for he forbade those that had the leprosy either to
continue in a city, or to inhabit in a village, but commanded
that they should go about by themselves with their clothes rent;
and declares that such as either touch them, or live under the
same roof with them, should be esteemed unclean; nay, more, if
any one of their disease be healed, and he recover his natural
constitution again, he appointed them certain purifications, and
washings with spring water, and the shaving off all their hair,
and enjoins that they shall offer many sacrifices, and those of
several kinds, and then at length to be admitted into the holy
city; although it were to be expected that, on the contrary, if