have in the Scriptures and Josephus concerning them.

(20) A glorious testimony this of the observation of the sabbath
by the Jews. See Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 2. sect. 4, and ch. 6. sect.
2; the Life, sect. 54; and War, B. IV. ch. 9. sect. 12.

(21) Not their law, but the superstitious interpretation of their
leaders which neither the Maccabees nor our blessed Savior did
ever approve of.

(22) In reading this and the remaining sections of this book, and
some parts of the next, one may easily perceive that our usually
cool and candid author, Josephus, was too highly offended with
the impudent calumnies of Manethe, and the other bitter enemies
of the Jews, with whom he had now to deal, and was thereby
betrayed into a greater heat and passion than ordinary, and that
by consequence he does not hear reason with his usual fairness
and impartiality; he seems to depart sometimes from the brevity
and sincerity of a faithful historian, which is his grand
character, and indulges the prolixity and colors of a pleader and
a disputant: accordingly, I confess, I always read these sections
with less pleasure than I do the rest of his writings, though I
fully believe the reproaches cast on the Jews, which he here
endeavors to confute and expose, were wholly groundless and
unreasonable.

(23) This is a very valuable testimony of Manetho, that the laws
of Osarsiph, or Moses, were not made in compliance with, but in
opposition to, the customs of the Egyptians. See the note on
Antiq. B. III. ch. 8. sect. 9.