Commentary on Obadiah and a Philological Study of Enoch

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

...they are persuaded that it happened this way: the Edomite leaders denied passage to Joseph when he was seeking Canaan or about to bury his father there, but they were defeated in battle. One of them, named Zepho, a grandson of Esau (Genesis 36:15), was led away by Joseph into Egypt. Later, having slipped away from Egypt in flight, he came to Annius, the King of Carthage. When he was appointed by him as a military commander against the peoples of Italy, he seized a favorable opportunity to defect with his men to the Italians. He was hailed as King by them and obtained the name Janus, that is, Saturn (according to Abarbanel). From his own name, he founded Genoa and reigned for 50 years in Campania; see also Zennorenna The Tze'enah Ure'enah, a highly influential Yiddish homiletic commentary on the Torah, first published in the late 16th century, page 65.

2 Response: Although it would detract little from authentic original Greek: γνησίως (gnēsiōs) Christians if we allowed the seat of the Antichrist to be made Bozrah, the Antichrist to be made an Idumean or even Esau himself, and his offspring, the Jesuits, to be made Esau-ites—since they resemble such figures in their character, as the Blessed Gesner Salomon Gesner (1559–1605), a Lutheran theologian and professor at Wittenberg demonstrates in On Obadiah (page 75, bottom)—yet because the Jews weave too many broad consequences from this, we will concede nothing to them blindly.

We note, therefore:
1. Those things, as Buxtorf Johannes Buxtorf the Elder (1564–1629), a celebrated Hebraist and professor at Basel also well-advised in his Appendix to the Kuzari (399), do not appear in the Basel Münster edition of Joseph Gorionides Often called "Josippon," this is a 10th-century Hebrew history of the Jews. Early modern scholars frequently confused its author with the 1st-century historian Flavius Josephus. Perhaps they are still to be sought in the Venice edition, which, as Scaliger Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609), one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance observed in Refutation of the Three Sects (chapter 4), is more complete at the beginning and end than the Basel edition.

2. Even if such a thing were found in the Venice edition, Joseph Gorionides is not of such authority among us that we should immediately agree with him. We rightly hold Flavius Josephus The famous 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and author of 'The Jewish War' and 'Antiquities of the Jews' in high esteem whenever he speaks the truth. Yet Joseph Gorionides is not the same person as him. For the father of Flavius was Matthias, and his grandfather was Joseph (Life of Josephus, page 1); whereas either the father or certainly the grandfather of Gorionides was Gorion. Furthermore, Flavius Josephus distinguishes himself quite clearly from that other Joseph in The Jewish War (book 2, chapter 25, and book 4, chapter 5). Finally, this Gorionides often contradicts Flavius. For example, regarding the reason for the killing of John [the Baptist], compare Flavius Josephus (Antiquities, book 18, chapter 7) and Gorionides (book 5, final chapter, from the beginning). For this reason, Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, Gerhard Johann Vossius, Johannes Drusius, Possevinus (in his entry for Hegesippus), Francisco Ribera, Constantin L'Empereur, Anton Hülsius, and others have long since convicted the history of Gorionides extant today of spuriousness original Greek: νοθείᾱς (notheias).

3. And the lie itself, whoever its author is imagined to be, betrays and stabs itself. It is enough to produce a few absurdities as evidence. Abarbanel says that Zepho fled from Egypt in the sixth year after the death of Jacob. He indeed, according to—