wheresoever any body of men of our nation do live; and even there
an exact catalogue of our priests' marriages is kept; I mean at
Egypt and at Babylon, or in any other place of the rest of the
habitable earth, whithersoever our priests are scattered; for
they send to Jerusalem the ancient names of their parents in
writing, as well as those of their remoter ancestors, and signify
who are the witnesses also. But if any war falls out, such as
have fallen out a great many of them already, when Antiochus
Epiphanes made an invasion upon our country, as also when Pompey
the Great and Quintilius Varus did so also, and principally in
the wars that have happened in our own times, those priests that
survive them compose new tables of genealogy out of the old
records, and examine the circumstances of the women that remain;
for still they do not admit of those that have been captives, as
suspecting that they had conversation with some foreigners. But
what is the strongest argument of our exact management in this
matter is what I am now going to say, that we have the names of
our high priests from father to son set down in our records for
the interval of two thousand years; and if any of these have been
transgressors of these rules, they are prohibited to present
themselves at the altar, or to be partakers of any other of our
purifications; and this is justly, or rather necessarily done,
because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a
writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they
being only prophets that have written the original and earliest
accounts of things as they learned them of God himself by
inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their
own times, and that in a very distinct manner also.

8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us,