(17) One may here take notice, that how tyrannical and extravagant soever Herod were in himself, and in his Grecian cities, as to those plays, and shows, and temples for idolatry, mentioned above, ch.8.sect.1, and here also; yet durst even he introduce very few of them into the cities of the Jews, who, as Josephus here notes, would not even then have borne them, so zealous were they still for many of the laws of Moses, even under so tyrannical a government as this was of Herod the Great; which tyrannical government puts me naturally in mind of Dean Prideaux's honest reflection upon the like ambition after such tyrannical power in Pompey and Caesar: "One of these (says he, at the year 60) could not bear an equal, nor the other a superior;and through this ambitions humor and thirst after more power in these two men, the whole Roman empire being divided into two opposite factions, there was produced hereby the most destructive war that ever afflicted it; and the like folly too much reigns in all other places.Could about thirty men be persuaded to live at home in peace, without enterprising upon the rights of each other, for the vain glory of conquest, and the enlargement of power, the whole world might be at quiet; but their ambition, their follies, and their humor, leading them constantly to encroach upon and quarrel with each other, they involve all that are under them in the mischiefs thereof; and many thousands are they which yearly perish by it; so that it may almost raise a doubt, whether the benefit which the world receives from government be sufficient to make amends for the calamities which it suffers from the follies, mistakes, and real-administrations of those that manage it."(18) Cesarea being here said to be rebuilt and adorned in twelve years, and soon afterwards in ten years, Antiq.B.XVI.ch.5.
sect.1, there must be a mistake in one of the places as to the true number, but in which of them it is hard positively to determine.
(19) This Pollio, with whom Herod's sons lived at Rome, was not Pollio the Pharisee, already mentioned by Josephus, ch.1.sect.
1, and again presently after this, ch.10.sect.4; but Asinine Pollo, the Roman, as Spanheim here observes.
(20) The character of this Zenodorus is so like that of a famous robber of the same name in Strabo, and that about this very country, and about this very time also, that I think Dr.Hudson hardly needed to have put a overlaps to his determination that they were the same.
(21) A tetrarchy properly and originally denoted the fourth part of an entire kingdom or country, and a tetrarch one that was ruler of such a fourth part, which always implies somewhat less extent of dominion and power than belong to a kingdom and to a king.
(22) We may here observe, that the fancy of the modern Jews, in calling this temple, which was really the third of their temples, the second temple, followed so long by later Christians, seems to be without any solid foundation.The reason why the Christians here followed the Jews is, because of the prophecy of Haggai, 2:6-9, which they expound of the Messiah's coning to the second or Zorobabel's temple, of which they suppose this of Herod to be only a continuation; which is meant, I think, of his coming to the fourth and last temple, of that future, largest, and most glorious one, described by Ezekiel; whence I take the former notion, how general soever, to be a great mistake.See Lit.
Accorap.of Proph.p.2.
(23) Some of our modem students in architecture have made a strange blunder here, when they imagine that Josephus affirms the entire foundations of the temple or holy house sunk down into the rocky mountain on which it stood no less than twenty cubits, whereas he is clear that they were the foundations of the additional twenty cubits only above the hundred (made perhaps weak on purpose, and only for show and grandeur) that sunk or fell down, as Dr.Hudson rightly understands him; nor is the thing itself possible in the other sense.Agrippa's preparation for building the inner parts of the temple twenty cubits higher (History of the War, B.V.ch.1.sect.5) must in all probability refer to this matter, since Josephus says here, that this which had fallen down was designed to be raised up again under Nero, under whom Agrippa made that preparation.But what Josephus says presently, that Solomon was the first king of the Jews, appears by the parallel place, Antiq.B.XX.ch.9.sect.
7, and other places, to be meant only the first of David's posterity, and the first builder of the temple.
(24) "Into none Of these three did king Herod enter," i.e.1.Not into the court of the priests; 2.Nor into the holy house itself;3.Nor into the separate place belonging to the altar, as the words following imply; for none but priests, or their attendants the Levites, might come into any of them.See Antiq.B.XVI.ch.
4.sect.6, when Herod goes into the temple, and makes a speech in it to the people, but that could only be into the court of Israel, whither the people could come to hear him.
(25) This tradition which Josephus here mentions, as delivered down from fathers to their children, of this particular remarkable circumstance relating to the building of Herod's temple, is a demonstration that such its building was a known thing in Judea at this time.He was born about forty-six years after it is related to have been finished, and might himself have seen and spoken with some of the builders themselves, and with a great number of those that had seen it building.The doubt therefore about the truth of this history of the pulling down and rebuilding this temple by Herod, which some weak people have indulged, was not then much greater than it soon may be, whether or not our St.Paul's church in London was burnt down in the fire of London, A.D.1666, and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren a little afterward.