PREFACE

...laboriously; and I considered it both my passion and my duty to embrace this task, and to apply myself to it, so that the most noble author of histories, Flavius Josephus—who holds the place next to the Sacred Writers—might be held and read by all with greater use and benefit than has been the case until now.

My first concern was to look in every direction and to urge learned men everywhere to assist me in this notable undertaking, and to earn the gratitude of many scholars. The renowned Hudson John Hudson (1662–1719), the previous editor whose work Havercamp is completing. had almost stripped England bare, having surveyed all the libraries there and leaving nothing behind; many resources had also been sent to him from elsewhere. And yet, this edition can testify that some things were left for the care and diligence of those who followed; enriched by new collations and additions that are not to be regretted, it will easily defend its own dignity. Two codices A codex is an ancient manuscript in book form, rather than a scroll. from Leiden Original: "Lugd. Bat." (Lugdunum Batavorum), the Latin name for Leiden in the Netherlands. certainly deserve the primary place; they were once owned by Isaac Vossius, and the renowned Hudson had some excerpts from them, as witnessed by the notes in the hand of Johannes Cocceius made in the margin of the book. We have inspected these with diligent care, and throughout we have noted their variations where they differed from the Vossian excerpts, using the letters L. B. (sometimes enclosed in brackets (L. B.) where it was necessary to insert them into the Hudsonian readings). Both codices are written on paper, but the hands are very good and ancient. The first, which once belonged to Wilhelm Nooms as the name inscribed there testifies, contains nine entire books of the later Antiquities, but not ten, as is incorrectly printed in the Catalog of the Leiden Library, Page 392, Number 26. For it begins from the start of the twelfth book; and since these books in particular were once very corrupted, this delayed the edition of Bosius, because he could not yet obtain a complete codex of them, meanwhile greatly desiring the excerpts of this manuscript, as Graevius writes in a letter to Heinsius, which appears in the latest collection of the renowned Burman, Number 151. I learned that the same books, but with the eleventh added, exist in the Milanese Ambrosian Library, but they agree so closely with the printed editions that you would hardly notice any departure from them. Nevertheless, it pleased me to give such notice of that codex as reached us from the letters of that most illustrious light of Italy, Ludovico Antonio Muratori. "A rather old parchment manuscript of Flavius Josephus," he says, "in the Ambrosian Library marked with the letter F, number 128, in small folio, which once belonged to the Archbishop of Philadelphia, is defective and begins from book 11 of the Jewish Antiquities. It is otherwise of the most excellent quality and venerable antiquity. The first page is torn in the upper outer corner; all others are intact and unmarred by the injury of time, so that they can be clearly read by a man skilled in older characters, or one slightly practiced in reading such a codex. For the letter beta The Greek letter β. in it is always written in this form: u; and kappa The Greek letter κ. as υ, so that alpha-beta eta Original Greek: αβ η.—as very frequently the same character represents both, nor do they differ in the slightest. Ligatures Characters where two or more letters are joined together. are very rare, but there is one that easily leads into error, which encompasses lambda and iota The Greek letters λ and ι., perpetually expressed in that form which should be taken for the letter mu The Greek letter μ. in the adjacent word. Furthermore, it has no subscript iota after the manner of more recent writers, but it clings to its vowel."

After that part of the histories follow the books of the Antiquities, and finally the Life of Josephus, written in Greek and published in print.

I have faithfully transcribed the other side of the first page from the first complete line, and it is as follows; and except for "he did later" Original Greek: τὸ ὕστερον ποίησεν. in two places, I noted nothing else varying from the printed edition I use, printed at Geneva Original: "Aureliæ Allobrogum," a Latin designation for Geneva. by the presses of Pierre de la Rovière, 1611.

"And that he would build the temple, and enjoy their ancient happiness, these things he provided for them. For having stirred up the soul of Cyrus, he caused him to write throughout all Asia. And King Cyrus says: Since the greatest God has appointed me King of the inhabited world, I am persuaded that this is He whom the nation of the Israelites worships; for indeed He has mentioned my name through the prophets. And that he would build the temple in Jerusalem in the country of Judea. These things Cyrus knew from reading the book where Isaiah had left prophecies concerning him..."