of the man! for he had neither told us who these three hundred
and eighty thousand were, nor how the four hundred and thirty
thousand perished; whether they fell in war, or went over to
Ramesses. And, what is the strangest of all, it is not possible
to learn out of him who they were whom he calls Jews, or to which
of these two parties he applies that denomination, whether to the
two hundred and fifty thousand leprous people, or to the three
hundred and eighty thousand that were about Pelusium. But perhaps
it will be looked upon as a silly thing in me to make any larger
confutation of such writers as sufficiently confute themselves;
for had they been only confuted by other men, it had been more
tolerable.

34. I shall now add to these accounts about Manethoand Cheremon
somewhat about Lysimachus, who hath taken the same topic of
falsehood with those forementioned, but hath gone far beyond them
in the incredible nature of his forgeries; which plainly
demonstrates that he contrived them out of his virulent hatred of
our nation. His words are these: "The people of the Jews being
leprous and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of
distempers, in the days of Bocchoris, king of Egypt, they fled to
the temples, and got their food there by begging: and as the
numbers were very great that were fallen under these diseases,
there arose a scarcity in Egypt. Hereupon Bocehoris, the king of
Egypt, sent some to consult the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about
his scarcity. The god's answer was this, that he must purge his
temples of impure and impious men, by expelling them out of those
temples into desert places; but as to the scabby and leprous
people, he must drown them, and purge his temples, the sun having
an indignation at these men being suffered to live; and by this