wonderful and plausible occasion for the name of Sabbath;
for he says that "when the Jews had traveled a six days'
journey, they had buboes in their groins; and that on this
account it was that they rested on the seventh day, as having
got safely to that country which is now called Judea; that then
they preserved the language of the Egyptians, and called that
day the Sabbath, for that malady of buboes on their groin
was named Sabbatosis by the Egyptians." And would not a
man now laugh at this fellow's trifling, or rather hate his
impudence in writing thus? We must, it seems, fake it for
granted that all these hundred and ten thousand men must
have these buboes. But, for certain, if those men had been
blind and lame, and had all sorts of distempers upon them, as
Apion says they had, they could not have gone one single
day's journey; but if they had been all able to travel over a
large desert, and, besides that, to fight and conquer those
that opposed them, they had not all of them had buboes on
their groins after the sixth day was over; for no such
distemper comes naturally and of necessity upon those that
travel; but still, when there are many ten thousands in a camp
together, they constantly march a settled space [in a day].
Nor is it at all probable that such a thing should happen by
chance; this would be prodigiously absurd to be supposed.
However, our admirable author Apion hath before told us
that "they came to Judea in six days' time;" and again, that
"Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and
Arabia, which was called Sinai, and was concealed there forty
days, and that when he came down from thence he gave laws
to the Jews." But, then, how was it possible for them to tarry
forty days in a desert place where there was no water, and at