Note 66 — APPENDICES.

As an example of the inexactitude of Josephus’ measurements, I may instance the length which he gives for the Samaria colonnade (Ant., XV. viii. 5). He gives 20 furlongs or 12,000 feet, the real length being 5500 feet. Again, he says that the harbour at Cæsarea equalled the Piræus (Ant., XV. ix. 6). The Piræus was twenty times as large as the Cæsarea harbour. He makes the third wall of Jerusalem 8000 yards long, yet he gives the total circuit of the city as 6600 yards long in the same account (Wars, V. iv. 3). He places Gabaoth Saule four miles from Jerusalem in one passage (Wars, V. ii. 1), and nearly double that distance in another (Wars, II. xix. 1), the real distance being 5½ miles. It has long been known that the chronological calculations of Josephus do not agree together, either through his own inaccuracy or through the corruptions of copyists (see the foundation of the Temple in the eighteenth year of Herod, Ant., XV. xi. 1; or in the fifteenth, Wars, I. xxi. 1), and the comparisons which Josephus gives between Jewish and Greek weights in eight different passages do not agree in any one instance. The historian wrote in Rome in 75 and 93 A.D. Such is the accuracy of the author whom a critic like Dr. Robertson Smith is disposed to quote against the results of actual measurements of walls and rock, which are exact within the decimal of a foot. The general statements of Josephus are very valuable, but his measurements are quite unreliable.